Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926)

When presented with an artifact from the history of cinema that comes with the label of being the first of its kind, assessment can go one of two ways. The first is the path of respect: respect towards lack of technical sophistication, towards the cultural foibles and shortcomings of the milieu of a bygone era. Respect easily leads to undue reverence with the assumption that no critical comparison can be made between objects of such disparate provenances as two films 80 years apart.
The second is a cold rejection of such contextual considerations and means using the same yardstick to evaluate each work irrespective of age, budget or other constraints, as just a Ding an sich.
It comes as such a joy to discover that the first ever animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed requires no special dispensation. The technical limitations of shooting stop-motion with paper and metal silhouette figures on an illuminated glass backing, with images of variable quality and fluidity, come across as virtues in a digital age, constantly reminding you of the artisanal effort behind each scene, and you hear the voice of a single auteur rather than the blanded-out orchestra of the 100-strong. And that voice, Reiniger's imagining of stories from 1,001 Arabian Nights, is a fantastically inventive one, full of craft and fantasy, even if the source stories are shown up as being rather simplistic and morally questionable upon being stripped to their bare bones.

7/10