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The world of animation is much bigger than it might appear to us at first glance. We are all familiar with the films we grew up with, but Hollywood wasn’t the only place that produced great cartoons… Poland, Japan, Russia, China and Europe all have their own traditions and a rich history of animated film making. Animation Resources’ archive contains many foreign films that are rarely seen in the United States. We feature a sampling of interesting animation from around the world in each Reference Pack.
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SD VIDEO:
Two Films By Hans Held
The Troublemaker 1940 / Baron Munchausen 1944
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In previous Reference Packs, we’ve featured films by the German animator Hans Fischerkoesen. Drafted by Joseph Goebbels to produce animated films for the Nazi regime and charged with building a studio to rival Walt Disney, Fischerkoesen succeeded in making some remarkable cartoons that largely avoided straying over the line into being outright propaganda. Today we feature one of Fischerkoesen’s peers, Hans Held, who wasn’t quite as lucky or successful.
Held was born in Bavaria in 1910 and worked at the Brandenberger Theater as a designer when the Nazis rose to power. He was drafted by Goebbels to work at UFA as a design and color consultant and assistant director for live action films. Because of Goebbels’ and Hitler’s interest in animation, Held established an animation studio in Bavaria. He produced several films, but none were as execrable in their propaganda content as “The Troublemaker”.
The story is simple and blunt in its purpose. A magpie spots a fox lurking in the forest and notifies the police and her rabbit neighbors. A group of hedgehog soldiers alerts a squadron of wasps and war erupts. The fox threatens a rabbit girl, but is eventually killed by a catapult. The animals of the forest rejoice at the fox’s death. Held rams home the analogy to the Nazi militarism of the time, by making characters run in a goose-step and by using the sound of contemporary fighter aircraft for the wasps. I don’t need to point out what group of people the fox is meant to represent.
Held’s experience in the theater is a limiting factor here. The entire film is constructed of medium long shots that are stagey and devoid of any cinematic interest. The backgrounds are painted like theatrical backdrops, and the character movement is blocked without expressing any personality. Goebbels learned from his mistake. After this first attempt, he instructed the animators he supervised to focus on core cultural virtues, rather than direct propaganda. The films that followed, specifically those by Fischerkoesen were much more successful.
In 1943, the UFA studio released a large scale color live action film, designed to compete with MGM’s lavish musicals and adventure films like Alexander Korda’s “The Thief of Bagdad”. No expense as spared to make this film the biggest and most elaborate film Germany had ever produced. Because of his relationship with UFA, Goebbels called on Hans Held to make an animated short featuring the character with an eye to perhaps create a series of animated Munchausen adventures. The result was an abject failure. The war effort had drained the resources of Held’s studio and the Nazi regime was beginning to crack. Held had learned very little since “The Troublemaker”, and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” succeeded in being even more stiff and devoid of personality than its predecessor.
Sometimes we can learn as much from bad examples as good ones. Hans Held is an example of an artist who was skilled in the medium of live theater and live action movies, but was wrongly cast as an animator by Goebbels. These films also show that as persuasive as animation can be, there needs to be a certain core of humanity if one wants the audience to embrace the idea. The Nazis were ill suited to compete with Walt Disney, who had his finger on the pulse of middle America and strove to serve his audience, not force his audience to serve his ideology.
REFPACK057: The Troublemaker 1940
MP4 Video File / SD / 12:06 / 402 MB Download
REFPACK057: Baron Munchausen 1944
MP4 Video File / SD / 07:11 / 98 MB Download
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SD VIDEO:
Well, Just You Wait Ep.07
Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin / Soyuzmultfilm, Russia / 1973
We continue the Russian Wolf and Rabbit cartoons with episode 07, “Cruise Ship At Sea”.
The premise of Nu, Pogodi! (which translates into English as Well, Just You Wait!) was pitched by a writing team of satirical humorists to many directors at Soyuzmultfilm, but was rejected every time. Finally in 1969, Gennady Sokolsky agreed to direct a 2 1/2 minute pilot for the series in an omnibus film called “Happy Merry Go Round”. The general consensus at the studio was that the cartoon was “low class” and beneath the dignity of Soyuzmultfilm, but director Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin strongly believed in the concept, so the studio decided to take a chance and allow him to direct a few episodes… and then a few more… and then more.
Kotyonochkin was proven correct. The cartoons were a huge success. Between 1969 and 2006, Soyuzmultfilm ended up making 22 episodes, and in a 2014 poll of audiences all over Russia, Well, Just You Wait! was voted the most popular cartoon series of all time by a landslide. Although the series resembles both Tom & Jerry and the Roadrunner and Coyote series, the director, Kotyonochkin claimed not to have ever seen any of these Hollywood cartoons until 1987 when his son got a video tape recorder and Western tapes began to be imported.
In these Russian cartoons, there’s almost no dialogue, and the action almost always occurs on screen. Static tableaux are rare, as are detailed backgrounds and “on model” drawings. These cartoons focus on expressive poses and movement, and save time and expense by avoiding the careful cleanup required for character model details and overlapping action. The theory here is, if it moves funny, it’s funny… and they are right about that.
