Watch the Meditative Cinepoem “H20”: A Landmark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

in Environment, Film, Nature | January 25th, 2019

We all stand to ben­e­fit from a bit of hydrother­a­py, but in these hec­tic, try­ing times, it’s chal­leng­ing to find the time for a bath, let alone come up with the dough for a trop­i­cal vaca­tion or sooth­ing spa expe­ri­ence.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, the near­ly hun­dred-year-old exper­i­men­tal film above may be your best option.

In 1929, pho­togra­her and film­mak­er Ralph Stein­er turned his cam­era on a num­ber of watery subjects—hydrants, water­falls, streams, rain­drops dis­turb­ing placid pud­dled sur­faces.…

The result was H20, an 11-and-a-half minute cinepo­em, con­sid­ered by film his­to­ri­ans, The New York Times not­ed in Steiner’s obit, to be “the sec­ond Amer­i­can art film.”

(Have a look at James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Webber’s impres­sion­is­tic 1928 adap­ta­tion of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er if you’re curi­ous about the first.)

Pho­to­play mag­a­zine bestowed its first prize for ama­teur film­mak­ing upon H20, prais­ing Steiner’s pure abstract pat­terns and aston­ish­ing tem­po, and gush­ing that “the pic­ture is bound to attract wide atten­tion and a great deal of dis­cus­sion wher­ev­er it is shown.”

He revis­it­ed the sub­ject two years lat­er with Surf and Sea­weed, above, though his fas­ci­na­tion with move­ment was not lim­it­ed to the nat­ur­al world, as evi­denced by 1930’s Mechan­i­cal Prin­ci­ples.

The hub­bub may have died down a bit in the 90 years since H20’s release, though Steiner’s spir­it lives on in a num­ber of young exper­i­men­tal filmmakers—witness Nor­bert Shieh’s award-win­ning Wash­es, Dave Krunal’s Water­bomb, and Jaden Chen’s A Cup of Water, below.

H2O has been pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty by the Library of Con­gress’ Unit­ed States Nation­al Film Reg­istry. The orig­i­nal piano score in the ver­sion fea­tured on Open Cul­ture was com­posed by William Pear­son.

Down­load a free copy of H20 from the Inter­net archive for use in future try­ing times.

Stein­er’s films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Watch Four Ground­break­ing Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Mountain Monks: A Vivid Short Documentary on the Monks Who Practice an Ancient, Once-Forbidden Religion in Japan

in Film, Religion | January 23rd, 2019

If you need to get some seri­ous think­ing done, go to the moun­tains. That notion holds across a wide range of cul­tures, but it has a par­tic­u­lar force in Japan, where solo hik­ing, some­times great­ly extend­ed solo hik­ing, has long been a pop­u­lar treat­ment for a wide vari­ety of trou­bles both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al. But no group has tak­en it to quite the extreme as have the Yam­abushi, ascetic moun­tain her­mits who have prac­ticed Shugendō, a hybridiza­tion of ver­sions of eso­teric Bud­dhism, Tao­ism, and Shin­to that goes back to the eighth cen­tu­ry. What sort of lifestyle, one won­ders, would such seri­ous reli­gious ded­i­ca­tion in such a harsh, remote loca­tion pro­duce?

Visu­al jour­nal­ist Fritz Schu­mann, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his doc­u­men­taries on a 1300-year-old Japan­ese hotel and a near­ly extinct Japan­ese print­ing tech­nique, gives us a sense of that in his new short Moun­tain Monks. “Walk­ing bare­foot through rivers, med­i­tat­ing under water­falls and spend­ing the nights on moun­tain­tops — that is the way of the Yam­abushi,” he writes.

“They walk into the for­est to die and be born again.” Their Shugendō teach­ings “peaked in pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry, when Yam­abushi vis­it­ed around 90 per­cent of all vil­lages in north­ern Japan,” and when its monks “were said to have mag­i­cal pow­ers and served as advi­sors to samu­rai and war­lords.” But then, “in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, when Japan opened itself to the west and moved from a feu­dal state towards indus­tri­al­iza­tion, their reli­gion was for­bid­den.”

