Silence Is Golden

THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED-1926-Although it’s been said Walt Disney’s SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES was the first full-length animated feature, this silent “silhouette animation” was made 12 years earlier! It’s based on The Arabian Nights tales and is painstakingly reproduced with hand cut silhouettes photographed frame by frame. It took German born director Lotte Reiniger (with the help of her cameraman-husband and three other animators) three years to complete and is quite unique.

A restored version (with a newly produced version of the original score) was released in 1999. Although she had to compete in the ‘30’s with Disney, The Fleischers and Warner Bros., Reiniger continued to make her creations into the ‘70’s including a series of shorts set to the music of Mozart. She also made versions of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel and Jack And The Beanstalk!



TILLIE’S PUNCTURED ROMANCE-1914- Though only sporadically funny by today’s standards TILLIE’S PUNCTURED ROMANCE was the first full-length comedy ever made. While most ran only two reels (around twenty minutes at most) TILLIE’S is an unbelievable 70 minutes! It is also the last time star Charlie Chaplin was directed by someone other than Charlie Chaplin. In this case it was the legendary Mack Sennett.

Chaplin plays a con man who courts the rotund Tillie (Marie Dressler) to get his hands on her father’s bankroll. They run away to “the big city” together. Tillie has one drop of whiskey and goes crazy in a bar, dancing and jumping and causing general mayhem. Chaplin takes up with his former girlfriend (and con woman) played by Mabel Normand until he finds out Tillie’s billionaire uncle has died and left her three million dollars! He quickly ditches Normand and marries Tillie. Much lunacy follows including the discovery that the uncle isn’t dead and a wild party where Tillie goes nuts trying to shoot Chaplin with a pistol!

Chester Conklin, Charley Chase and Edgar Kennedy co-star. It’s based on a Broadway play, which Dressler starred in. And it was remade in 1928 with WC Fields!

Thanks for reading!