The Fredösphere

Have you heard of The Adventures of Prince Achmed?  The wifeösphere and I are working our way through this silent German film from 1926.  Called the first feature-length animated film (take that, Snow White!), the visuals were realized by manipulating paper cut-outs silhouetted on colorful backgrounds.

When movies include puppets, the standard response is to joke about the "wooden" acting.  A film that depends on silhouettes alone to hold your attention for 66 minutes had better make them gorgeously detailed, and Achmed does just that.  It's quite astonishing how well the small details and gestures communicate character.  Certainly, by 1926 standards, this is an engrossing movie (and that remains true even though the film we have today is a degraded and incomplete copy of the original).  See it for historical or novelty-seeking reasons if you like, or just watch it for pure enjoyment.

I must mention the film's creator was an avant-garde artist named Charlotte Reiniger, who was only 23 at the time the film was made.  What an achievement.  If only Hitler had ambitions to make Germans into superior animators instead of superior athletes!  Charlotte Reiniger would have become famous, Leni Riefenstahl would have been forgotten, and Walt Disney would have become a Nazi.  Oh, wait.