Though the pro­scrip­tion on Yam­abushi has long since been lift­ed, as a reli­gion it no longer pos­sess­es quite the fol­low­ing it once did. A group of monks has kept its flame alive in secret in iso­la­tion, up in north­ern Japan’s Yam­a­ga­ta pre­fec­ture, and now any­one can sign up for pri­vate cours­es through the offi­cial Yam­abushi­do web site, even for­eign­ers. The sim­ple rig­ors of their dai­ly life may sound appeal­ing indeed to those fed up with whichev­er mod­ern, tech­nol­o­gy-sat­u­rat­ed soci­ety they’ve come from, and Schu­man­n’s film may well con­vince a fair few to look into the expe­ri­ence them­selves. Not to say that he sug­ar-coats it: “The idea,” declares one Yam­abushi mem­ber right at the begin­ning, “is to expe­ri­ence the tor­tures of hell.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japan­ese Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jodie Foster Teaches Filmmaking in Her First Online Course

in Film | January 21st, 2019


FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

FYI: Jodie Fos­ter has just rolled out a new online course on film­mak­ing over on Mas­ter­Class. In 18 video lessons, the two-time Oscar-win­ner guides “you through every step of the film­mak­ing process, from sto­ry­board­ing to cast­ing and cam­era cov­er­age.” Accord­ing to Mas­ter­Class, the course comes with “a down­load­able work­book of les­son recaps and access to exclu­sive sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als from Jodie’s archive.” Stu­dents will have “the chance to upload videos to receive feed­back from peers and poten­tial­ly Jodie her­self!” You can enroll in Fos­ter’s new class (which runs $90) here. You can also pay $180 to get an annu­al pass to all of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es–which includes oth­er film­mak­ing class­es by Ken Burns, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Spike Lee, Wern­er Her­zog and more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing: Fea­tures 30 Video Lessons

Free MIT Course Teach­es You to Watch Movies Like a Crit­ic: Watch Lec­tures from The Film Expe­ri­ence

Colum­bia U. Launch­es a Free Mul­ti­me­dia Glos­sary for Study­ing Cin­e­ma & Film­mak­ing

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The Art of Creating Special Effects in Silent Movies: Ingenuity Before the Age of CGI

in Film | January 10th, 2019

If any­one tries to claim that mod­ern day movies have too many spe­cial effects remind them of this. Films have always used spe­cial effects to trick the audi­ence, and we’re just using new vari­a­tions of tools from a cen­tu­ry ago. In fact, right from the begin­ning, cre­ators like Georges Méliès were push­ing the bound­aries of cel­lu­loid and 24 frames per sec­ond like the show­men and magi­cians they were.

By the time we get to the silent come­di­ans as seen in our above video, tech­nol­o­gy had advanced along with the pure phys­i­cal com­e­dy of the stars. Yes, they were amaz­ing and nim­ble ath­letes, but they weren’t stu­pid. Cam­era trick­ery helped them look super­hu­man.

The first exam­ple shows Harold Lloyd’s icon­ic stunt from 1923’s Safe­ty Last!, where he hung over the streets of Los Ange­les from a clock face. Only he wasn’t real­ly. Using forced per­spec­tive, a con­struct­ed build­ing edi­fice, and a safe mat­tress a few feet below shows how Lloyd faced no dan­ger at all. Edit­ing, too, cre­ates so much of the effect, as we have seen how high the clock is com­pared to the ground in pre­vi­ous shots. The angle on the streets below and in the dis­tance real­ly sell the scene com­pared to just shoot­ing sky.

In fact, this forced per­spec­tive is still used in mod­ern films: Peter Jack­son used it a lot in The Lord of the Rings to give the impres­sion that Gan­dalf was twice as tall as Hob­bit Fro­do sim­ply by con­struct­ing the sets small­er.

And when back­grounds are basic like sand dunes, even the low bud­get film­mak­er can achieve some amaz­ing effects with no mon­ey, just a bunch of cool minia­tures:

Then again, Jack­ie Chan one-upped Lloyd for real in his 1983 film Project A, when he dan­gles from a three-sto­ry clock hand only to crash through two canopies onto the ground below. It’s a stunt so nice, they show you it twice!

The oth­er favorite trick of the silent films was mat­te paint­ing. As long as the cam­era doesn’t move, a piece of glass with a pho­to-real­is­tic paint­ing on it can seam­less­ly fit into the action.

