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Animation: A World History

Volume II: The Birth of a Style—The Three Markets
Giannalberto Bendazzi

Eastern Europe

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Giannalberto Bendazzi
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EASTERN EUROPE

Poland kind of studies before passionately applying himself to

Poland was worn out by the world conflict, with its major
cities largely destroyed and its capital razed. Łódz and
Katowice, two of the least stricken cities, became the very
first centres of animation. In Katowice, a group named
Slask made productions with animated drawings for the
state department of cinema, Film Polski. Later on, a stu-
dio in Bielsko-Biała specialized in animated drawings,
while the studio in Łódz became pre-eminent in puppet
animation. It was in this field that Halina Bielińska (War-
saw, 14 August  1914–Warsaw, 13 October  1989) and
Włodzimierz Haupe (Gniezno, 17 January 1924–Warsaw,
10 March  1994) distinguished themselves with Janosik
(1954), the first Polish animated feature film, and, four
years later, with Zmiana warty (Changing of the Guard),
created with animated matchboxes. In the field of ani-
mated drawings, only the children’s films by Wladysław
Nehrebecki (1924–1979) are noteworthy.
After 1956, in Poland too there was a gradual thawing
in favour of art films.1 The initiators of this new attitude
were the then-debuting artists Jan Lenica and Walerian
Borowczyk, who made their first films together: Był sobie
raz . . . (Once Upon a Time . . ., 1957) Dom (The House,
1958), Nagrodzone uczucie (Love Rewarded, 1957) and the
two made-to-order micro-shorts, Strip-tease (1957) and
Sztandar młodych (Banner of Youth, 1957).
Lenica had studied music, architecture and fine arts
before dedicating himself to graphics, where he soon
made a name for himself. Borowczyk undertook the same
cinema. He made his debut in the early 1950s with short,
live-action films. The collaboration between the two art-
ists, marred by their strong and independent personalities,
ceased in 1958. Within a few months of each other, both
Lenica and Borowczyk emigrated to the West. They never
resolved their frictions but, independently, they were both
able to attain high levels of creativity.
Lenica and Borowczyk’s joint works of 1957 made his-
tory in Poland, as their sense of absurdity, surrealism and
anguished settings became favourite themes of the Polish
School.
Czechoslovakia and Puppets
In June 1945, shortly after Prague was liberated from Ger-
man occupation, theatres released the advertising short
Sensational Attractions, Marvellous Entertainment. It was the
first to be produced by independent animators and the
first animated film of the new Czechoslovakia. Activi-
ties started in earnest. Jiří Trnka, Eduard Hofman, Josef
Vácha and musician Václav Trojan began working on
their debut short, Zasadil dědek řepu (Grandfather Planted
a Beet, 1945).
The country was in turmoil. The struggle for power was
paralleled by heated debates and an atmosphere of recon-
struction and optimism. At the studio, animators were
euphoric. ‘This is time for experiments’, stated Jiří Trnka
in 1946. ‘We must take advantage of it!’ From that time on,

1
Despite the fact that Soviet-inspired Socialist Realism was embraced by the regime, Poland always managed to save an independent
approach to creation. World famous artist, background designer and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990) founded in 1948 the
unwelcomed but tolerated Krakow Group (including Maria Jarema, Jonasz Stern and Jerzy Nowosielski) which produced abstract and
assemblage works. In 1955 Kantor also created the Cricot 2 Theatre, where Andrzej Pawlowski (1925–1986) presented his light show
Kineformy (Kinetic Forms), which became an exciting abstract film by the same title in 1957, with music by Adam Walaciński.
 58  Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets

artists looked for new ways to animate. Even when some Characterized by inventive drawings and a very limited ani-
conformism of themes took root some years later, the best mation, it was based on a tale of Jiří Wolker (1900–1924), a
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artists (Trnka, Karel Zeman, Hermína Týrlová) continued to
find unusual stylistic solutions and to look forward. Following
a witty suggestion by Trnka, the Prague studio was named
Bratři v triku (‘the brothers in shirts’, but also ‘the brothers of
tricks’, referring to animation). The logo, by Zdeněk Miler,
represented three curly haired children wearing striped shirts.
Jiří Trnka (whose work will be discussed in detail later) was the
most influential among Prague’s animators. For more than a
decade, almost every animated puppet movie made in the
capital was released by the studio he directed from 1946 and
which was renamed after him at his death.
Films with animated drawings had a different course.
Many talented artists ventured into production, but the only
remarkable works were Jiří Brdeěka’s first film, Vzducholod´
a láska (The Dirigible and Love, 1948) and Zdeněk Miler’s
O milionáři, který ukradl slunce (The Millionaire Who Stole the
Sun, 1948). The first, with Kamil Lhóták’s drawings inspired
by turn-of-the-century illustrations, tells the story of two lov-
ers who fulfil their dreams after the young man builds a dirig-
ible and snatches the girl from another suitor. The second
film (award winner at the 1948 Venice Festival) describes a
rich man who steals the sun for his exclusive enjoyment, leav-
ing the world in darkness, until a little girl saves humanity.
poet and an early member of the Communist Party in Czech-
oslovakia. It is probably the finest film by Miler (Kladno, 21
February 1921–Nová Ves pod Pleší, 30 November 2011), an
artist who had learned the technique of animation in Zlín, at
the Bat´a studio, which he had joined in 1942.
In 1947, Stanislav Látal (Samotišky, 7 May 1919–Prague,
4 August  1994) directed the original tale Liška a džbán
(The Fox and the Pitcher). Václav Bedřich (Příbram, 28
August  1918–Prague, 7 March  2009), a specialist in chil-
dren’s productions, was a prolific animator. Eduard Hofman
(Krakow,2 16 May  1914–Prague, 1987), who also special-
ized in works for children, displayed his verve and taste with
Andělský-kabát (The Angel’s Coat, 1948) and Papírové nocturno
(Paper Nocturne, 1949). In 1950, Hofman was invited to
direct the animation studio. He also participated in the
foundation and management of an animated film studio in
Czechoslovak Television.3 The Angel’s Coat (made together
with artist František Freiwillig) fully showed his style of
directing – a comprehensible story told at a brisk pace,
complete with funny gags and distinct animation snapshots.
Another challenge was the feature film Stvoření světa
(The Creation of the World, 1957),4 based on drawings by
the Frenchman Jean Effel.5

