Tag: animation

The Stolen Heart (1933)

The Stolen Heart (1933)Most film buffs know Lotte Reiniger as the pioneer of silhouette animation and the creator of the first feature-length animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a combination of One Thousand and One Nights stories that predated Walt Disney’s Snow White by over a decade. Reiniger was the creator of more than forty films using silhouette animation, a technique initially borrowed from the Chinese shadow puppet tradition that utilizes paper dolls to form silhouettes, then animated and photographed frame by frame. Reiniger is one of the frontrunners of stop-motion animation.

While Prince Achmed is certainly her most famous and ambitious work, Reiniger also made a number of shorter films, including The Stolen Heart, a 1933 short about a town populated by lovers of music who lose their instruments to an old demon. The thematics of the story involve the triumph of joyful music over evil, as the demon is eventually conquered not by anger, but by joy.

Films like The Stolen Heart make a passionate argument for Reiniger’s place in the pantheon of animation greats, a symbol of the power of female directors. There is no dialogue, and Reiniger’s storytelling depends on the combination of the visual and the use of music and song. The film comes off as an anti-fascist parable, reinforced by depiction of the demon as a gigantic old man, looming over the tiny village and robbing the people of their joy. But joy in itself is stronger than oppression and it is the action of the instruments themselves that liberates the people – the music echoes across the landscape, awakening the villagers from despair and eventually crushing the oppressive shadow. Reiniger’s silhouettes meld and transform, and give the impression of witnessing real life through a curtain, warmth and love radiating even as sorrow nearly cows the people.

Reiniger tends to come off as a footnote in animation history, partially because of her gender, and partially because silhouette animation is now largely a lost cinematic art. But it is hard  to watch The Stolen Heart and fail to be moved by it. Reiniger is an artist, a director of the highest caliber, and anyone who fails to seek out her work has done a disservice to themselves and to the history of cinema.

Fantastic Planet (1973)

Fantastic Planet (1973)

fantastic-planet-1973

Until recently, we’ve tended to associate animated films with children, and treated animated films that deal with adult subjects as anomalies, or at best new discoveries. But animation has been around as long as cinema, and for much of its history it has been directed toward adult audiences as much as children. The French/Czech co-production Fantastic Planet, directed by Rene Laloux, is one of many animated films from the 1970s that deals with adult and oft-disturbing subject matter in a unique, complex way.

Fantastic Planet takes place on the planet Ygam, inhabited by a race of blue humanoids called Draags. Draags keep human beings, called Oms (in French, literally homme or man), as pets, putting them in collars, dressing them in little costumes, and playing with them. But Draags also view wild Oms as dangerous, vicious creatures that must be eradicated. The film centers around one Om named Terr, a pet of Tiwa, the daughter of a senior Draag leader. Through an error in his collar, Terr begins to learn Draag language, culture, and planet knowledge from a pair of headphones that project Tiwa’s school lessons directly into his brain. Finally sick of being treated like an animal, Terr escapes, fleeing into the wilderness with Tiwa’s headphones. He meets up with a band of wild Oms to whom he offers Draag knowledge, but incurs danger both from the frightened Oms and the increasingly malevolent Draags.

Fantastic Planet’s sci-fi plot is somewhat simplistic, enhanced by the surreal imagery that creates a strange, unique culture and experience. The film ostensibly was meant to reflect the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia, but it has greater resonance than that, dealing with issues of dehumanization, genocide, and the complex philosophy that puts one people (or species) above another. The Oms are ignorant because their overlords have kept them ignorant, but the Draags also have no apparent awareness that their pets are anything more than dumb animals. Terr provides a bridge, imparting knowledge that proves to be a danger to himself, to the Oms, and to the Draags.

Fantastic Planet is more about image than about plot, the creation of a fascinating, bizarre world that is about cinematic experience creating meaning. While firmly set in its Cold War mentality, it nevertheless succeeds in being universal, in saying something about the way humanity treats that which it does not understand, about belief in superiority and the dangers that creates for all creatures, Draags and Oms alike.