The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

image courtesy of mubi.com

You ever go to a children’s pageant? Fewer events are entered with lower expectations. You just hope it’s cute or quick or, at the very least, nobody starts crying in the middle of it. Every so often, something crazy will happen - some kid has the voice of an angel, some little girl goes viral with an incredible dance number, or, more likely, the show just stays together. This film feels like one of those latter shows.

This film came out in 1926. That’s before the Academy Awards even existed. That’s the year before The Jazz Singer. Live action movies didn’t even have sound. They certainly weren’t going to add it to animated films, rare as they may be. So no Robin Williams cracking wise as the genie here - just title cards and a score doing all the heavy lifting, nearly seventy years before anyone thought to put a stand-up comedian inside a lamp.

This film has a few things going for it:

• It’s really short (66 minutes)

• The music is beautiful

• It’s a technical marvel, given the limitations in the 1920s

Based on the Arabian Nights stories, here a sorcerer trades his magic flying horse for Princess Dinarsade, but her brother Achmed ends up riding off on it by accident and lands on the island of Wak Wak, where he falls for its ruler, Pari Banu. The sorcerer escapes, kidnaps Pari Banu, and pins Achmed under a boulder, but the Witch of the Flaming Mountain - the sorcerer’s old enemy - saves him and helps him get Pari Banu back, only for Wak Wak’s demons to steal her away again. On his way to rescue her, Achmed meets Aladdin, who turns out to be another of the sorcerer’s victims: tricked into fetching a magic lamp, then robbed of it, his palace, and Dinarsade. Together, the witch duels and kills the sorcerer, the group storms Wak Wak using the lamp’s genies, and they finally rescue both princesses, reuniting everyone for a happy ending.

This movie is so cool. It’s all done in silhouette animation, so rather than hand-drawing on cels or using code to construct movement, it is done in a stop-motion style against colored backdrops. You still know which character is which, you still understand the action and movement. It’s impeccably designed, with small details of clothing and headwear; even fingers and faces feel vibrant and lively, despite the constriction of what is essentially a cardboard cutout. The genies themselves are a highlight of this approach - no booming comic personality, no shapeshifting one-liners, just eerie, elegant shapes that move like smoke and menace. It’s a different kind of magic than the Disney version trained generations of us to expect, and there’s something to be said for a genie who’s actually unsettling instead of just funny.

Now, they cram a bunch of abbreviated stories into such a short time frame (five acts), so any type of character development is nonexistent. But, I’d rather watch this than have to sit through a 3+ hour DW Griffith silent monstrosity again.

3.5 out of 5 Stars