2
Then Austro-Hungarian Empire, today Poland.
3
Although Czechoslovakia became a member of the Soviet Bloc in 1948, Czech animators never accepted the style of their Muscovite col-
leagues. This approach certainly led them to be original and world famous Eduard Hofman expressed very harsh opinions even on Disney,
which we quote here for historical documentation, without sharing them: ‘The first aspect of our programming was nationality. We wanted
to enliven the Czech landscape, Czech people, Our people, Our thinking. Secondly, we wanted to always be more lyrical, freer – in contrast
to the sharpness of the American cartoon. We wanted to be national even in joking. Our humour is not as sharp and as biting as American
humour. We intentionally did not take Disney as an example in anything. Disney’s expression is not national; it’s not at all American. It is
only tied to that continent by its content. Disney’s artistic expression is actually Munich Art Nouveau. It is cosmopolitan neutrality in art.
Also, Disney’s humour is an end in itself, his gags dazzle. Disney influenced the entire world with his animation shorthand, his cliché. And we
work with a broad pallet of the most varied artists [. . .]. The difference between Disney and us? To put it precisely: Walt Disney approached
animated film technically, coldly, by subjugating illustration to the requirements of movement. And we do the exact opposite. We even work
with artists that by merit of their character are not specifically predetermined for animation. For example, Antonín Strnadel, Kamil Lhóták
and a number of others. For example, even Jiří Trnka himself. And still, after the animated film is finished, they remain, each of them, an art-
ist in this area, without losing their individuality, as we know it from their static art. Speaking for myself: I always try to preserve the artist, not
to coerce him into anything or force him into anything and I do so instead of finding the appropriate and absolutely correct movement that
would come from his drawing. That is the exact opposite approach to that of Walt Disney’ (Vladimír Bystrov, ‘Eduard Hofman: Osobnost
Ćeskoslovenského kresleného filmu’ [Eduard Hofman: A Personality in Czechoslovak Animated Film], Film a doba, Prague, 1958).
4
The Holy Scripture says that, at the Beginning of Everything, there was darkness and God. In this film, God is nicely absentminded,
still having a lot to do. To get help with His work ahead, He gets himself an egg that He keeps warm until little angels hatch. But the
last egg, which is quite spotted, turns out to have been hiding a restless, little devil. Once the helpers are all there, God needs light for
His further work. He flicks a lighter – in vain. As usual, it doesn’t work. The Creator therefore has to use the famous magic formula: Let
there be light! There is light and God, with the little angels’ help, starts creating, while the little devil does his best to ruin His plans, using
an endless succession of witty ideas. Of course, he does most mischief when God starts creating humans. God keeps a close watch on
Adam, but the little devil immediately spoils Eve and teaches her to dance rock ’n’ roll . . . (and this was the very first ever to sound in a
Czech Communist film).
5
By real name François Lejeune (1908–82), Jean Effel was a journalist, painter and caricaturist. Nothing to do with the Tour Eiffel.

