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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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Jiri Trnka Arist and Puppet Master
Chapter 5
May 5th, 1945, was the day of the Prague Uprising, and four days later came Liberation Day. Trnka felt the upsurge of national excitement: a desire to rebuild and re-create was in the air. He had always worked hard, and now he felt his energies redoubled. He began to look for a medium which really suited him, and it was then that he had the idea of experimenting with the puppet film. He thought of a theme, and began to write the script of a puppet tale called Grandpa Planted a Beet.
It was inevitable, however, that Trnka should be side-tracked for his puppets once again. His desire to experiment with films happened to coincide with the formation of a group of artists and animators who were initiating a revival in animated cartoons. They invited Trnka to take charge of the work. Since he did not feel fully prepared for work with his puppets, he agreed.
Trick Brothers, as the group called themselves, had arisen out of the Trick Studios, where they drew captions and made trick sets for films. At the outbreak of war, this had become a refuge for numerous young artists and architects. They had been under the management of Diellens, an Austrian, whose ideas for animated cartoons had included a cartoon based on the opera Orpheus and Eurydice, for which life drawings were made of several well-known singers. Diellens had left at the beginning of 1943, and the studio had come under the supervision of von Mollendorf, a Nazi, who had taken very little interest in the work. They had completed a cartoon called Wedding in the Coral Sea, which was technically brilliant, but characterless. The story was typical of the time of the German occupation, and the characterization showed the influence of Walt Disney.
Walt Disney had, in fact dominated animated cartoons throughout the thirties. it was not only that the market was flooded with films from his own studio, but also that he had influenced the technique and style all over the world. A cartoon film was automatically thought of as a Disney film, and any work in Europe in this field was always along his line. Disney's stick-in-trade was in general use. He nearly always used anthropomorphism, creating a number of standard animal figures, who he made resemble human beings. To some extent, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Pluto and the rest acted out the minor worried of the average middle-class American. The basic ideas were the same as those which had been expressed in the silent film, but the use of animal characters made them funnier more original. There was usually the same moral: the characters had to keep smiling whatever complicated events overtook them, and the comic side of the ordinary man's daily life was emphasized. Disney was assured of a stead market. His monopoly lasted fifteen years, and no innovator was ever able to break into the field during that time.
Then came Trnka and the Trick Brothers. years later, Stephen Bosustow, the American critic, was to call Trnka 'the first rebel against Disney's omnipotence'.
Disney's omnipotence had helped other animators to learn the basic elements of the craft. His cartoons had given them technique and skill. But what they lacked was a style and concept of their own. These Trnka was to supply in his very first film, made immediately after the war.
Trnka came to the company with the script which he had originally planned as a puppet film: Grandpa Planted a Beet. he adapted it instead as an animated cartoon, designing the figures himself. The studio, which had not yet officially taken the Trick Brothers, started working as a subsidiary of the newly established Film institute, on June 15th, a month and six days after the end of the war. The film Grandpa Planted a Beet was a turning point both for Jiri Trnka and for the Czech cinema. Czechoslovakia had taken a revolutionary step in the field of the animated cartoon. Grandpa Planted a Beet was warmly welcomed in its own country, as the first truly Czech animated cartoon.
The moral of Grandpa Planted a Beet was simple but not obvious: that the help of even the smallest and weakest is valuable. There was not Disney-like anthropomorphism. Man remained man, and the animals remained animals. The two worlds were not interchangeable.
Technically, the film reflected Trnka's experience in the puppet theatre and as an illustrator. he could not throw off these two influence, knowing nothing about films and having therefore nothing to substitute for them. This was a weakness to some extent, but also a strength. It prevented him from copying. He brought a fresh vision to the cinema, and this, ignorant though he was of film-making, he produce a work of importance. The setting of Grandpa Planted a Beet was confined entirely to the inside of the cottage and the cottage garden. It was faintly reminiscent of a puppet set. And there was a night scene which recalled some of the ideas in Basil and the Bear, the one success of the Wooden Theatre. The animation was rather clumsy. The film was a little like a book illustration in motion. But compared with the American cartoons it was a real discovery. The artistic level was high, and new ground had been broken.
Grandpa Planted a Beet was followed by a whole series of cartoons made under Trnka in the Trick Brothers Studio: The Animals and the Brigands (from the story 'The Enchanted Wood'), The Gift, a parody, and The Chimney Sweep, and anti-Nazi satire. Grandpa Planted a Beet had achieved a warm welcome in Czechoslovakia. The Animals and the Brigands broke through internationally: it was acclaimed at the first International Film Festival at Cannes.
