As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Jack and the Beanstalk (1955) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Lotte Reiniger silhouette version of the classic tale will probably bore kids who grew up on Pixar but adults might find it's unique look to be worth a look. The story is the same familiar one we all know as Jack trades his cow for some magic beans and climbs up the beanstalk to take on the giant. From what I've read it appears that Reiniger and her form of animation has pretty much been forgotten by most today but I enjoyed what I saw here enough to check out more of her work. The film runs just under 12-minutes and features a color backdrop to the cut out silhouette images. I thought the visuals in the film were extremely nice and I especially loved the colors that Reiniger used for the background. The climb up and down the beanstalk were a lot of fun as the visuals really brought everything to life. Another good thing is the narration by Deryck Guyler.

Just watched this Lotte Reiniger animated short on YouTube. As usual, Ms. Reiniger employs her literal cardboard silhouette characters in telling her stories. Only this time, the background is in color which was probably a demand from her production company bosses since she herself preferred black and white. Anyway, she provides entertaining movements that move the familiar tale of Jack and the Beanstalk along smoothly. The YouTube version I saw, however, had to be cut to fit the 10 minute limit most uploaders get on the site. Since I knew the story so well, that was little concern to me. I also like the narrator chosen for the English-language version that was presented on YouTube. So on that note, this version of Jack and the Beanstalk is highly recommended especially if you have children.

This is one of the few silhouette movies that she made with color backgrounds, but she always preferred black-and-white animated movies. Pieces of this can be seen during the documentary "Lotte Reininger: Homage to the Inventor of the Silhouette Film" by Katja Raganelli, which can be seen on "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" DVD. "Prince Achmed" was the first full-length animated film, made in 1926. Most of her work qualifies as stop-motion, as each character in her movies was photographed one frame at a time and strung together later. These are absolutely amazing pieces and I highly recommend renting or buying the "Achmed" DVD. An amazing, relatively unknown stage of early animation and this woman filmmaker is an inspiration.