Happy Birthday, Lotte Reiniger! Born today in 1899 as Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger, this German film director was also the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation, pre-dating Walt Disney by nearly a decade.
Among her credits, she is best known for writing and co-directing the 1926 German silent black and white (tinted and toned) animation/fantasy film 'Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed' ('The Adventures of Prince Achmed'). The film is thought to be one of the oldest surviving feature-length animated films.
Hailed as the first feature-length animated film in the history of cinema, this captivating film by the pioneering animator Reiniger tells the story of Prince Achmed's magical adventures.
The story is based on elements from Syrian Maronite cloth merchant, writer and storyteller Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab's One Thousand and One Nights. This included "Aladdin" and "The Story of Prince Ahmedand the Fairy Perī-Bānū".
Reiniger required several years, from 1923 to 1926, to make 'Prince Achmed'. Each frame had to be painstakingly filmed, and twenty-four frames were needed per second.
More than seventy-five years later, this enchanting film still stands as one of the great classics of animation – beautiful, mesmerizing and utterly seductive.
Several famous avant-garde animators worked on this film with Reiniger, among them German cinematographer and film director Walter Ruttmann, Bohemian film-maker Berthold Bartosch, and noted American architect Carl Koch (who co-directed 'Prince Achmed' but went uncredited).
Reiniger is also noted for having devised the first form of a multiplane camera; she made more than forty films, all using her invention.
Reiniger had a distinct art style in her animations that was very different from other artists in the time period of the 1920s and the 1930s, particularly in terms of characters.
In the 1920s especially, characters tended to rely on facial expressions to express emotions or action, while Reiniger's characters relied on gestures to display emotions or actions. She also utilized the technique of metamorphosis often in her animations.
This focus on transformation greatly benefits her tendency to work with fairytale stories. 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed' specifically adapts fantastic elements to take advantage of animation to show things that could not be shown in reality.
Reiniger considered animation's separation from the laws of the material plane to be one of the greatest strengths of the medium.
Because of this, Reiniger's characters are not usually biologically correct, but they are able to express a fluidity which is very important to her style of expressionism.
Although there are other animators in that time period that used these techniques, Reiniger stands out because she is able to accomplish this style using cutout animation. Reiniger's figures resemble stop-motion animation in the way that they move.
Although all subsequent makers of animated fairy tales could be said to have been influenced by Reiniger, German film director Bruno J. Böttge is probably the one who has made the most explicit references to her work.
Reiniger is also known for directing the eleven-minute 1935 German black and white animation/fantasy short film 'Papageno'. This is thought to be one of the oldest surviving feature-length animated films as well.
Disney's 1940 American animation/fantasy film 'Fantasia' uses Reiniger's style in the beginning of the scene where Mickey Mouse is in the same shot as the live-action musicians.
Two homages to 'Prince Achmed' can be spotted in two Disney films. The first is in the 1963 American animation adventure comedy fantasy film 'The Sword and the Stone'.
The scene includes the duel between the witch Madam Mim and the wizard Merlin, who both transform in various creatures.
Starting with the silhouette format in the 1989 French silhouette animation television series Ciné si (Cinema If), French writer, designer, storyboard artist and director of animated films and television programs Michel Ocelot employs many of the techniques created by Reiniger.
The second homage in a Disney film can be spotted when a character named Prince Achmed makes a cameo at the beginning of the 1992 American animation musical fantasy film 'Aladdin'.
Along with the other techniques created by Reiniger for Ocelot's own invention, this is shown in his 2000 French compilation animation/family film 'Princes et princesses' ('Princes and Princesses').
Reiniger's cut-out animation style was even utilized in the credits of the 2004 American gothic dark comedy/fantasy film 'Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events'.
In the 2010 British/American fantasy film, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1', Swiss animation director Ben Hibon used Reiniger's style of animation in the short film titled "The Tale of the Three Brothers".
The American animated television series Steven Universe (2013–2019) paid homage to the style of Reiniger's films in the episode "The Answer" (S02E22).
The municipal museum in Tübingen, a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany, holds much of Reiniger's original materials and hosts a permanent exhibition, "The World in Light and Shadow: Silhouette, shadow theatre, silhouette film".
The Filmmuseum Düsseldorf also holds many materials of Reiniger's work, including her animation table, and a part of the permanent exhibition is dedicated to her. Collections relating to her are also held at the BFI National Archive.
No original German nitrate prints of 'Prince Achmed' are known to still exist. While the original film featured color tinting, prints available just prior to the restoration had all been in black and white.
During 1996, while working from surviving nitrate prints, German and British archivists had restored the film.
In 1999, they reinstated the original tinted image by using the Desmet method. This involved film tinting, toning, or a combination of the two.
Reiniger had been active from 1918–1979.
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