Lotte Reiniger: The Fairy Tale Films



1922-1961
An enchanting animated film collection, with wonderful music tracks and charming narrations

Lotte Reiniger was one of the twentieth century's major animation artists, pioneering a unique and distinctive style of black and white silhouette animation in her interpretations of classic myths and fairy tales.

Reiniger began her career in Germany and in 1926 made The Adventures of Prince Achmed (available on BFI DVD), one of the first and most ingenious full-length animated films in the history of cinema. Her first film adaptation of a fairy tale was Cinderella in 1922. She moved to Britain in the 1930s where she joined the GPO Film Unit and later worked for the Crown Film Unit of the COI. From 1952 onwards, Reiniger, together with her husband Carl Koch, created a series of fairy-tale films for Primrose Productions based on the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Hauff, Hans Christian Andersen and the stories from One Thousand and One Nights.

Released in time for Christmas, in a two-disc digi-pac with additional features and a 22-page booklet of film notes and director biography, The Fairy Tale Films is a magical collection that will appeal to children and adults alike.

Disc One
* Cinderella (1922)
* The Death Feigning Chinaman (1928)
* The Golden Goose (1944)
* Aladdin and his Magic Lamp (1954)
* The Frog Prince (1954)
* The Gallant Little Tailor (1954)
* Sleeping Beauty (1954)
* Snow White and Rose Red (1954)
* Cinderella (1954)
* Puss in Boots (1954)

Disc two
* The Magic Horse (1954)
* The Grasshopper and the Ant (1954)
* The Three Wishes (1954)
* Thumbelina (1954)
* The Caliph Stork (1954)
* Hansel and Gretel (1954)
* Jack and the Beanstalk (1955)
* The Little Chimney Sweep (1956)
* The Frog Prince (1961)

Extras
Special features on disc two
* The Art of Lotte Reiniger (John Isaacs, 1970, 16 mins)
* Mike Figgis' selection (extract from Friday Night Hijack, 2008)

A great addition to their Prince Achmed disc! Been looking forward to a english-friendly release of this kind for quite some time now (no need to plunge for those german discs now).

Can someone correct the spelling of Lotte Reiniger's name in the subject header?

My apologies for the improper spelling!

Now confirmed as a two disc set, or so MovieMail says.

Michael...or anyone else...before the September sale is up...how is the quality of BFI's Prince Achmed? It is a much older disc, and I'm considering either a purchase of it, or a rental of the Milestone.

I haven't seen it myself, but this is what DVD Times and Kinocite thought.

I have it and find it very enjoyable. I have not done any comparisons with it (I don't have anything to compare it to), but with this BFI sale, I would definitely recommend its purchase. £7.98 at amazon.co.uk right now.

Watched on a tube it's perfect, but anything more sophisticated will reveal heavy interlacing. Obviously the nature of the animation makes it a lot more distracting than usual. I'm sure that if bfi redid this nowadays it would be encoded very differently. Still worth getting in the sale though. It's a fabulous film.

I wonder if the German disc of Achmed is any better in this regard?

Hmm. The interlacing possibility bothers me a bit...aside from being non-anamorphic, could it also be the result of a NTSC to PAL transfer? I understand BFI's disc of Piccadilly went through as much, so I'm considering buying/renting the Milestone disc instead.

OK, just to clear up a few things:

1) The BFI restored Piccadilly on 35mm in the first place, to for them to release an NTSC-to-PAL transfer as the DVD would frankly be deranged. In actual fact, it's a gorgeous transfer - one of the best I've seen of a silent film (Beaver screencaps)

2) I've no idea why anamorphic enhancement is even mentioned when discussing silent films - which with only two or three exceptions (the end of Napoléon being the most obvious one) will be 1.33:1 or even narrower. So they should be non-anamorphic.

3) Interlacing may be unavoidable with a great deal of silent material, since it's the only practical way of presenting it on video while running at the correct projection speed - even MoC's deservedly acclaimed (and very recent) Nosferatu is interlaced. So it's not necessarily a fault of the transfer, just of the fact that video systems don't have variable framerates - and the only way round this would be to release the film as a Quicktime file or similar.

Whoops. Meant to say "non-progressive", not "non-anamorphic". I'm off to a horrible start with Lotte Reiniger already!

I don't know where I had heard that the BFI transfer of Piccadilly was NTSC-to-PAL; but I'm quite sure I had heard the complaint lodged against them. If it was incorrect, well, I'm glad any misgivings I had about that disc aren't going to leave this thread.

I think I'm going to just rent the Milestone disc for now; it'll be in my queue next week, and I'll consider snatching it or the BFI disc later. I gotta start pinching those pennies! It doesn't seem likely that BFI will re-release it as they have done/are going to do with Beauty and the Beast, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Salo, and Orphee.

It's definitely incorrect. Why would they have taken their own 35mm master, telecined it to NTSC and then converted it to PAL? It makes no sense whatsoever - not least because it would be more expensive to do, as it involves an extra conversion stage!

New cover art. I can only assume that any still image from any of these films would make for really gorgeous cover art.

And they managed to pretty well hide the ugly BFI logo.

Btw, I thought the German Prince Achmed looks great, certainly much better than I've seen it before. Only trouble is that in my Japanese edition doesn't have English inter-titles for Achmed, though it does have English for all but a few of the 40 or so short films.

DVD Times review.

Incidentally, this set will be followed up later in the year with another Reiniger collection, this one dedicated to her 'music films'. (Plus there's going to be a few of her shorts cropping up on the BFI's GPO Film Unit volumes.)