Recalled Jiří Brdeěka:
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Hofman was a great organizer. He was the one who
kept animation on its feet after the war. He was also the
one who brought Trnka to cinema, convincing him to
leave behind illustrations and puppet theatre. Hofman
was an exceptional manager from 1950 to 1956, when
he directed the animation studio, and also later, when
he directed the entire production company of movies
for children.6
Despite Hofman’s endeavours, his years were not the
most satisfying. As Jan Hořejší wrote:
Beside negative external influences, which were, in
my opinion, the most important reasons, there were
also the consequences of a general decay in anima-
tion. Together with a growing intellectualism and a
tendency to over-illustrate as an end in itself, these led
to an ever increasing limitation in the development of
animation.
However, Hořejší added,
Production started breathing again after 1956, and the
reasons for such a delay were [.  .  .] social above all.
In an atmosphere of gradual openness, the creative
courage [. . .] of the postwar reappeared in all artistic
fields.7
Within the field of drawn animation, the really dra-
matic leap forward was done by debutant František
Vystrěil (Olomouc, 9 November  1923–Prague, 8 Janu-
ary 2000), who released O místo na slunci (The Place in the
Sun, 1959). The five-minute short was unpretentious, but
influenced a lot of animators that side of the Iron Curtain,
pushing them to use epigrammatic scenarios (in this case
teasing human envy and covetousness) and very simplified
drawings and animation, the UPA way.
As already mentioned, other animators worked at Zlín:8
above all, Hermína Týrlová and Karel Zeman.
6
Jiří Brdečka, letter to the author (1977).
7
Jan Hořejší and Jiří Struska, Occhio magico – Il cinema d’animazione Cecoslovacco 1944–1969 [in Italian], Prague: Československy Filmexport,
1969, pp. 16 and 20.
8
From 1949 to 1989, the old town of Zlín was named Gottwaldov, after the Czech Communist leader Klement Gottwald (1896–1953).
Today is again Zlín, Czech Republic.
9
Jaroslav Boček, ‘Hermína Týrlová’, Film a doba, Prague, 1964.
Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets  59
Hermína Týrlová
We have already met this artist (1900–1993), whose
early life was hard. She lost her father and brother sud-
denly and, subsequently, her mother; she grew up in the
Břevnov orphanage. When she was fifteen, she started
learning animation from Karel Dodal, married him, and
later endured a divorce – without ever giving up work. At
the age of thirty-four she, finally, created her own inde-
pendent work in the Zlín Studios. It was the puppet film
Ferda Mravenec (Ferda the Ant, 1943), which languished
in the archives for over a year. Shown immediately fol-
lowing the Liberation, it was a beginning. It was not a
masterpiece; but in one direction it foreshadowed all of
her work: it was intended for children.
With her second film, Vzpoura hraček (Revolution in
Toyland, 1947), Týrlová found her world. She would
bring to life mass-produced toys, rag dolls, sock puppets,
knots on handkerchiefs, celluloid figures, dice, needles,
balls of yarn, tailor’s measuring tapes, trains, even glass
beads.
Jaroslav Boček singles out three periods in Týrlová’s
production. ‘In the first period – that is from Revolution
in Toyland through Ukolébavka [Lullaby, 1948] and Nepove-
dený panáček [Imperfect Figure, 1951] to Devět kuřátek [Nine
Chicks, 1952] – she develops the basic strand of playful-
ness. A toy comes to life as if in a child’s dream and carries
out a short story. In Lullaby, Týrlová reveals her approach
to the puppet and makes it the tissue of the story schema.
The imagination of a little girl put to bed brings to life a
doll, and its whirling rocks the girl to sleep. In the follow-
ing Imperfect Figure, the schema of the dream becomes the
creative method’.9
The connection of the world of toys with the world of
people is typical of this first period: the child and the doll
in Lullaby; the residents of a toyshop against a Gestapo
agent in Revolution in Toyland; the sewn characters banding
together against the evil tomcat in Imperfect Figure. From
the confrontation of a double reality and double logical
order, Týrlová mines likeable and simple humour and even
fragile, fantastic poetry.
 60  Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets

The second period suffers from the imposing influ- usually neglected by men’.11 Among her remarkable
ence of Trnka and Zeman. Týrlová attempted to tell an productions, also worth mentioning are Modrá zástěrka
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epic story and handle a puppet of the dramatic type. (The Blue Apron, 1965) and Malovánky (Paintings,
Belonging to this period are Pohádka o drakovi (A Dragon 1970).
Story, 1953), Zlatovláska (Goldilocks, 1955), Míček Flíček
(Misha the Ball, 1956), and a rendition of Hans Chris-
tian Andersen’s Pasáček vepřů (The Swineherd, 1958).
But the epic was foreign to her inspiration and she did
not have a natural, general bent for dramatic situations. Karel Zeman
The only significant gain was the experience she made
with a lengthier film dimension, of which she later made Karel Zeman was born on 3 November  1910 in
fruitful use. Ostroměř u Nové Paky12 and died on 5 April 1989
The turning point to the third period was Uzel na in Zlín/Gottwaldov. As a teenager, he immigrated
kapesníku (A Knot on the Handkerchief, 1958). With this to France, where among many experiences (he was
film, Týrlová returned to the style and approach of her a model maker and draughtsman, and even a pugi-
beginnings and a renaissance of her talent took place. list) he attended an art school of advertising and
The subsequent films, be they Vláček Kolejáček (Kolejáěek started making animated commercials.
Choo-choo Train, 1959), Ztracená panenka (The Misfit, Back home, he collaborated with the immensely
a.k.a. Tke Lost Doll, 1959) or Kulička (The Marble, 1963), powerful Zlín firm Bat’a. (footwear), which had an
bear witness to this. Her scope of interest expanded from in-house film studio for its own commercials. From
toys to other objects close and intimately familiar to chil- then on he settled in Zlín and in 1943, along with
dren. In The Marble, she managed fully and economically colleague Hermína Týrlová, he made Vánoční  sen
to connect play with life’s philosophy, childish antics with a (The Christmas Dream), his directorial debut,
mature valuation – thus nourishing the culture of good art which was awarded for Best Animation at the first
intended for children. Cannes Film Festival in 1946.
Týrlová exhausted herself completely on work for When the Bat’a. management was expropriated
children. It can also be said that she didn’t try to accom- after the war (1945), Zeman and Týrlová (their
modate children in her work; her personal form of expres-
sion preserved the characteristics of childhood, despite
encroaching age.
Being a female director was not easy in Týrlová’s youth.
She recalled the times when she made Ferda the Ant: ‘I could
not disappoint people. I had to finish the film successfully.
Failure would mean that I could no longer work in film. It
would also mean, at least for a time, the end of the idea of
the puppet film in this country. The studio leadership did
not have too much faith in me, and this was doubled by the
fact that I was a woman. The psychological moment that a
woman is starting something new complicated everything
for me’.10
Tasteful and sensitive, Týrlová was ‘an artist of clear,
terse and delicate imagination, capable of weaving the Figure 3.1  Karel Zeman, The Christmas Dream, 1948.
subtle, minute events of people and objects which are