In Char­lie Chaplin’s 1936 Mod­ern Times, that allows the come­di­an to skate very close to a three floor drop with­out even being in dan­ger. (Tech­ni­cal­ly, the cam­era *does* move in this shot, but it’s a short pan which wouldn’t affect the illu­sion.)

This old-school method has gone away, though up through the ‘80s great mat­te paint­ing artists were work­ing on films like the Star Wars tril­o­gy and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now a dig­i­tal mat­te artist works in three dimen­sions, not two, with end­less finesse and tweak­ing at their dis­pos­al, like in Game of Thrones:

The mat­te is the basis, real­ly, of all mod­ern dig­i­tal effects. Wher­ev­er there is a green screen, you’re see­ing the evo­lu­tion of the mat­te. You prob­a­bly have an app on your phone that does some­thing sim­i­lar, and can mag­i­cal­ly trans­port you to where you real­ly want to be…just like film.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts–and Keaton’s 5 Rules of Com­ic Sto­ry­telling

Some of Buster Keaton’s Great, Death-Defy­ing Stunts Cap­tured in Ani­mat­ed Gifs

Cap­ti­vat­ing GIFs Reveal the Mag­i­cal Spe­cial Effects in Clas­sic Silent Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The “David Bowie Is” Exhibition Is Now Available as an Augmented Reality Mobile App That’s Narrated by Gary Oldman: For David Bowie’s Birthday Today

in Fashion, Film, Music, Technology | January 8th, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvP1ZczQ-C8

Maybe it’s too soon to divide pop music his­to­ry into “Before David Bowie” and “After David Bowie,” but two years after Bowie’s death, it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine pop music his­to­ry with­out him. Yet, if there ever did come a time when future gen­er­a­tions did not know who David Bowie is, they could do far worse than hear Gary Old­man tell the sto­ry. Luck­i­ly for them, and us, Old­man nar­rates the new David Bowie aug­ment­ed real­i­ty app, which launch­es today on what would have been the legend’s 72nd birth­day.

Bowie and Old­man were both born and raised in South Lon­don. They became friends in the 80s, starred togeth­er in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film Basquiat, and col­lab­o­rat­ed on the 2013 video for “The Next Day,” in which Old­man plays a sleazy, duck­tailed priest. As much the con­sum­mate changeling in his medi­um as Bowie, Old­man brings a fel­low craftsman’s appre­ci­a­tion to his role as docent, with­out any sense of star-struck­ness. “I see him less as ‘David Bowie,’” he once remarked, “and more as Dave from Brix­ton and I’m Gary from New Cross.”

The app is based on the sen­sa­tion­al 2013 Vic­to­ria & Albert muse­um exhi­bi­tion David Bowie Is, which trav­eled the world for five years before end­ing at the Brook­lyn Muse­um this past sum­mer. Focused on “the colour­ful, the­atri­cal side of Bowie,” Tim Jonze writes at The Guardian, the show drew “a stag­ger­ing 2m vis­i­tors” with its stun­ning breadth of cos­tumes, props, sketch­es, lyrics sheets, film, and pho­tog­ra­phy. The dig­i­tal ver­sion intends, how­ev­er, not only to “recre­ate the expe­ri­ence of going to the exhi­bi­tion,” but “to bet­ter it.”

Learn how “Dave from Brix­ton” (or Davy Jones, before a Mon­kee of the same name came along) made “sketch­es propos­ing out­fits for his teenage band the Delta Lemons (brown waist­coats with jeans).” See how that young aspir­ing croon­er learned to love “hikinuki—the Japan­ese method of quick cos­tume change that he exper­i­ment­ed with dur­ing his Aladdin Sane shows at Radio City Music Hall.” The exhi­bi­tion bril­liant­ly ful­filled his own wish­es for his lega­cy. “As Bowie him­self puts it,” Jonze writes, “he didn’t want to be a radio, but a colour tele­vi­sion.”