The Animals and the Brigands was based on a well-known fairytale about the animals in the forest who frighten the brigands and take their money. In Trnka's version the brigands became three harmless creatures. The animals too, were frightened by the mysteries of the forest at night. Trnka made the forest into a kind of poetical and fantastic dream, in which mushrooms and acorns came to life, the light of dawn dispelling the terrifying aspect of the nocturnal moth. The setting and technique were forerunners of those Trnka was to use more freely in depicting the forest creatures, the Athenian lovers, and the artisans in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His approach was a continuation of the methods he had used in Grandpa Planted a Beet , but the cartoon was more professional in character and better as a film. The drawing and animation were greatly improved, and the story gave scope for a larger set, more development, and speedier action. he sometimes made deliberate use of delayed climax, big lingering over lyrical detail, and this was to become characteristic of his work in the puppet film. There was one episode in The Animals and the Brigands, an encounter between animals and brigands in a cottage and the panic-stricken flight of each group in a different direction, which showed that he was now handling animation and composition with mastery. It was a technical triumph for this new type of animated cartoon. A moving camera was used. There were close-ups for adding drama, and panoramic effects for breadth.
The Animals and the Brigands was typically Czech. When the film as first performed, people began to speak of Czech school of cartoon films. The reviews in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, when the film was performed at Cannes, confirmed that Trnka and the Trick Brothers had embarked on a promising road, and that there was at last been a breakaway from the school of Walt Disney. He succeeded with the film The Gift.
The Gift revealed Trnka for the first time as a capable film director. it was full of excitement and ideas. Superficially, its aim was to parody the excessive zeal of film producers and authors, but its meaning really went further than that. its apparent slightness did not conceal the serious purpose of satirizing the ideals of bourgeois society. The cartoons were set inside an acted film. The drawing was simpler and more dynamic that in the preceding films. There were little figures drawn from popular Kitsch of that time, representing certain stock types: the Millionaire, the Artist, the Servant, 'such a faithful devoted soul'. The treatment was grotesque, and there was a spoken commentary which provided scope for original associations of ideas in the drawings. The story was full of surprised and there were rapid changes of setting: at one moment the characters were in a large busy city, at another in the romantic surroundings of Venice. The First had its own poetry: it was aggressive, original, rich in satire.
It was however ahead of its time, and when it was first shown it was misunderstood. The critics found it incomprehensible, and accused Trnka of being deliberately odd and pretentious. They felt the film was a mistake, and detracted from his former successes, Today, however, the meaning which baffled critics in 1946 is clear enough, for in the intervening years the animated cartoon had become established, and its idiom is more easily understood. Today, too, the influence of the Gift on animated film in general can be more fully appreciated. This influence exerted itself gradually, both at home an abroad.
The Chimney Sweep, Trnka's next film, was a political satire. Trnka used two simple main characters, Springer, a chimneysweep, and a snooping collaborator. he caricatured the goose-stepping S.S. men, and the film was full of comedy, action, and dramatic chases, but the satire also was strong. Trnka made use of what he had learned in producing The Gift, but The Chimney Sweep, was more direct and simpler. It was understood readily, and the critics regarded it was one of Trnka's best films.
It was received so favorably at that time because it satisfied the need to laugh at the recent past, and this relieve the protracted tension of the Occupation period. But though it was about recent events, it remains alive and topical, carrying a warning of some urgency.
With The Chimney Sweep, Trnka's work in cartoon films came to an end. he designed the scenery for the fable of The Fox and the Jug, and then he moved into a small studio in the upper storey of an old house in the centre of Prague, where he finally turned to the puppet films. Some of the animators from the cartoon films joined him here, and he also found a kindred spirit to help him in Vaclav Trojan, the compose.
Trnka was now turning back to his puppets, fully prepared for the first time, since he now had had much varied experience, in art, puppetry, animated cartoons, and life in general. The circumstances were very different from those which had previously led to failure. He could rely on the solid backing of the nationalized film industry.
Trnka abandoned animated cartoon as he had abandoned book illustration, without regrets. Though he was leaving a well-established art form he had helped to develop, he felt strong and confident in venturing on to new ground. He set out into uncharted territory, and he found himself.