10
Quoted in Jaroslav Boček, ‘Hermína Týrlová’, Film a doba, Prague, 1964.
11
Vladimir Kolman, Vom Millionär, Der die Sonne stahl – Geschichte des Tschekoslowakischen Animationsfilms, Frankfurt: Deutsches Filmmuseum,
1981, p. 22.
12
Then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

relationship being by then rather strained) man-
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aged to create their own animation and film studios
on the premises.
Zeman gained popularity with his comic shorts
on Mr Prokouk, a well-intentioned, scatterbrained
chap with a large nose, a brush-like moustache
and a straw hat. This personification of the
man-in-the-street would be the hero of about ten
shorts between the 1940s and 1970s. The Prok-
ouk tales were slightly moralistic, but funny and
genuinely original, be they the character involved
with rubbish (Podkova pro štěstí [Horseshoe for Suc-
cess, 1947]), or bureaucracy (Pan Prokouk ouřaduje
[Mr Prokouk, Officer, 1947]), or laziness (Pan Prok-
ouk filmuje [Mr Prokouk, Filmmaker, 1948]).
In 1949, Zeman directed the film that once
and for all brought him to the international lime-
light, Inspirace (Inspiration). The most unpliable
substance – glass – is impeccably animated, and
a Harlequin and a Columbine, along with gentle
horses, interpret a fantasy in a shining, all-glass
scenery. Lyrical and innovative, for most people it
was a stylistic shock.
The featurette Král Lávra (King Lávra, 1950)
was a satire based on a novel by Karel Havlíěek
Borovský.13 A  king has the ears of a donkey and
hides them under long hair and a beard. Once
a year, a barber is summoned to the court, com-
manded to cut the royal hair, and then executed in
order to keep the secret. The smart barber Kukulín
Figure 3.2  Karel Zeman, Inspiration, 1948.
13
A nineteenth-century writer and epigrammatist (1821–56), he wrote this allegorically anti-imperialist poem shortly before he died.
Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets  61
is able to save his life and to be given the post of
court barber, but one day he can’t help confiding
the ridiculous detail to a willow tree. But then, the
tree is cut down and its wood is utilized to make
a double bass. When an orchestra goes to play to
the palace, the double bass tells the audience that
King Lávra has the ears of a donkey! The courtiers
pretend they didn’t hear anything, but Kukulín runs
away. King Lávra showed Zeman’s self-confident
hand at direction and his great sense of humour
and of entertainment.
But this would be his adieu to animation-only
films. He turned to combined-technique feature
films with Poklad ptačího ostrova (The Treasure of
Bird Island, 1952), a puppet, cartoon, live-action
tale set in Persia. His Cesta do pravěku (A Journey into
Prehistory, 1955) told the story of four students who
ascend the river of time, discovering ancient ani-
mals (the only animated elements of the film were
the models of dinosaurs, while everything else was
live action).
In 1958, after two years of work, Zeman released
Vynález zkázy (The Diabolic Invention, 1958), based
on Jules Verne’s 1896 novel Face au drapeau (Face
the Flag), featuring animated drawings and models
together with live actors. Reviewers praised the tech-
nical results of the film and its background design
(from illustrations by Édouard Riou and Léon Ben-
ett) which maintained Verne’s nineteenth-century
ambiance. ‘The film suffers from imbalance, both
in technique and inspiration’, wrote André Bazin,
‘but there are innumerable beautiful sequences
and frequent comic expedients’. Added Vittorio
Spinazzola, ‘Not too many critics noticed the deci-
sively modern thesis, dealing with the tragic end
of the researcher, unable to understand whether
his conquests will be used to help humanity or will
be turned against it’. Local critics proudly claimed,
‘Méliès did not die, he is Czechoslovakian and his
name is Zeman’.
In 1961, Zeman repeated this success in Baron
Prášil (Baron Münchhausen, 1961), based on Got-
tfried Bürger’s novel and Gustave Doré’s engrav-
ings. Jan Hořejší and Jiří Struska wrote:
 62  Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets

This time, in a way never seen before in live-action

Jiří Trnka
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cinema, Zeman enters the worlds of Münch-

hausen, Bürger and Doré.14 Prášil’s journey
(Prášil is the Czech name for Münchhausen) from
the Moon to Constantinople on a vessel drawn by
Pegasus; his entry into the sultan’s palace, which
Dore’s engraving enlivens in all its magic; the
romantic kidnapping of princess Bianca from the
palace; the naval battle and Münchhausen’s glo-
rious victory; the involuntary flight of the Baron
in the claws of a huge bird; his return riding a
seahorse; his flight on a cannonball [. . .]. It is not
surprising that in his other two films Bláznova kro-
nika (A Jester’s Tale) and Ukradená vzducholod’ (The
Stolen Airship),15 the filmmaker builds on his past
achievements, although with new twists.16
After his third Verne adaptation, Na kometě (On
the Comet, 1970, from Hector Servadac, 1877),
Zeman turned to children tales: Pohádky tisíce a jedné
noci (Thousand and One Nights, 1972, a collection
of shorts), čarodějův učeň (Krabat – The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice, 1977), Pohádka o Honzíkovi a Mařence
(The Tale of John and Mary, 1979) and the docu-
mentary Karel Zeman for Children (1980).
Always suspended between marvel and tech-
nique, Zeman’s subtle, vibrant films do not fit the
limiting definition of adventure cinema, but display
a playful vitality and faith in progress which are
deserving of Verne and Méliès.
With simplicity and ingeniousness, he carried out
an idea of cinema that had been proposed by Méliès
and Ptushko, without imitating them (probably barely
knowing them) and reaching higher artistic peaks.
The Diabolic Invention, where the viewer doesn’t
feel any difference between animation and
live-action, actors and drawings, or real sets and
invented sets is probably the quintessence of the
work of this great visionary.
Jiří Trnka was the master. Although he was not
directly the master, because he was too modest
to teach anybody anything. But the quality of
his work was such that all of us tried to equal or
surpass it. Trnka had been the first to show us
that animation could be an art form. He made
art films, and this was somewhat revolutionary at
the time. Trnka also taught us discipline: he was
self-disciplined and industrious and expected the
same from his collaborators. He was very kind
but also strict. He did not accept compromises.
He encouraged us to be serious.17
This is how Jiří Brdečka described the artist who
more than anybody else brought honour to Czech-
oslovakian animation.
Trnka was born in Pilsen (now Plzeň) on 24 Feb-
ruary  1912, the son of a blacksmith and a dress-
maker. His junior-high art teacher, and one of the
last great puppeteers, Josef Skupa (1892–1957),
encouraged the boy to study art and made him his
assistant. From Skupa, Trnka learned the art of
carving wooden puppets.
Figure 3.3  Jirí Trnka.

