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Last Sunday’s story covered The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), the earliest animated feature that still exists. The response to the piece was wonderful. But, in the comment section, an interesting question came up: how long is the film, exactly?
There’s no simple answer.
Today, the popular BFI edition of Prince Achmed lasts 65 minutes. The latest Blu-ray release in Germany is several minutes longer — because it runs a little slower (see a comparison). Meanwhile, the scholar John Grant once argued that the film was originally 90 minutes in length. Not because modern versions are missing footage, but because they’re running too fast.1
And, in a sense, all three of those lengths are correct.
The reason is complex, and it involves more than Lotte Reiniger’s classic film. It affects all silent films, including the live-action ones. People have debated it for more than 70 years. At its core, it’s about what one second contains.
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