Hailed as the first full length animated feature this film clearly has an important place in cinema history. The technique used is that of traditional shadow theatre mixed with some crude stop frame stuff. The detail of the cut outs and the composition of the scenes are both impressive for the time but were effortlessly superseded by Disney's Snow White a mere 11 years later.
Based on episodes from the Arabian Nights the story is pretty straightforward stuff; sorcerer invents flying horse, contrives to steal princess, prince with aid of Chinese witch and Aladdin rescues princess. The story itself didn't hold my interest (whenever things get tough for our hero the witch comes a long and magically solves any problems) over an hour and a half it's stretched pretty thin and I probably would have switched off had I not been in the middle of a three hour train journey. The problem is, that in spite of the obvious technical accomplishments, this is essentially a special effects film and like any special effects film once that aspect is worn out things quickly get boring. Snow White still gets watched in cinemas today not because of its animation which, whilst it stands the test of time, isn't up to today's standards but because of the story and the design work both of which are brilliantly realised.
Having said that Achmed's soundtrack is good and there's probably some interesting stuff for people interested in the idea of orientalism. But in the end this is an interesting foot note in the history animation.
IMDB
2 comments:
From that screenshot, it looks a lot like the shadow theatre we saw on that ferry in Thailand...
the sound track wasn't that bad
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