14
Based on a real soldier’s life, tales, legend and jokes about Baron Münchhausen were collected and published by an anonymous German
writer in 1781. Rudolf Erich Raspe made an English version in 1875, and Gottfried August Bürger translated Raspe’s book into German
again and expanded it. Gustave Doré (1832–1883) illustrated Bürger’s book in 1862.
15
From Jules Verne’s novel Deux ans de vacances (1888).
16
All quotations on this page are from André Bazin, ‘Bruxelles’, Cinema nuovo, No. 134, July–August 1958, Milan; Vittorio Spinazzola, ‘La
diabolica invenzione’, Cinema nuovo, No. 139, May–June 1959, Milan; and Jan Hořejší and Jiří Struska, Occhio magico – Il cinema d’animazione
Cecoslovacco 1944–1969 [in Italian], Prague: československy Filmexport, 1969.
17
Jiří Brdečka, letter to the author (1977).

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Figure 3.4  Jirí Brdecka and Jirí Trnka.
Asked why animated puppets had undergone
such a development in Czechoslovakia, critic Jiří
Struska answered, ‘[P]erhaps because of the tra-
dition of Renaissance and Baroque popular per-
formances [.  .  .] perhaps because of the puppet
tradition’. Explained Marie Benešová, ‘Puppet
theatre was adopted centuries ago as a way to sub-
stitute for ordinary theatre with live actors. During
the Austro-Hungarian oppression, puppet theatres
stirred up rebellion against forced Germanization.
Towards the 1840s, no fewer than seventy-nine
puppeteer families toured Bohemia. The musi-
cian Smetana composed two graceful overtures to
puppet theatres, the artist Aleš painted scenes and
puppets, the novelist Jirásek dedicated his fairy tale
Mr. Johannes to puppeteers’.18
In the years following World War I, Czech pup-
pets gained even more popularity because of the
rise of specialized theatres, new companies and
radio programmes. There was no theatrical ‘genre’
that was not approached by wooden actors, from
children’s works to vaudeville to classical dramas,
comedies and political satire. In Czechoslovakia,
more than anywhere else, this tradition entered
cinema with the greatest spontaneity. There is no
visible hiatus between puppet theatre and animated
puppet cinema. The transition occurred smoothly,
with those minimal changes required by the new
18
Jan Hořejší and Jiří Struska, Occhio magico – Il cinema d’animazione Cecoslovacco 1944–1969 [in Italian], Prague: československy Filmexport,
1969; Maria Benešová, ‘Il cinema di animazione’, in Ernesto G. Laura (ed.), Il film cecoslovacco, Rome: Ateneo, 1960.
19
Jaroslav Brož, ‘20 let Československého filmu – Vypovidá Jiří Trnka’ (20 Years of Czechoslovak film – as told by Jiří Trnka), Film a doba,
Prague, 1965.
Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets  63
means of communication but with the same acting
and scene design.
In 1928, sixteen-year-old Trnka started at the
School of Arts and Crafts in Prague, making a
living by assisting his master Skupa and contribut-
ing vignettes to a newspaper. In 1935, the year he
graduated from the school, he wrote the play Master
of the Sea, for which he also directed and designed
the puppets and the sets. In 1936, he set up his own
puppet theatre (the Wooden Theatre) in Prague.
Despite the critics’ praise, it lasted only one year, as
it didn’t meet the desired response from the audi-
ence, who considered the shows too intellectual.
In 1939, he turned to live-action theatre and
won a national contest for designing the scenery of
Bedřich Smetana’s opera Libuše, to be staged at the
National Theatre. The political situation stopped
the production of the opera, but Trnka was given
the opportunity to meet avant-garde director Jiří
Frejka (1904–1952) and musician Václav Trojan,
with whom he would fruitfully collaborate. In 1940,
at twenty-eight, he had his first one-man exhibition,
by the title The Painter Gives Way to Children.
During the war years ‘Jiří Trnka was the set
designer of various Frejka productions, and col-
laborated with many more stage directors as well.
The Nazi government let him off the labour for the
Reich in consideration of this artistic contribution
that helped life look calm in Prague. The war years
were also filled with painting, illustration, even toy
making. Having made a name for himself, Trnka
almost unexpectedly made his debut in filmmaking
in 1945, after the Liberation.
‘During the war I never saw any of the people
from Afit. I  only knew some of their co-workers
from that time, such as Brdečka. Only after the
liberation, already some time in June, did Eduard
Hofman and some of his colleagues come to me
and say, “We have a studio here and want to do
animated films and we’d like you to do them with
us” [. . .] They came, spoke nicely and so I started
doing it with enthusiasm’.19
 64  Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets
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Figure 3.5  Jirí Trnka, The Gift, 1946.
The subject he suggested, Grandfather Planted a
Beet, was accepted; the result was Trnka’s first film
with animated drawings, which shows the artist’s
undisputed skills, but is still far from the level he
would later reach with puppet animation.
Dárek (The Gift, 1946) is an almost experimental
movie, unusually surrealistic for its time. Zvířátka a
petrovští (The Animals and the Brigands, 1946) is a
brisk rendition of an old, popular tale. Pérák a SS
(The Springer and the SS Men, 1946) is a well-made,
anti-Nazi movie, featuring a chimney sweep who
dons two strong springs, taunts the SS and jumps
away from them. All these drawn-animation works
were made in 1946. In Trnka’s opinion, however,
too many middlemen (artists, colour technicians)
weakened the originality of the author’s drawings,
