Portrait of Lotte Reiniger, Berlin 1918. Courtesy of William Mortiz.

Lotte Reiniger, when mentioned at all, is most often brushed off in a single sentence noting that she apparently made a feature-length silhouette film in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed; but since that was in Germany, and silhouettes aren't cartoons, Disney still invented the feature-length animated film with Snow White. Anyone who has seen Prince Achmed wouldn't be convinced by this reasoning, but, alas, only a tiny fraction of the people who see Snow White ever get to see any Reiniger film at all. Few of her nearly 70 films are readily available--and almost none of them in excellent prints; when Reiniger fled Germany to England in the 1930s, she was not able to bring her original negatives with her, so most modern prints are copies of copies, which have lost much of the fine detail, especially in backgrounds.

More than just noting that Reiniger's Prince Achmed, begun in 1923 and released in 1926, was a pioneer feature-length animated film, one must proclaim that it is a brilliant feature, a wonderful film full of charming comedy, lyrical romance, vigorous and exciting battles, eerie magic, and truly sinister, frightening evil. Our current prints of Prince Achmed were "restored" in 1954 with a new (rather kitschy) musical score by Freddie Phillips, which means that the images move faster than they should (18 frames-per-second silent speed versus 24 frames-per-second sound speed). The original symphonic score by Wolfgang Zeller, one of the great film composers, more correctly supports the drama with a thrilling grandeur, exciting suspense and lush romanticism. Furthermore, although the "restoration" reestablished the tints of the original, much of the fine background detail in most scenes is lost. (Original nitrate prints are available in Europe, so let's hope that a more authentic restoration becomes available soon.)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926. Courtesy of William Mortiz.

In addition to Prince Achmed, Lotte Reiniger made a second feature, Dr. Dolittle, released in 1928 (unfortunately just as the sound film began to triumph), with a musical score by Paul Dessau, Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith. Following Hugh Lofting's 1920 book, The Story of Dr. Dolittle, it tells of the good Doctor's voyage to Africa to help heal sick animals. Again, it is currently available only in a television version with new music, voice-over narration and the images playing too fast.