The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926, Lotte Reiniger) (Patreon)

79/100

Such a tonic to watch a nearly century-old film and marvel at things that would still seem thrillingly innovative today. In point of fact, I know for certain that they do: One of the three animation styles that Nina Paley employs in Sita Sings the Blues, though expressly based on Indian shadow puppets, looks a great deal like Reiniger's silhouette work here, particularly in terms of how much literally pinpoint detail went into designing the characters' ornate accoutrements. But those Drunk History-style interludes were comparatively simple, whereas The Adventures of Prince Achmed goes for maximalist dazzle at all times, and rarely misses. I was hooked from the opening scene, in which a sorcerer, through trial and error, conjures up a flying horse (with climb and dive controls located on its head and rump, respectively); whatever you imagine can be achieved, in the way of "Sledgehammer"-video-style metamorphosis, by just moving cardboard cutouts frame by frame across a light board, Reiniger achieves considerably more. And with a wry sense of humor, too—it's hard to articulate how she manages to generate emotion from figures that talk via intertitles and don't really have facial expressions to speak of, but I cracked up at the sorcerer creating a new outfit, donning it, and then, in a quick flourish, summoning a little diamond-shaped vanity mirror to check himself out. (It's mostly the speed with which he approves—there's a tiny smile—and flicks the mirror out of frame.) Every sequence delights the eye, and one effect is genuinely as magnificent as anything I've ever seen in an animated film: When Pari Banu and her attendants bathe in the river, Reiniger uses two dozen or so small, wedge-shaped, irregularly spaced bits of paper to perfectly replicate a reflection refracted through water. I mean, "perfectly"—it's not photorealistic, of course, but it's better than photorealism, at once strikingly fantastic and wholly persuasive. 

That's also a good synopsis of stop-motion animation (of which this is a variant, though I guess all animation is stop-motion in the broadest sense), and here we run into the dilemma that I faced upon a recent re-viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas. How damaging can mediocre content be when manifested by sublime form? I forced myself to concede that Nightmare's Burtonized design and Selickian virtuosity can't completely paper over the fact that it's a bloated half-hour TV special, and Prince Achmed—to which I have no nostalgic allegiance whatsoever, so it's easier this time—similarly suffers from a narrative that's just mix-and-match Hanna Diyab (and also often racist, albeit in a way that's rooted in ignorant cultural stereotypes rather than animus; it's Muppet Show racism). Tossing Aladdin into the Achmed + Pari Banu tale, using "sorcerer" as the bridge, just sorta sidelines the latter for a while, without the aid of Scheherazade to serve as justification. The movie's never remotely dull—Reiniger's visual imagination sees to that—but neither is it ever terribly engaging as an actual series of, y'know, adventures. Might’ve been more troublesome at 90+ minutes, but Reiniger wisely kept it down to six reels, which fairly whiz by. And I want to emphasize that, while stills from Prince Achmed convey a taste of what it's like, you really need to see the silhouettes in motion to get the full stunning effect. It's a triumph not merely of design but of cinema, transcending its considerable historical significance, and I dearly wish that someone had recommended it to me sooner. (The key restoration seems to have occurred in the late '90s, so I'm surprised there wasn't any NYC hullabaloo around that time. Had Film Forum run it for a week, I'd definitely have seen it.) If you've not yet seen it yourself, I hereby vociferously verging on maniacally commend it to you.