An Evening of Cult Animations of Arabian Nights: ‘The Thief and The Cobbler’ and ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’

THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER [RECOBBLED CUT] (aka Arabian Knight, Princess and the Cobbler) (1993/2007): This is one of the most striking animated films you’ve probably never heard of. It’s convoluted production circumstances (detailed briefly here, from, of all places, the film’s IMDB trivia page) partially account for why:

Originally conceived by Richard Williams as an attempt to make the greatest animated film of all time, it later became his own “reason for living.” After failing to secure funds from private investors or a studio to make the film, Williams decided to finance the film on his own, taking small jobs on television commercials or Saturday morning cartoons and using the proceeds to hire his own group of animators. The production moved in fits and starts until the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988 ) allowed Williams to make a deal with Warner Bros. to finance and distribute the film. As the production continued, however, it became obvious that Williams would not meet the 1991 release date originally set by the studio due to numerous delays, not the least of which were the director’s insistence on absolute perfection and hesitation in using storyboards–two circumstances which often resulted in whole sequences being scrapped and re-shot. With Warner Bros. nervous over the release of Disney’s Aladdin (1992), which [more than closely] resembled The Thief and the Cobbler (1993) in story, tone and style (many of the animators on the Disney feature had also worked for Richard Williams), the studio turned over completion of the film to the Completion Bond Company, which promptly fired Richard Williams and brought on animator Fred Calvert to finish the film as cheaply and quickly as possible. Calvert heavily re-edited the film and altered the story, bringing in Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals and Jonathan Winters to re-dub the lead characters. Eventually distributed by Miramax, the film was cut even further before debuting in theaters. Though bootleg copies of Richard Williams’ original work-print continue to circulate and several restoration attempts have been proposed, an official “Directors Cut” has yet to be released.

That’s necessarily compressed… There are plenty of longer accounts out there, with even more heartbreaking trivia (the first DVD release of the film was a pan & scan print of the Miramax cut, issued as a givaway in specially marked boxes of Froot Loops, for instance). We will not be watching any of the butchered officially released cuts, but instead the “recobbled cut” put together with the magic resources of the internet by fan/animator Garrett Gilchrist. This new version uses the Williams workprint as its source, both for soundtrack and sequencing, using laserdisc elements, storyboards and animation tests to fill in the gaps. I (and more than a few other folks, natch) feel the result is truly sensational… but I’ll let you judge for yourself.

as well as:

THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) (1926): I saw this showing at the recent Phillips Collection “Société Anonyme” dada/surrealist exhibit. It blew my mind, and is just as breathtaking in sustained viewing as it was at my first glimpse. It was made by avante-garde German animator Lotte Reiniger, sometimes pal of German silent director Paul Wegener (Der Golem), and a member of the Weimar-era art scene in her own right.  This is one of the earliest surviving animated feature films, predating Snow White by some fifteen years. It’s silent, and it’s done in an Asian shadow-puppet style, rather than the more traditional animation on display in Thief and the Cobbler, but that’s a large part of its beauty. It also runs just over an hour, so as part of a double bill, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

with special intermission cartoon shorts:

Ub Iwerks’ Willy Whopper in “INSULTIN’ THE SULTAN” and “ALI BABA” (1934 and 1936, respectively): Ub Iwerks was Walt Disney’s right-hand man. He’s the one who animated the early Mickey Mouse shorts, he’s the one who came up with the Silly Symphonies concept, and as animation in its golden age became an easy way to make lots of money, he left Disney and started his own competing studio. After a few years and some bad breaks, he ended up back at Disney, where he continued to quietly do much of the important work behind the scenes (he was the head of the “imagineering” department, which designed and made the robots for the theme parks) as well as doing special effects work for others (he got an Academy Award nomination for his effects work on Hitchcock’s The Birds). These are a pair of short cartoons from the brief heyday of his studio. They’re more Fleischer-zany than Disney or Warners ‘toons are, but are more fun for it. It’s also worth keeping in mind that these were made during the ’30s, and as a result, aren’t especially…ah, tolerant.