The Adventures of Prince Achmed Blu-ray/DVD Combo Review

Format: Blu-ray/DVD Combo pack. Country and Year of Release: United Kingdom, 2013.

UK/US Import Friendly?
Disc Region: Yes if you are in the UK or Europe. No elsewhere, unless you have a multi-region player. The Blu-ray is locked to Code B, and the DVD is locked to Region 2.
DVD Video Format: PAL. (US viewers should ensure compatibility before ordering.)
Language: Yes. The feature contains reconstructions of the original German intertitles, but has the option of English subtitles and/or English voiceover narration. The extras are either presented in English, or with German intertitles and optional English subtitles.

[Note: Images are taken from the DVD, rather than the Blu-ray.]

The worldwide success of Disney has often led people to assume that the studio pioneered many more things than it actually did. There are a surprising number of animation history textbooks – and even the documentary Il était une fois Walt Disney, recently reviewed on this site – which state that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the very first animated feature film. In actuality, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) preceded Disney by over a decade.¹ The film is also notable for having a female director, Lotte Reiniger (which is sadly still something of a rarity in contemporary Hollywood production). What is perhaps most striking about Prince Achmed, though, is its use of silhouette animation. Rather than using the prevalent method of painting onto translucent cels, Reiniger created models out of cardboard and lit them from below, creating the illusion of elaborate shadow figures bounding around the screen.



Prince Achmed is now rightly considered a classic, and an important pioneer of this (still underused) art form. Even though the silhouette method removes so many attributes often taken for granted by animators – such as being able to show facial expressions – Reiniger captures so much personality in the design and movement of her characters. (She even manages to incorporate a couple of nude scenes, benefiting from silhouette animation’s ability to imply more than it actually shows!). The surviving print of the film has been carefully restored to preserve the colour tinting found in the original release.

The plot, based on elements from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, is a little episodic (being literally split on-screen into several acts). It's also not the most progressive of love stories – Achmed initially kidnaps his love interest, Peri Banu, against her will, and only really becomes the 'hero' after the villainous sorcerer does exactly the same thing! Nonetheless, the inventiveness of the visuals remains a thrill, helping to compensate for some of the slightly dated aspects of the narrative.

The British Film Institute (BFI) previously released Prince Achmed onto DVD in 2001. This 2013 release upgrades the set to a combo pack, containing both a Blu-ray and a newly-encoded DVD. Unfortunately, the discs are region-locked (to code B and region 2 respectively).² For those able to play the disc, the upgrade to Blu-ray is extremely pleasing. While there are still minor instances of print damage throughout the film, the higher definition helps to draw attention to additional subtleties in Reiniger's animation.

Although Prince Achmed is a silent film, Wolfgang Zeller created an official musical score that could be performed live in higher-end cinemas. The score was been re-recorded as part of a 1999 restoration, and serves as the primary audio track on the disc. The film's original German intertitles have been recreated, and there are optional English subtitles available.

A second audio track provides an English audio narration by the actress Penelope McGhie. This has been expanded significantly from the track on the previous BFI DVD release – in that version, the narration largely just read out the English translation of the German intertitles. The track on this new set – 'based on Lotte Reiniger's own translation of her German text' according to the liner notes – goes a lot further. In addition to reiterating the intertitles, the narration frequently elaborates upon the action as it is occurring on-screen, further clarifying the plot and the characters' motivations. I’m a little bit torn about the new version of the track. While the additional explanations will no doubt be helpful for younger children, I am concerned that they could potentially distract from the images themselves. One of the enticing things about silhouette animation is the ability for the viewer to use his or her imagination, and there is a risk that this could impose too much specificity into the storytelling. Still, it is nice to see an attempt to make the disc as accessible as possible, especially as purists are already catered for with the option to watch with subtitles and an uninterrupted musical score.

The BFI have provided a pleasing number of extras, all of which are in HD, and delve further into Reiniger's filmography. The first section collects all three short films from her The Adventures of Dr. Dolittle series – The Trip to Africa, Cannibal Land and The Lion's Den – originally released in 1928.

Although production was abandoned before the entire story was told, there is a lot to admire in the animation in the available films. The only downside is that, as the title of the middle installment implies, there are some reductive images of African tribespeople. Even in silhouette, Reiniger manages to incorporate many of the stereotypical designs that also often plagued Hollywood animation and other forms of comic art during this period. The copies of the films supplied on the disc are taken from a 1930 reissue, which added synchronized sound (limited to a musical score, and some rather annoyingly dubbed animal noises) and translated the intertitles to English. As with the main feature, there is some print damage, but the films still look and sound very good.

The second section, 'Lotte Reiniger: Innovator', contains another sample of her films, again in HD. The Flying Coffer (1921) is the earliest of Reiniger's films to be released by the BFI, and some of the shots – particularly those of the assembled crowd – have interesting parallels with scenes later incorporated into Prince Achmed. This film also has translated English intertitles, rather than the German originals.

The Flying Coffer

Prince Achmed

The Secret of the Marquise (1922) is a brief narrative-based commercial that Reiniger made for Nivea Soap and Cream. Unlike the majority of her works, this uses white cutouts on a black background. The film has its original German intertitles, with optional English subtitles available. Sadly, neither Coffer nor Marquise have had a soundtrack added to them by the BFI, and play in complete silence.

The Lost Son

The final section jumps ahead to the later stages of Reiniger's career. We get two bible-themed productions – The Story of Bethlehem (1956) and The Lost Son (1974). Both were produced in the UK, and so are presented with their original English soundtracks. The Lost Son is a notable departure for Reiniger as it involves actual real-time puppetry – cutout figures made to move with sticks – rather than frame-by-frame animation.

Finally, there is a surprisingly thorough booklet featuring several short essays about Prince Achmed, as well as some very useful contextual information about each of the bonus shorts.

The above extras are exclusive to this new release, acting as a nice additional incentive for fans to upgrade.³ What is rather disappointing, though, is that the BFI have not ported across a significant extra from their previous DVD-only version of Prince Achmed – Katja Raganelli's hour-long documentary entitled Lotte Reiniger: Homage to the Inventor of the Silhouette Film (2001). The film gave a good overview of the entirety of Reiniger's career, and even had access to her cutout models and production designs. It is a surprising omission, and one which leaves the new set feeling a little incomplete in spite of its enticing new features. Sadly, the bundled DVD in this combo pack contains the same extras as the Blu-ray, rather than being a duplication of the previous SD version.

On the whole, this is still a highly recommended purchase. I think that the quality of the picture on the Blu-ray, and the chance to see additional Reiniger films, just about gives this the edge over the previous release with the documentary. If you own the existing DVD, then there is still a lot here to justify a double-dip – just make sure that you hold on to the original disc too!

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is available to purchase from: Amazon.co.uk.

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NOTES:
<sup>1. Prince Achmed is considered to be the earliest surviving animated feature. Evidence has come to light in recent years to suggest that an Argentinian filmmaker, Quirino Cristiani, may have produced the very first feature-length animation, 1917’s El Apóstol, but sadly the film no longer exists to allow for definitive verification.↩
2. If you are importing the disc from America, you will need to ensure that your Blu-ray and/or DVD player is multi-region capable. Otherwise, there is a Region 1 DVD-only release from Milestone Films (which duplicates the content found on the original BFI DVD).↩
3. Pleasingly, none of the shorts overlap with the BFI's other major release of Reiniger’s work, 2008’s two-disc DVD entitled The Fairy Tale Films.↩</sup>