and he made plans to animate puppets. Some car-
penters and technicians had found room in a neigh-
bouring building and Eduard Hofman had in mind
to make it into a puppet studio. Trnka went over
and, straight afterwards, some young animators
(Břetislav Pojar, Stanislav Látal, Bohuslav Šrámek)
went over, too.
Trnka observed: ‘With Pojar, we animated one
of my oldest wooden puppets, a ballerina. It moved
well, but gave an abstract impression. The effect
was nice, but did not mean anything. Thus we
understood that a puppet film needs concrete situ-
ations, a story’.20 He added: ‘From the beginning
Marie Benešová, Jiří Trnka, Prague: Československy Filmexport, 1970.
20
Jaroslav Brož, ‘20 let Československého filmu – Vypovidá Jiří Trnka’ (20 Years of Czechoslovak film – as told by Jiří Trnka), Film a doba,
21
Prague, 1965.
I  tried to avoid making puppets that looked too
much like people, which are just animated replace-
ments for people. That’s why my films only have
live puppets, that is, just puppets as such’.21
Špalíček (The Czech Year, 1947), the feature film
born after this experiment, indeed told a ‘story’ or,
rather, many stories. Based on a book illustrated by
Mikuláš Aleš, the film was a type of documentary
on Czech customs throughout the year. It already
showed the seeds of the poetics Trnka eventually
developed: love of nature; a subtle, but powerful,
lyricism; and a deep feeling for popular culture.
Trnka’s second feature film was Císařův slavík
(The Emperor’s Nightingale, 1948), based on
Andersen’s tale. Set in the Court of the Celestial
Empire and characterized by the porcelain-like
softness of aristocratic places and faces, the subject
seems very different from Trnka’s previous film,
which featured solid, spontaneous Bohemian peas-
ants. In fact, the underlying theme of this second
movie does not differ substantially from the first
one, but is approached here through irony. The
court, the mechanical toys of the shy little emperor
and the elegant headdresses are ridiculed in com-
parison with the simple life and nature. This theme
was already present in the tale by Andersen, an
author to whom Trnka felt close.
These films were successful abroad but, domes-
tically, no Czech spectator paid much attention to
them. While heavy political pressure was put on
live-action production, and some was put on car-
toon animation, almost nobody cared for the pup-
pets. This guaranteed the team an almost complete
freedom, during uneasy times.
In 1950, Trnka made his third feature film, Bajaja
(Prince Bayaya), taken from a nineteenth-century
story by Božena Němcová about a peasant who
becomes a knight, defeats three times a dragon,
saves three princesses, marries the youngest one
and then comes back with her to his native cot-
tage. Then the artist returned, seven years later, to
the national popular theme of his first film. The
structure itself was similar to Trnka’s old work,
with various episodes from ancient Slavic popular
 Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets  65

mythology being presented as parts of one whole Trnka’s last feature film was Sen noci svatoján-
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fresco. Considered by many as Trnka’s masterpiece,
Staré pověsti české (Old Czech Legends, 1957) was an
example of how heroic or sublime topics could be
treated with such unpretentious tools as puppets.
In 1954 and 1955, Trnka undertook an ambi-
tious adaptation of three episodes from Dobrý voják
Švejk (The Good Soldier Schweik, 1955) by Jaroslav
Hašek. As with most literary texts, Hašek’s novel does
not lend itself to dramatic representation, although
several versions have since been made for cinema or
TV. Trnka’s version was not one of the finest works
by the filmmaker; nevertheless, he managed to pre-
serve Hašek’s spirit, using characters based on Josef
Lada’s classic illustrations of the text.
ské (Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1959), from
Shakespeare.22
Here, he let his fantasy go free and created luxuri-
ous costumes and sceneries. In his conception, the
English masterpiece was a light pantomime on youth
and love: merry, playful and colourful. The film
excels for its portrayal of common people such as the
foolish peasants from Athens (Bottom and company,
treated by the Czech director with much more ten-
derness than the Bard had) who fall victim to Puck’s
tricks. Critic Dilys Powell wrote in the Sunday Times
(11 October  1959) that she was surprised at how
powerful puppets could be: ‘Bottom was enchanting,
and Snug could not have been more entertaining’.
Ugo Casiraghi disagreed:

Trnka likes to let loose in a spectacular, tasteful

pantomime, rich with choreographic expedi-
ents but mixing too many styles (from neoclas-
sic to rococo), displaying somewhat exaggerated
refinements and, in the long run, excessive
mannerism.23

Trnka’s other works were mainly shorts. He had

Figure 3.6  Jiří Trnka, Sen noci svatojánské (Midsum-
mer Night’s Dream), 1959.
experienced all that was possible with a puppet
film, and had experimented with all genres, from
tales and parodies to epics. He still had only one
genre left: the civic one.
Once a fertile and brilliant artist, Trnka entered
an increasingly pessimistic stage, his last. Vášeň (The
Passion, 1962) is the bitter story of a youngster who
is totally insensitive to the humanistic ideals, and
whose only interest is his motorcycle. Kybernetická
babička (The Cybernetic Grandmother, 1962) tells of
a child who goes from the loving care of her grand-
mother to that of a robot granny – an armchair fur-
nished with handles, levers and push buttons – an
obvious polemic against encroaching technology.

