The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka (with The Emperor's Nightingale)

1951 Czech animation that none of my 4 1/2 readers will care about

Rating: n/r

Plot: Contains five short films and one feature-length film based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

The Emperor's Nightingale, narrated by none other than Boris Karloff, was boring. I watched it last, and maybe by that time, I had had enough of the puppet films of Jiri Trnka, a guy who needs to buy a vowel. The shorts though? Well, it's Czech animation, so it's up one of my favorite alleys. The first, "Bass Cello," is from the same Chekhov story that John Cleese used in Romance with a Double Bass, a cute little skinny-dipping tale. The puppets, like in most of these movies, are simple in a charming way, but Trnka still manages to make the characters expressive. I also like his backgrounds, how he simulates cloud movement and water reflection. With the wizardry of Henry Selick and other modern animators, there's not much in this that's going to drop your jaw, but Trnka's work does show off a technical genius. The wild west romance adventure parody called "Song of the Prairie" used sparse backdrops and more of those expressive but simple puppets for some funny moments. Nice touch with a playing card at the end during the villain's death. "Merry Circus" was more cut-outs than puppet stop-motion, little paper talented seals, mischievous clowns, a monkey, trapeze mayhem, a performing bear, a one-man band, a woman on a horse. Cirque So-Bear! Abbey watched this one with me and really seemed to enjoy it. These are less experimental/surreal than Svankmajer/Barta (although "The Hand" was sort of an existential nightmare), more in the vein of Mr. Roger's puppet friends than copulating animated meat. The weirdest one might have been "A Drop Too Much," a short about drunk-drivin' Bill that was like a creepy public service announcement. Worth watching if you're into this sort of business, but trust me--you don't really need to watch The Emperor's Nightingale no matter how much you like puppets or Boris Karloff. Maybe it needed a puppet Boris Karloff?

Daisies

1966 Czech feminist film

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Two girls (Marie I and Marie II) decide that the world is bad. As a result, they decide to be bad, finding various ways to misbehave by conning perverse butterfly collectors, playing with the food, playing with their food more, breaking stuff, drowning, and being general nuisances. Honestly, you're going to be frustrated if you like movies that have plots and characters who aren't named the exact same thing.

Yet another Eastern European movie, Czech even. At times, you could accuse this of looking like a film school project that the professor didn't even like very much. It's an artsy-fartsy dadaistic clash of visual trickery and tomfoolery. You've got rapid and maddening color changes, weird sound effects (like creaking door sounds when the gals move their limbs or typewriter noises when there's nary a typewriter), lots of scenes involving the slicing and dicing of phallic symbols, the best scissor fight you're likely to see, and lots of scenes that seem to go on forever. But it does all add up to something, again with sort of an obvious film schoolish theme, and it is visually arresting and completely interesting considering the time and place it was made. It didn't last long, by the way. Czechoslovakia banned, so nobody would get to see the fantastic scene where the Maries take after Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel (a movie that should have been banned in Czechoslovakia and everywhere else; and I'm not even pro-censorship!) and mimic trains while in blackface. There's some Svankmajer-esque animation with the quicky-shots of things like locks, butterflies, word shavings, and colors. This is not exactly a movie that stands the test of time, and the stream-of-conscious delivery and too-lengthy scenes will annoy most people, but I'm nevertheless happy I watched it.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

1970 sex ed video for girls

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Inceptionesquely, menstruating Valerie dreams a little dream and then a dream-within-a-little-dream, little-dreaming of earring-thieving vampiric chimera, foul grannies, guys with ukuleles, lustful priests, stake burnings, lesbian smoochings, and funky little poisoned demons. Thanks for the trip, Valerie!

As beautiful and as visually interesting this little Czech trip through a pre-pubescent girl's subconscious was, I'm really glad it wasn't much longer. I appreciate cloudy technicolor symbol-laden seemingly-plotless abstract and surreal foreign films as much as the next guy, but this is almost hyper-dreamy if that makes sense. If it's not the sexuality, it'll be the vampires that offend the sensibilities of the religious right, and there are some startling shots of the black-cloaked pale-faced, dysodontial, gaunt figure contrasted against the softer backgrounds of the village. The colors in this beg to be remastered. They're muted and fuzzy, maybe appropriately so, like colors worn away from being from once-upona fairy tale times. This is definitely a case where director Jaromil Jires (don't ask; I don't know him) makes up for the whole no-plot thing and what seems to be a limited budget with a consistent vibe, alluringly hypnotic. It's a frustrating yet tantalizing visual treat, like an Alice's Adventures in Wonderland without the hallucinogenics or a Heidi with fistfuls and a liberally dog-eared copy of The Softest Metamorphosis--A Nubile Girl's to Her Body and How to Avoid Priests and/or Vampires.

