The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the Oldest Surviving Animated Feature Film, Is Now in the Public Domain (1926)

Die Aben­teuer des Prinzen Achmed, or The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, lays fair claim to being the ear­li­est ani­mat­ed fea­ture film in exis­tence. If we do grant it that title, it beats the next con­tender by more than a decade. While Prince Achmed came out a cen­tu­ry ago, in 1926, Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, whose pro­duc­tion was presided over by a cer­tain Walt Dis­ney, did­n’t reach the­aters until 1937. The lat­ter pic­ture holds great dis­tinc­tion in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, of course, not least that of being the first fea­ture made with cel ani­ma­tion: the dom­i­nant tech­nique through­out most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and one whose dig­i­tal replace­ment has been lament­ed by clas­sic ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts. But the quiv­er­ing sil­hou­ettes of Prince Achmed show an alter­na­tive.

The mak­ing of Snow White was, by the stan­dards of the day, a vast under­tak­ing, requir­ing Dis­ney to mar­shal artis­tic and indus­tri­al resources at a scale then unknown in ani­ma­tion. Prince Achmed, by con­trast, owes its exis­tence most­ly to the work of one woman: Lotte Reiniger, who first learned the craft of scheren­schnitte sil­hou­ette-mak­ing as a lit­tle girl in Berlin.

Scheren­schnitte was inspired by what was thought to be ancient Chi­nese arts of paper-cut­ting and pup­petry, but when watched today, Prince Achmed or the oth­er ani­ma­tions Reiniger cre­at­ed bring more read­i­ly to mind tra­di­tion­al Javanese wayang kulit shad­ow pup­pet the­ater: an aes­thet­ic that, in a sense, suits the source mate­r­i­al ide­al­ly.

The episodes that con­sti­tute Prince Achmed’s nar­ra­tive are drawn in large part from One Thou­sand and One Nights, a text whose cen­turies-long evo­lu­tion bears the marks of not just many dis­tinct cul­tures across Asia and the Mid­dle East, but also those of more dra­mat­ic trans­for­ma­tion through its folk­tales’ cul­tur­al trans­po­si­tion into French, then oth­er Euro­pean lan­guages. What Reiniger brings to enchant­i­ng hand­made life isn’t any par­tic­u­lar place at any par­tic­u­lar time, but rather an ele­gant, mys­te­ri­ous, quite lit­er­al­ly arabesque realm that nev­er real­ly exist­ed. In oth­er words, Prince Achmed takes place in what can only be called the Ori­ent — which, now that the film has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, we can all vis­it when­ev­er we like. And if such vis­its hap­pen to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of Lotte Reinigers in this world of mar­ket-researched mega-bud­get ani­ma­tion, so much the bet­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film: The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Ani­ma­tion Pio­neer Lotte Reiniger Adapts Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute into an All-Sil­hou­ette Short Film (1935)

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.