22
In Sen noci svatojánské three worlds meet: the Athenian aristocracy, depicted by Duke Theseus’s court and by the two quarrelsome couples;
Oberon’s arboreal realm, full of magic and enchantments; and the down-to-earth world of Athens craftsmen, fond of theatre and intent
on the preparations of the show they will give in honour of the Duke’s wedding with Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons. The crafts-
men have chosen to play Pyramus and Thisbe and go into the wood for rehearsals. Lysander and Hermia seek shelter there, too; they are
in love, but Hermia has been promised to Demetrius. Demetrius chases Hermia while, at the same time, he’s chased by Helena. But the
masters in the woods are Oberon and his servant Puck. By dint of spells, they poke fun of everybody (including Oberon’s wife, Titania),
until the Duke lets the true lovers get married, and the play at long last be played.
23
Ugo Casiraghi, ‘Il cinema cecoslovacco’, Quaderni del circolo monzese del cinema, Monza, 1962.
 66  Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets
Derisive, but not resigned, was Archanděl Gabriel a
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paní Husa (Archangel Gabriel and Mistress Goose,
1964), based on a short story from Boccaccio’s
Decameron. In Middle Age Venice, a hypocritical
preacher disguises himself as Archangel Gabriel
in order to have sex with an aristocratic lady; he’s
unmasked and pilloried.
Trnka’s gloominess culminated in Ruka (The
Hand, 1965), his last film. A  potter and sculptor
is commissioned to make a monument by a huge
Hand, a symbol of power. He refuses, and the
Hand turns to coaxing and to force. Under the har-
assment he dies – and the Hand gives him a grand
funeral.
(As a polemicist, Trnka was sincere but pedantic.
He aimed at stressing and stressing his point again,
so that The Passion, The Cybernetic Grandmother and
The Hand, by today’s standards, can seem slow and
didactic).
In 1966, the artist was forced to interrupt his
activity because of poor health. Because of a heart
ailment, he could not work, and the lack of work
worsened his condition. ‘My hand is intact, but my
mind is empty’, he said, one year before he died
in Prague, on 30 December  1969, at the age of
fifty-seven.
Casiraghi wrote:
Trnka shows two tendencies. The most authen-
tic, one might say realistic, appears in a classic
manner every time he addresses the popular tra-
ditions of his land. The most fantastic, sophisti-
cated, one could even say ‘decadent’ tendency
appears when the artist deals with culturally
refined aristocratic legends of other countries.24
Trnka’s role as a national poet actually derives
from his being a peasant–poet. ‘I belong to the
country’, he said, ‘I have never felt at home in cit-
ies’. Rooted in the peasant traditions of a people
who has always turned to the land for resources,
Trnka brought to cinema a deep love for nature
and a lyric faith in traditions and their eternal spirit,
which inspired his full-blooded sense of humour
and his faith in life.
24
Ugo Casiraghi, ‘Il cinema cecoslovacco’, Quaderni del circolo monzese del cinema, Monza, 1962.
A great narrator, Trnka is the ultimate repre-
sentative of the long line of Bohemian storytellers
and novelists. His work can be compared to a very
prolific writer who addresses historic or chivalric
novels, tales for children (the nice operetta-like
western parody Árie prérie – [Song of the Prairie,
1949]), innovative stories (the shorts O zlaté rybce
[The Golden Fish, 1951], with drawings, and Dva
mrazíci [Two Frosts, 1954], with a combination of
puppets and cartoons), and erotic subjects.
About the latter, it must be said that their original-
ity (as much as their chastity) is interesting. Román s
basou (Novel with a Contrabass, 1949) is based on a
short story by Anton Chekov. We see a bassist as he
swims naked in a pond, and there meets the no-less-
naked love of his life. They both lose the clothes
they left on the bank, so he hides her in his cello
case. His chamber orchestra colleagues look for
him, think he drowned, and rescue the cello case.
The ending is narratively insignificant (the woman
is shown in her nudity to the aristocrats who were
waiting for the music performance, while the bass-
ist wanders in the forest by night), but stylistically
delicate and urbane: rarely has such subtle modesty
by wooden actors, directed with such sympathetic
irony, been shown on a screen. In Archangel Gabriel
and Mistress Goose, Trnka aims his satire against his
worst enemy – falsehood, deceit, haughtiness – yet
maintains only respect for sincere, human lust.
The ‘refined’, ‘baroque’ side of Trnka’s work
is the representation of a well-assimilated culture,
but is also the most open to criticism. Whenever
the theme challenged his expressive skills, Trnka
became more cerebral, even falling into a precious,
but uninspired, style. Culture stifled the artist’s
spontaneity. This is the case of Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Some sequences of earlier works (Old Czech
Legends, for instance) also suffer from a complacent
formal perfection and a smug representation of
‘realistic’ movements and characters.
Trnka is at his best when developing a poetics
for animated puppets, creating rules for their act-
ing and structures. Before Trnka, animated pup-
pets clashed with the problem of physiognomy and
face-animation; entire files were filled with mouths,

