The Adventures of Prince Achmed
About The Adventures of Prince Achmed
An African sorcerer shows the Caliph a flying horse and is offered the princess Dinarsade. Her brother Achmed mounts the horse, cannot control it, and is carried to the island of Wak Wak, where he takes Pari Banu. The sorcerer steals her, pins Achmed under a stone, and sells her in China. The Witch of the Flaming Mountain frees him. Achmed then saves Aladdin, whose lamp the sorcerer has taken. The witch kills the sorcerer in a duel of animal shapes, the lamp opens Wak Wak, and Achmed cuts Pari Banu free of a many-headed beast. A flying palace brings Dinarsade back, and the two couples leave for home.
Cast & crew
More about The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Lotte Reiniger designed, cut, and moved the silhouette figures and also wrote the film. Carl Koch photographed them. Wolfgang Zeller composed the score. Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, and Alexander Kardan worked on the production. Oskar Fischinger built a wax-slicing machine used on the film. Comenius-Film distributed it.
Themes
Making
Reiniger and Koch worked on the silhouettes for several years before the 1926 release. Fischinger's wax slicer was built for effects on this film.
Look
Carl Koch filmed Reiniger's jointed silhouette puppets on a glass table lit from below, stacked in layers so the figures sit at different depths.
Technique
Oskar Fischinger built a machine that sliced wax for some of the effects. Original prints were tinted; a 1998–1999 restoration put the tints back by the Desmet method.
Music
Wolfgang Zeller wrote an orchestral score for the film.
Preservation
German and British archivists restored the film in 1998 and 1999 from surviving nitrate prints and reinstated the color tinting. Copies in circulation before that restoration were black and white.
Notes
- The German title is Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed.
- Wikipedia times a projection at 24 frames per second at 65 minutes. Some accounts use 18 frames per second.
- A 2007 reissue took in $100,156. That figure is not the 1926 gross.
- English-market DVDs from Milestone Films, in NTSC from Image and PAL from the BFI, carry German intertitles with English subtitles and an English voice-over.
Scenes
- The flying horse carries Achmed off the palace roof.
- The witch and the sorcerer change into animals and throw fire at each other.
- A many-headed creature seizes Pari Banu until Achmed cuts her free.
Influenced by
- One Thousand and One Nights
Also available
- Internet Archive (die-abenteuer-des-prinzen-achmed)
- Milestone Films DVD
