wayvyiews -Adventures of Prince Achmed
Often heralded as the oldest feature length animated movie, Adventures of Prince Achmed has a very interesting history surrounding it. It had to be reconstituted through a tinted nitrate copy combined with English intertitles from the BFI National Archive to be enjoyed by a contemporary audience, which speaks volumes of the versatility and longevity of the animation genre. It is also important to note that even though that is the medium the film chooses to tell its story, many other artistic and storytelling genres are present in this film, such as the silent film, comedic film, fantasy action film and romantic film to name a few of the overlapping genres. Because of its success in so many of these genres, it goes on to create tropes in the genre in many of the films that follow it.
It also displays elements of Orientalism, a movement that started around the end of the 19th Century and continues well into the 20th Century that goes about attempting to represent “Oriental” societies, as the exact opposite of Occidental societies. This came about as a result of the possibility of being able to travel further and faster and Europeans seeing the East as a means to revitalize their own society by studying them. Adventures of Prince Achmed will be dissected and analyzed thoroughly as to itemize the ways in which it revolutionized animation and could reframe the ways in which we think about animation today. Furthermore, the narrative, sets, characters and shot composition will be studied closely in order to glean evidence of its subscription to Orientalism, animation and its several storytelling genres.
This film, much like Citizen Kane for live action movies, features several tropes of the animation, action and fantasy genre that were so successful in their execution in this film that filmmakers to this day recycle these tools. Some of the tropes that were reinforced in the action genre were “The Bond Villain” where the villain leaves the protagonist in a dire situation where he can escape for the sake of the plot rather than killing him, which would be the most logical thing to do. Another was the “Damsel in Distress” which is seen in most European style stories but was not as ubiquitous in film at this time. Both Peri Banu and Dinarsade are at the mercy of the men in their lives. Flashback is also employed in the film, a technique which becomes popular and widespread in almost every film and has clearly been a part of film since its very early history. This technique is often used to relay a lot of crucial information to the plot or inform the audience of a character’s backstory as it is employed in this case when Aladdin tells Achmed his backstory up to the point where he meets the monster.
For animation, this film is perhaps paramount. It is the oldest surviving example of stop motion animation even though the trope could be connected to The Cameraman’s Revenge from 1912. The film used very intricate paper silhouette cutouts on painted lead backgrounds, photographed them and then moved the puppets frame by frame. This technique could be linked back to the shadow puppet shows from ancient Chinese tradition, with the difference being that the puppets in Adventures of Prince Achmed are not manipulated in real time. The backgrounds of the shots are also colour coordinated to give the audience a sense of changing environments, times and locations. For the most part, when action is happening indoors, the audience sees a green backdrop. When things are happening in a cave or at night, the backdrop is blue and when things are happening during the day, they are yellow. Dynamic backgrounds are clearly a part of animation since its inception and these backdrops serve as an early precursor to Disney’s later multiplane camera, which took backgrounds and separated their elements based on the distance from the viewer to simulate a more realistic space and perspective. This technique can be seen in Bambi where the camera feels as though it is moving through space although we are aware we are only looking at serval flat paintings overlapping each other. As a result of the techniques needed to create such an intricate work, filming took three years as twenty-four frames were needed for one second of film. This industry standard of twenty-four frames per second is still found in animated features today. This film was so impactful on the genre of animation, that cameos in two separate Disney features, first in The Sword in the Stone where there is a duel between a shapeshifting witch and a wizard with the same abilities. A character named Prince Achmed is also featured at the beginning of Aladdin, which takes many stylistic cues and references from Adventures of Prince Achmed.
Orientalism is a movement that affected every form of art. European scholars and thinkers were travelling and documenting their travels in books and paintings. Two such artists were Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Charles Dufresne. The former died a few years before the release of Adventures of Prince Achmed and the latter was lived concurrently with the film. Both artists created works that are reminiscent in the way that they are composed of the film. Both artists focus heavily on the aesthetics of the Oriental, specifically those in the Middle East and of the Islamic faith. From the costume design to the backgrounds, careful attention is paid to creating fidelitous recreations of their architecture and their garments. From as early as seven minutes and thirty seconds into the film, we see images of ornate tents, beautifully decorated headdresses, flowery accents and long flowing robes which all call on the image of the Middle East. The fonts of the title cards as well as the subject matter of the narrative also subvert European expectations of what is supposed to happen in a story as there are suggestions of incest as well as Achmed being alright with Aladdin marrying his sister.
Much of Orientalism was about creating an other-worldly experience. “The Orient” was seen as the complete antithesis of Western Society and as a result art that attempted to recreate Oriental places or cultures often had the same intent and effect. This is to say that the exotic technique and atypical subject matter and protagonist serves the Orientalist manifesto. German expressionism also squirms its way into the stylistic merit of Adventures of Prince Achmed as the same attention to the complexity and design of the sets can be found in expressionist films and the one in question. The experimentation of light against dark and the employment of landscape and architecture to represent the inner workings of the people’s mind as well as a fascination with the supernatural are also common elements.
In summary, Adventures of Prince Achmed is one of the most important animated films of all time, if not paramount. It provided the framework for so many films to follow and gave Disney a blueprint for the massive empire that they have erected. It gives us the earliest examples of a new animation technology and executes it with such grace that almost a century later it can still be enjoyed and appreciated. It also gave us an example of Orientalism in film, a movement that was mostly considered in terms of anthropology, sociology and painting which makes this film a rarity. Finally, it created tropes that we can see in films still to this day, like villains allowing the hero to escape, heroes having to go through adverse elements to get to their happy ending and flashbacks. Adventures of Prince Achmed is a wonderful movie and, in my opinion, acts as the Zenith for twentieth century animation.
-Mr. D
