Made by artist Lotte Reiniger, Achmed uses what’s called ‘silhouette animation’ which takes takes cardboard and lead cutouts under light and moves them kind of like a combination of shadow puppets and stop motion animation. What amazes me is how Reiniger was able to get small details like leaves and fingers with the paper. I would think that would be incredibly difficult to pull off.
The film is a silent movie with no dialogue and only title cards to know what is going on. The score which is so key in a silent movie is excellent by Wolfgang Zeller under the heavy direction of Reiniger (this seems like a very neat lady. They should make a movie about all of this!).
Finally a magic witch arrives who agrees to attack the Magician and they get the lamp back and after a little more adventure all is returned as it should be with couples in love and a the end of our story.
Here is a the first few minutes of the film to give you more of a feel of it.
Like I said it is only 65 minutes so why not spend a little of your time with something so unique and beautiful? Plus, you can tell people you’ve actually seen the first animated film. None of this Snow White stuff! 😉 . It is a silent film so it does require some focus and reading of the cards but again it’s only 65 minutes! So it’s not concentrating for that long.
I am shocked this is not Criterion release. It seems right up their ally. So far I believe the only animated film they have done is Watership Down (which I own). The restoration added back the original color tints which were missing for many years, but the DVD release feels very dated and Criterion could do amazing things with it.
It’s always hard to give grade when something is the first of its kind so I won’t. Just watch it and enjoy!
Do you watch any silent movies? In Salt Lake there is an old movie theater that has the largest theater organ in the world and you can see silent movies with the live organ accompaniment. It’s pretty amazing.