Bowie prob­a­bly would have been pleased to have his friend Gary host­ing his vari­ety show. But does the AR app match, or bet­ter, the real thing? It’s “no match for see­ing the cos­tumes in real life,” or see­ing Bowie him­self in the flesh. But for the mil­lions of peo­ple who nev­er got the chance—a cat­e­go­ry that will soon include everyone—it may cur­rent­ly be the best way to expe­ri­ence the musician/actor/writer/one-man-zeitgeist’s career in three dimen­sions. See a pre­view of the app from Rolling Stone, above, and down­load the AR David Bowie Is for iPhone and Android via these links. The cost is $7.99.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Dark­est Char­ac­ter

David Bowie Memo­ri­al­ized in Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Four Daring Films by Lois Weber, “the Most Important Female Director the American Film Industry Has Known” (1913–1921)

in Film, History | January 8th, 2019

These days, every cinephile can name more than a few women among their favorite liv­ing film­mak­ers: Sofia Cop­po­la, Ava DuVer­nay, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Cam­pi­on, Agnès Var­da — the list goes on. But if we look far­ther back into cin­e­ma his­to­ry, com­ing up with exam­ples becomes much more dif­fi­cult. There’s Ida Lupino, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, whose The Hitch-Hik­er made her the only female direc­tor of a 1950s film noir, but before her? No name from that ear­ly era is more impor­tant than that of Lois Weber, in some esti­ma­tions “the most impor­tant female direc­tor the Amer­i­can film indus­try has known.”

Or so, any­way, says Weber’s exten­sive Wikipedia entry, part of the rel­a­tive­ly recent effort to res­cue from obscu­ri­ty her vast body of work: a fil­mog­ra­phy esti­mat­ed at between 200 to 400 pic­tures, almost all of them con­sid­ered lost. Weber’s cham­pi­ons empha­size not just her pro­lifi­ca­cy but her bold­ness, not just tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly — 1913’s Sus­pense, for exam­ple, pio­neered the split-screen tech­nique — but social­ly.

Even in its infan­cy, she used her medi­um to deal with issues like pover­ty, drugs, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, women in the work­force, and even con­tra­cep­tion. (In 1915’s Hyp­ocrites, she went as far as to include the first full-frontal female nude scene in motion pic­tures.)

Though born in 1879, well before the advent of cin­e­ma, Weber grew up with a sur­pris­ing­ly suit­able back­ground to pre­pare her for this kind of film­mak­ing. Raised strong­ly reli­gious, she left the fam­i­ly house­hold to take up street-cor­ner evan­ge­lism and church-ori­ent­ed social activism. Ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry she moved from her native Pitts­burgh to New York, where she set her sights on singing and act­ing. “I was con­vinced the the­atri­cal pro­fes­sion need­ed a mis­sion­ary,” she lat­er explained, and hav­ing heard that “the best way to reach them was to become one of them,” she “went on the stage filled with a great desire to con­vert my fel­low­man.”

Weber’s work in the the­ater opened the door to oppor­tu­ni­ties in the then-nascent movie indus­try. By 1914, she could con­fi­dent­ly say in an inter­view that “in mov­ing pic­tures, I have found my life’s work. I find at once an out­let for my emo­tions and my ideals. I can preach to my heart’s con­tent, and with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to write the play, act the lead­ing role and direct the entire pro­duc­tion, if my mes­sage fails to reach some­one, I can blame only myself.” The recent restora­tion of sev­er­al of her sur­viv­ing films has made it pos­si­ble for her mes­sage to reach a cen­tu­ry she nev­er lived to see — and to give their view­ers the chance to eval­u­ate the claims made by film his­to­ri­ans like Antho­ny Slide, who puts her along­side D.W. Grif­fith as “Amer­i­can cin­e­ma’s first gen­uine auteur, a film­mak­er involved in all aspects of pro­duc­tion and one who uti­lized the motion pic­ture to put across her own ideas and philoso­phies.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

103 Essen­tial Films By Female Film­mak­ers: Clue­less, Lost In Trans­la­tion, Ishtar and More

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), the First Female Film Direc­tor & Stu­dio Mogul

Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

The First Fem­i­nist Film, Ger­maine Dulac’s The Smil­ing Madame Beudet (1922)