Alice

1988 animated classic

Rating: 17/20

Plot: See Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

My favorite retelling of Carroll's book, Svankmajer's Alice is, in my opinion, represents the master animator at the peak of his grotesque powers. The story's essentially the same, and most of the characters from the novel find their way into Svankmajer's Wonderland. Svankmajer's vision and leftfield creativity breathes unique life into them, making the White Rabbit a sawdust-leaking stuffed buck-toothed thing, the March Hare a wind-up toy, the Mad Hatter a wooden marionnette, the Caterpillar a sock puppet, and, most disturbingly, Bill and the White Rabbit's other pals a perverse menagerie of skeletal reptilian things. The pace is quick, and there's plenty to see, especially for lovers of quirky nightmares. The narration kind of annoys me, probably more so because of some terrible dubbing, but I can put up with that because it's such a treat visually. I definitely could have done without half the lip close-ups though. Nevertheless, bitchin'!

Little Otik

2000 horror comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Bozena and Karel want a child more than anything else in the world. They receive some upsetting news when a doctor tells them they'll never have a child. To cheer his wife up, Bozena unearths a tree root that's kind of in the shape of a human baby and presents it to his wife. They pretend it's real and play parent at their weekend house, and nine months later, with the aid of some faux stomachs, fool their neighbors and friends into thinking they have had a child. Problems arise when the wooden baby develops an impossible appetite.

This doesn't have as much animation as Jan Svankmajer's Alice or Faust. When you finally get to see the root baby come to life, it's truly horrifying and very realistic. The breast-feeding and temper tantrum scenes manage to be even more terrifying than watching a real-life baby. Otik is based on a Czech folk tale, a story learned when a neighbor girl reads from a picture book, and like the best folk tales, this has its share of gruesome moments. It's particularly gruesome when the titular child eats, of course, but watching the other characters eat isn't much better. And they certainly enjoy an interesting array of soups. But Otik isn't all horror. It's also very humorous. A scene where a guy on the street fishes babies out of a tub with a net and wraps them in newspaper is very funny, and as disturbing as it is, a scene featuring a pedophile's crotch hand made me laugh. That pedophile's crotch is the first animation you see in this movie, by the way. The funniest bit is when the husband brings the root to his wife and says, "Guess what I've got for you." It just seems like such a cruel thing to do to a woman who can't have a child, but I laughed and laughed anyway. I really enjoy this movie, but I wonder if Svankmajer had trouble with funding. There are parts of the movie that seem incomplete, especially the ending, and I really wish there could have been more animation, even if was just surreal vignettes that had nothing to do with the main conflicts. Like crotch hand! I imagine the film's theme has to do with human greed, especially since an alternate title is Greedy Guts.

The Cremator

1968 Cesky film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Kopfrkingl rfealtly lipkes hits jozb as the tituvglar spalovac mrtvol. He freqcuenjtly reacds the Tibeztlan Boozk of the Dxead and usces it to supplrort his idzea that crenmatzion is the most comcfortwable way to go. It's the 1930s, and when Gezrzmzany rovlls in, they make him an offqer that he has problkems renfushing in this hiltariousc comegdy from cheehry Czechoslovakia.

At least I think it's a horror/comedy. If it is, it's one of the most disturbing comedies ever made. If not, I might be disturbed myself. But the hijinks of a recurring married couple, lines like "We take a break in the afternoon, and you can breathe fresh air in the cemetery," and a cheery song some characters sing about the death of children are too funny not to be in a comedy. It's nothing I laughed out loud at. Well, that's not true. I think I laughed at a scene where the titular cremator is training a new employee and asks him to look into a little hole in the furnace before annoucing, "There's nothing to see--we must wait for a nice cremation." I really liked The Cremator, from the opening title sequence with some cut-out animation stuff that reminded me of fellow Czech Svankmajer to the startling conclusion. Speaking of Svankmajer, there are also some rapidly juxtaposing shots of cat facial features and pictures of women's breasts that looked straight out of one of the animator's shorts. That must have been the thing to do in Czech movies from the late 60s until whenever. This dark movie is a great depiction of a man losing touch with reality. The lead, a guy with too many consonants in his name, is subdued, doing very little to help the reader know that he's going insane. Instead, director Juraj Herz lets that be shown through the cinematography with some flashy editing, the use of the always odd wide-angle lens, and some other nifty camera tricks. I also like how Herz transitions from one scene to another. Close-ups of a wrinkled animal at a zoo bleeds into the next scene with a close-up of the wrinkles on a guy's forehead. A character's lines fit with the context of one scene when you suddenly realize you've actually been taken to a brand new situation. It's really a neat trick the first few times you notice it, but for the movie to so consistently move from scene to scene like that is really impressive. I also liked a scene at a very strange wax museum, one that featured both puppets and a little person, and the ingenious way a boxing match was filmed. And the music--haunting minimalist clicks with operatic ghosts--fit very well. If you're a sucker for guys-losing-their-minds movies like I am, The Cremator is for you! I've also decided I need to see more Czech movies. Awesome stuff!