Shamus Culhane once lamented that television animation consisted of mostly lip-sync animation. He would have preferred to do away with lip-sync entirely and just have simple drawings that really move. Well, Just You Wait proves that he was correct.
We will have more Wolf and Rabbit cartoons in upcoming Reference Packs.
REFPACK057: Well Just You Wait Ep. 07
MP4 Video File / SD / 09:32 / 116 MB Download
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SD VIDEO:
Dog, Cat And… Ep 06
Jaroslaw Jakubiec & Jan Siupik / Studio Miniatur Filmowych, Poland / 1972
In this Reference Pack, we are sharing another short cartoon from a series produced by Studio Miniatur Filmowych, Pies, Kot I… which translates to Dog, Cat And… The episode is titled "Vacuum Cleaner".
This series is a different sort of take on the Tom & Jerry model, with the opponents outsmarting each other instead of just chasing each other out of hate or hunger. There is more to the relationship between the characters than just rivalry. The relationship of the characters makes it easy to see how it relates to slapstick comedy teams like Laurel & Hardy and Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The dog and cat are not just generic animals, but individual personalities with a dynamic relationship that is much more engaging than most “cat and mouse” or “dog and cat” cartoons.
These cartoons are almost devoid of dialogue with the focus on loose, funny animation. In fact, the drawings are often hilarious on their own, even removed from their context within the gag sequence. The facial expressions are well observed, and the poses employ clear silhouettes that form funny graphic shapes.
Well, Just You Wait!, and Dog, Cat And… both are very efficient at what they do. They could easily serve as a model for internet animation. The internet encourages repeat viewing more than television does. When you watch a dialogue driven cartoon on TV, once you’ve heard the jokes, you don’t need to watch it again. However, a short cartoon that looks and moves funny is entertaining no matter how many times you watch it. And for the animator who is making the cartoon, it’s a lot more fun to animate simple funny characters than it is to animated a lot of tedious lip-sync.
Dog, Cat And… looks like it was a lot of fun to make. The film makers at Studio Miniatur Filmowych didn’t feel constrained by the ordinary lives of animals. Their characters can drive cars, build their own houses and go to exotic places. That freedom allowed the animators to keep their series fresh, and gave them the opportunity to experiment within a 10 minute format. Simple drawings, funny movement and no rules… these are the kinds of series that would work well as episodic internet cartoons.
We will have more episodes from this series in upcoming Reference Packs.
REFPACK057: Dog Cat And… Ep06
MP4 Video File / SD / 09:16 / 212 MB Download
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SD VIDEO:
Goku no Daiboken Ep. 1 & 11
Giasaburo Sugii / Japan / 1967
Goku no Daiboken (aka Adventures Of The Monkey King) was an animated series released in 1967 made by Mushi Productions. It was supervised by Giasaburo Sugii, and directed by several artists including Osamu Dezaki, Hideaki Kitao and Sad Tsukioka, among others. The 39 episodes were loosely based on the 16th century Chinese epic tale, Journey to the West. Ostensibly, Osamu Tezuka was the creator of the series, but he had very little to do with the production of the series, since he was completing the final episodes of Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) while Goku no Daiboken was in production at Sugii’s studio. Tezuka had published a manga comic based on Journey To The West, but this animated version is quite different in tone.
Sugii’s take on the characters was more “rough and tumble”. The focus was on the animation, with extreme takes and reflexive gags. Pay attention to the design as well. There are some very attractive layouts and color schemes. One scene even references Hanna Barbera’s The Flintstones!
The main character, Goku wasn’t portrayed as the eager student like in the manga; instead he was an obnoxious brat. In fact, the show received so many complaints from teachers, the character had to be toned down in later episodes. Along with Goku, the cartoons star his girlfriend Tatsuko, Hakkai the pig and Sha Gojo, the monk. The series debuted as a replacement for Astro Boy which had just completed its final season.
In the first episode, Goku is born at Mt. Kaka. He becomes a bratty pest and decides to take over the local castle just for fun. In episode 11, the characters visit a town where an election is taking place. Two political parties are facing off, the votes of Goku and his friends look like they will decide the election, but the campaigning gets out of hand.
We will bring you more early anime in upcoming Reference Packs.
REFPACK057: Monkey King Ep. 1
MP4 Video File / SD / 26:59 / 374 MB Download
REFPACK057: Monkey King Ep. 11
MP4 Video File / SD / 26:04 / 329 MB Download
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One afternoon, as I sat with Grim on his front porch, he casually mentioned that he had been told that there were machines that animated- computers. He wondered aloud "how they manage to get the machines to hold a pencil" and expressed an interest in finding out more about it. So I called my friend Charlie Gibson, who was a partner at Rhythm & Hues in Hollywood. I arranged for Grim to take a tour of their studio the following week.