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Bustling Streets of Mumbai, India in 1929: Vintage Footage Captured with Very Early Sound Cameras

in Film | January 8th, 2019

“Though hard­ly a cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­piece,” film crit­ic Andre Soares writes, “or even a good film,” Al Jolson’s 1927 The Jazz Singer will for­ev­er bear the dis­tinc­tion of “the first time in a fea­ture film that syn­chro­nized sound and voic­es could be heard in musi­cal num­bers and talk­ing seg­ments.” What usu­al­ly goes unre­marked in film his­to­ry is that Indi­an cin­e­ma was nev­er far behind its U.S. coun­ter­part. The country’s first fea­ture sound film appeared just four years after The Jazz Singer. Now lost, the love sto­ry Alam Ara debuted in March of 1931 and ini­ti­at­ed a ven­er­a­ble tra­di­tion with its sev­er­al songs, includ­ing the first major fil­mi music hit.

The movie was so pop­u­lar, one his­to­ri­an notes, “police aid had to be sum­moned to con­trol the crowds.” Its direc­tor Ardeshir Irani was inspired by anoth­er ear­ly Hol­ly­wood part-talkie musi­cal, 1929’s Show Boat, which, like his film, used the Movi­etone sys­tem to record sound, rather than the Vita­phone sys­tem used in The Jazz Singer. Movi­etone, or Fox Movi­etone, as it came to be known after William Fox bought the patents in 1926, was also respon­si­ble for anoth­er ear­ly film devel­op­ment, the sound news­reel, a tech­nol­o­gy that made its way to India almost as soon as it debuted in the U.S.

The first sound news­reel, show­ing footage of Charles Lindbergh’s tak­ing off in the “Spir­it of St. Louis,” debuted in 1927 in New York. In Novem­ber 1929, Fox opened the first exclu­sive news­reel the­ater on Broad­way, and in Jan­u­ary of that same year, a Movi­etone cam­era cap­tured the street scenes of Bom­bay (now Mum­bai) that you see above, over 13 min­utes of footage com­plete with live audio record­ing of bustling crowds, busy ven­dors and laun­dry work­ers, honk­ing auto­mo­biles, and clip-clop­ping hors­es.

This incred­i­ble doc­u­ment pre­serves the sights and sounds of a sig­nif­i­cant Indi­an slice of life from 90 years ago, and shows how ear­ly the tech­nol­o­gy for mak­ing sound films arrived on the sub­con­ti­nent. When Ardeshir Irani began film­ing his ground­break­ing musi­cal the fol­low­ing year, he would use exact­ly this same tech­nol­o­gy, shoot­ing all of the dia­logue and music live, on a closed set late at night to avoid unwant­ed noise like the street sounds you hear above.

Learn more of the Fox Movi­etone news­reel sto­ry here, and here, learn how Indi­an cin­e­ma began in Mum­bai in 1899 when Indi­an pho­tog­ra­phers, writ­ers, the­ater impre­sar­ios, and entre­pre­neurs like Irani took the new tech­nol­o­gy and used it to build a cul­tur­al empire of their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

India on Film, 1899–1947: An Archive of 90 His­toric Films Now Online

100 Years of Cin­e­ma: New Doc­u­men­tary Series Explores the His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma by Ana­lyz­ing One Film Per Year, Start­ing in 1915

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The King and the Mockingbird: The Surreal French Animated Film That Took 30 Years to Complete, and Profoundly Influenced Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata

in Animation, Film | January 4th, 2019

Ani­ma­tion, as any­one who has ever tried their hand at it knows, takes a great deal of time. The King and the Mock­ing­bird (Le Roi et l’Oiseau), for exam­ple, required more than thir­ty years, a jour­ney length­ened by much more than just the labo­ri­ous­ness of bring­ing hand-drawn images to life. But it does that glo­ri­ous­ly, with a style and sen­si­bil­i­ty quite unlike any ani­mat­ed film made before or since — a sig­na­ture of its cre­ators, ani­ma­tor Paul Gri­mault and poet/screenwriter Jacques Prévert. Hav­ing already worked togeth­er on 1947’s Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen adap­ta­tion The Lit­tle Sol­dier (Le Petit sol­dat, not to be con­fused with the Godard pic­ture), they chose for their next col­lab­o­ra­tion to ani­mate Ander­sen’s sto­ry “The Shep­herdess and the Chim­ney Sweep.”

