The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926 - ★★★½

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I felt like trying something different after I watched Timecrimes. And what's more different to a spanish timetravel movie from 2007 than a german silhouette movie from 1926?

This is based on one of the many stories from 1001 nights, a eastern story collection. It's about the story of Achmed, a prince who is tricked into flying away on a flying horse and then has to find a way back.
As far as I know this is the first feature length animated movie ever (except for two croatian ones that are lost). Even though by todays standards you almost wouldn't call the 60 minute running time full length anymore. The runtime was the initial reason I watched it, it's a quick watch.

The story is fun, in those 60 minutes a lot happens. We get a crossover with the Aladin-Story. The djinn in this is not as great as the one by Robin Williams, but he is helpful at least.
Also I'm pretty sure this movie influenced "The sword and the stone", because there is a big fight scene between a witch and a magician who transform into different animals to fight each other. In this it's not as funny as in the disney cartoon, but it looks great.

The animation is first-class, especially for the time, some scenes stutter a bit, but the transformation scenes are stunning. There are quite a few scenes where the magician transforms into something else and it is always clear into what he transforms and it looks just like in modern animated movies.

I should mention the silhouette-technique, which could maybe throw some people off. Basically the movie is black and white, everything you see is black in front of a white (or colored) background. You don't have facial features (well, you kinda do, but not really) and you just see the silhouettes of the characters. It's pretty minimalistic but for me it worked.

Also there are not that many title cards, and if there is one it mostly has only 2 lines on it, so it's really easy to watch and doesn't feel like a book.

All in all I really enjoyed this movie and it was probably influential for this world. It's of course not really comparable to a movie of this day and age with sound and all that, but it is watchable if you are in the mood for it. I rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars and a like.