Post by klep on Jan 20, 2020 7:37:19 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 1/20: The Adventures of Prince Achmed
1920s WEEK!
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the first known animated feature film, and already the boundless potential for the medium is clear. A magician manipulates arcane energies first into vague, globular shapes gradually gaining definition until they coalesce into a horse. Immediately animation shows incredible capacity for not just endless fantastical images, but also expressionistic and impressionistic art. The Magician is strangely proportioned - a bundle of arms, legs, and joints that bend and twist in uncanny ways, and his conjuration is not a summoning, but a sculpture of order drawn from chaos.
Essentially a stop-motion film, director Lotte Reiniger crafted The Adventures of Prince Achmed by painstakingly manipulating paper cutouts - 24 frames a second, for over 3,600 seconds. It's a process that took Reiniger and her assistants years, and illustrates the dedication and love animators must have for their craft. Crafting over 86,000 individual frames would be an unbelievably daunting task in any event, and even moreso with the intricately detailed and fluid silhouette cutouts Reiniger created.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed tells the story of an Arabian prince (Achmed, natch) and his adventures struggling against a devious Magician. He falls in love with the princess of the mystical land of Wak-Wak, is waylaid by a kangaroo (the Magician in disguise) in China, befriends a witch in a volcano, and at last allies himself with Aladdin to defeat the demons of Wak-Wak, end the wizard's schemes, and return home victorious. It's a delightful fantasy drawing inspiration and characters from 1,001 Arabian Nights, and Reiniger's beautiful cutouts and careful tinting do a marvelous job of evoking the atmosphere while working with almost no colors.
It is also, alas, pretty offensive. Many of the racial aspects are questionable at best (the Magician is always the African Magician, for example), but the Chinese emperor is just a straight-up racist caricature. And Prince Achmed's "grand romance" involves spying on bathing women and then kidnapping her (still naked) until she finally falls for him when he shows the slightest amount of shame by returning the clothes he stole. Similarly the Magician's initial plan involved trading his newly-conjured flying horse for Achmed's sister.
It's tempting to just dismiss these flaws as "of their time" or note that it's not actively malicious like, say, Birth of a Nation. But it's still important to reckon with these flaws, both to note how society has improved and to see where it hasn't. Of particular note is that Reiniger wrote the story herself, which shows how this kind of misogynistic narrative can become so ingrained even in its victims. Even today it's not hard to imagine this particular set of flaws making it into a film, although probably Achmed would be given some pretext and Pari Banu some clothes before he kidnapped her.
But if intentions count for anything, Lotte Reiniger no doubt believed she was doing a good thing by bringing these beloved characters and their adventures to life and sharing them with new audiences. And the film that she created is indeed beautiful and a remarkable achievement. All I'm saying is that maybe in the reboot we'll do it with a bit less kidnapping.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 1/27: Within Our Gates
CIVIL RIGHTS WEEK!
For Civil Rights Week we'll be watching Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates, a 1920 feature about race in America and the oldest surviving film by an African-American director. Come join us next week for our discussion of this film, available on YouTube and (for the moment) on Netflix.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 1/21: Little Women (2019)
The podcast finishes its current pairing with Greta Gerwig's new adaptation of Little Women. Come join us Wednesday for our discussion of her Best Picture-nominated film, still in theaters.
1920s WEEK!
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the first known animated feature film, and already the boundless potential for the medium is clear. A magician manipulates arcane energies first into vague, globular shapes gradually gaining definition until they coalesce into a horse. Immediately animation shows incredible capacity for not just endless fantastical images, but also expressionistic and impressionistic art. The Magician is strangely proportioned - a bundle of arms, legs, and joints that bend and twist in uncanny ways, and his conjuration is not a summoning, but a sculpture of order drawn from chaos.
Essentially a stop-motion film, director Lotte Reiniger crafted The Adventures of Prince Achmed by painstakingly manipulating paper cutouts - 24 frames a second, for over 3,600 seconds. It's a process that took Reiniger and her assistants years, and illustrates the dedication and love animators must have for their craft. Crafting over 86,000 individual frames would be an unbelievably daunting task in any event, and even moreso with the intricately detailed and fluid silhouette cutouts Reiniger created.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed tells the story of an Arabian prince (Achmed, natch) and his adventures struggling against a devious Magician. He falls in love with the princess of the mystical land of Wak-Wak, is waylaid by a kangaroo (the Magician in disguise) in China, befriends a witch in a volcano, and at last allies himself with Aladdin to defeat the demons of Wak-Wak, end the wizard's schemes, and return home victorious. It's a delightful fantasy drawing inspiration and characters from 1,001 Arabian Nights, and Reiniger's beautiful cutouts and careful tinting do a marvelous job of evoking the atmosphere while working with almost no colors.
It is also, alas, pretty offensive. Many of the racial aspects are questionable at best (the Magician is always the African Magician, for example), but the Chinese emperor is just a straight-up racist caricature. And Prince Achmed's "grand romance" involves spying on bathing women and then kidnapping her (still naked) until she finally falls for him when he shows the slightest amount of shame by returning the clothes he stole. Similarly the Magician's initial plan involved trading his newly-conjured flying horse for Achmed's sister.
It's tempting to just dismiss these flaws as "of their time" or note that it's not actively malicious like, say, Birth of a Nation. But it's still important to reckon with these flaws, both to note how society has improved and to see where it hasn't. Of particular note is that Reiniger wrote the story herself, which shows how this kind of misogynistic narrative can become so ingrained even in its victims. Even today it's not hard to imagine this particular set of flaws making it into a film, although probably Achmed would be given some pretext and Pari Banu some clothes before he kidnapped her.
But if intentions count for anything, Lotte Reiniger no doubt believed she was doing a good thing by bringing these beloved characters and their adventures to life and sharing them with new audiences. And the film that she created is indeed beautiful and a remarkable achievement. All I'm saying is that maybe in the reboot we'll do it with a bit less kidnapping.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 1/27: Within Our Gates
CIVIL RIGHTS WEEK!
For Civil Rights Week we'll be watching Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates, a 1920 feature about race in America and the oldest surviving film by an African-American director. Come join us next week for our discussion of this film, available on YouTube and (for the moment) on Netflix.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 1/21: Little Women (2019)
The podcast finishes its current pairing with Greta Gerwig's new adaptation of Little Women. Come join us Wednesday for our discussion of her Best Picture-nominated film, still in theaters.