“The pompous King Charles, who hates his sub­jects and is equal­ly hat­ed in return, rules over the amus­ing­ly named land of Taki­car­dia,” writes crit­ic Christy Lemire. The most prized item in his art col­lec­tion is “his por­trait of a beau­ti­ful and inno­cent shep­herdess with whom he’s des­per­ate­ly in love. What he doesn’t know is that when he’s asleep, the shep­herdess and the chim­ney sweep in the adja­cent can­vas have been car­ry­ing on a sweet and ten­der affair.” Still King Charles keeps try­ing to win her, or steal her, for him­self, “but the cou­ple gets help thwart­ing him at every turn from the one char­ac­ter in the king­dom who does not wor­ship the monar­chy: the brash and trash-talk­ing Mr. Bird, a bright­ly-feath­ered racon­teur.” The film’s mood “shifts seam­less­ly from imp­ish, sil­ly adven­tures to grotesque and night­mar­ish suf­fer­ing. And then the giant robot arrives.”

This may sound ambi­tious, even for the only ani­mat­ed fea­ture in pro­duc­tion in Europe at the time. Alas, the com­pa­ny took Gri­mault and Prévert’s increas­ing­ly expen­sive project out of their hands after just a cou­ple of years, and in 1952 its pro­duc­er André Sar­rut sim­ply released it unfin­ished. (You can watch the now-pub­lic-domain Amer­i­can ver­sion of the film, dubbed by a cast head­ed by Peter Usti­nov and titled The Curi­ous Adven­tures of Mr. Won­der­bird, just above.) But Gri­mault and Prévert held fast to their vision, the lat­ter revis­ing the script until his death in 1977 and the for­mer, hav­ing won back the rights to the film, assem­bling a team of ani­ma­tors to pro­duce new scenes and cut out some of the old ones. This com­plete ver­sion of The King and the Mock­ing­bird had its French pre­miere in 1979, though it would­n’t reach Amer­i­ca until just a few years ago.

“I’m sure this all sounds famil­iar,” says Youtube ani­ma­tion video essay­ist Stevem in his analy­sis of The King and the Mock­ing­bird as a sur­re­al­ist film. “The pro­duc­tion was too ambi­tious, the com­pa­ny steps in and pulls it back, and in spite of its issues it’s remem­bered as a cult clas­sic, and inspired some of the big names along the way.” Those names include Stu­dio Ghi­b­li founders Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta. “We were formed by the films and film­mak­ers of the 1950s,” Miyaza­ki once said. “It was through watch­ing Le Roi et l’Oiseau by Paul Gri­mault that I under­stood how it was nec­es­sary to use space in a ver­ti­cal man­ner.” Taka­ha­ta saw Gri­mault as hav­ing “achieved bet­ter than any­one else a union between lit­er­a­ture and ani­ma­tion.”

Though Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s fil­mog­ra­phy may offer plen­ty of mem­o­rably sur­re­al moments, The King and the Mock­ing­bird occu­pies a plane of ani­mat­ed sur­re­al­ism all its own. Draw­ing com­par­isons to Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), Stevem quotes the line from Andre Bre­ton’s Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo about “the belief in the supe­ri­or real­i­ty of cer­tain forms of pre­vi­ous­ly neglect­ed asso­ci­a­tions, in the omnipo­tence of dream, in the dis­in­ter­est­ed play of thought.” That’s the sort of expe­ri­ence Gri­mault and Prévert’s film, in its fin­ished state, offers, while also, in the words of Vul­ture’s Bilge Ebiri, draw­ing on “Fritz Lang and per­haps the style of Walt Dis­ney from the great era of Snow White. There are inter­est­ing antic­i­pa­to­ry echoes, not just of ani­me, but Roald Dahl and the Vul­gar­ia of Chit­ty Chit­ty Bang Bang.” Just the sort of mix­ture only pos­si­ble — only even imag­in­able — in ani­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Ani­ma­tion Course from a Renowned French Ani­ma­tion School

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Métal hurlant: The Huge­ly Influ­en­tial French Com­ic Mag­a­zine That Put Moe­bius on the Map & Changed Sci-Fi For­ev­er

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Short Ani­mat­ed Film, Des­ti­no, Set to the Music of Pink Floyd

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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