eyes and eyebrows ready to be superimposed on the
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puppets’ faces. Trnka discovered that those faces
had the same role as theatrical masks, and therefore
were to be as fixed and sacred as masks. His puppets,
characterized by contained expressions and almost
stately movements, artistically surpassed those artists
who had tried to loosen their puppets’ joints or give
them the same contortions as animated drawings.
Trnka’s puppets depicted their expressions from fram-
ing, lighting and movement rather than their physical
appearance. Characters were enlivened by psycho-
logical elements, and their mimicry was generated by
their drama. With the immovable faces of his wooden
actors, Trnka marked the passage from histrion-
ics to good acting and from external representations
to internal dramatic experiences. As Břetislav Pojar
wrote, ‘I often noticed Trnka, while he was paint-
ing his actors’ heads. He always gave their eyes an
undefined look. By merely turning their heads, or by
a change in lighting, they gained smiling or unhappy
or dreamy expressions. This gave one the impression
that the puppet hid more than it showed, and that its
wooden heart harboured even more’.
In the third millennium, Jiří Trnka’s works look
‘normal’, no less than (say) Orson Welles’s Citizen
Kane looks like a ‘normal’ movie. Actually, those
great innovators of the language paved the road for
everybody after them. Everybody did imitate them,
thus transforming their inventions into clichés.
Who, in the late 1940s, would have imagined that
animated puppets could be epic, romantic, and sar-
castic; that they would be able to charm audiences
during an hour-and-a-half-long feature film; that
would even confront Shakespeare? It was Trnka’s
artistic achievement, as well as his worldwide fame,
that sanctioned the birth of puppet animation as a
serious, important filmic trend.
The Music of the Puppets
Composer Václav Trojan (1907–1983) had a great
influence on Trnka during his career. He was a
neoclassicist and a neofolklorist, loved films and
had a cheerful and impulsive personality. A perfect
25
Trnka drew with his left hand and wrote with his right one; when under pressure, he could draw an image with both hands.
Chapter 3: Czechoslovakia and Puppets  67
Figure 3.7  Václav Trojan and Jirí Trnka.
counterbalance to the melancholic, highly organ-
ized, workaholic25 director who, in his turn, had a
deeply refined sense of music and felt the charm of
peasant traditions.
This is what Jan Vičar writes about the peak of
their collaboration, Old Czech Legends:
‘The composer paid great attention to the choice
of musical instruments. When he was unable to find
suitable historical instruments for his purposes, he
decided to imitate some of them. Thus the “sobot”
came into existence. The sobot (named after the car-
penter who made it, Mr. Sobotka) had eight wooden
boards (planks), every [board] tuned to one tone.
This creates together one octave (as a xylophone, for
example, but very low range). It played a significant
part in O Horymírovi. Elsewhere he used the electric
piano, organ, harp and percussion, which he stylized
in an archaic manner. He also used solo voices and
a mixed chorus, through which he evoked prayer as
well as elegies and hymnist formations. The mag-
nificent and pathetic chorus Oj, dobrá naše sudba (Oh,
Our Destiny Is Good) at the end of the film is, with
its ravishing power, comparable to some monumen-
tal parts of Smetana’s opera Libuše.
‘A short analytical view into some parts of
musical structure could explain how naturally
and deeply Trojan’s musical ability was ingrained
in the oldest Czech folk music tradition, and,
at the same time, why the composer’s music in
Old Czech Legends had such a national effect, even
though Trojan intended to compose “ancient”
and “pagan” music. The melody of the venerable
 68  Chapter 3: Hungary
hill Říp, as well as the melody of mythical prin-
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cess Libuše, contains Trojan’s typical melodic
outline, based on the 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th tones
of the overtone series – particularly the 6th, 8th,
9th and 10th overtones (contour if the major
6–4 chord). Trojan derived both of these melo-
dies from a melody of the same character from
one of the oldest Czech folk songs Proř, kalino, v
struze stojíš? (Why Do You Stand in a Brook, Plum
Tree?)’.26
Probably even more important was the beauti-
ful score of Midsummer Night’s Dream, where notes,
more than ever, suggest a character’s psychology or
a scene tone.
Since 1965, after twenty years of soundtracks,
Trojan devoted his talent to ‘pure’ music, especially
to chamber compositions. Here, too, he was imagi-
native and brilliant, and he is now considered by
music specialists one of the best Czech composers
of the twentieth century.
Hungary
Macskássy Gyula27 (Budapest, 1912–Budapest, 1972), a
former filmmaker in the advertising industry, became the
initiator of post-war Hungarian animation.
A student of painter and Bauhaus follower Bortnyik
Sándor, in 1951 Macskássy directed A kiskakas gyémánt
félkrajcárja (The Cockerel’s Diamond Coin), the first short of
the new generation. Hungarian films had been modelled
on the state-sanctioned production typical of other East-
ern European countries, favouring children’s films and
folkloric tales. In 1959, Macskássy and Várnai György
(Budapest, 1921–Budapest, 1991) made a breakthrough
with Ceruza és radír (Pencil and India Rubber). Shown at
the Karlovy Vary and Cannes festivals in 1960, this film
gave outside exposure to the new, sober ideas born in the
studios of Budapest, which no longer wanted to address
only children. The same year, the two filmmakers made
another fine production, Párbaj (The Duel), awarded at
26
Jan Vičar, The Film Music of Václav Trojan, in his own book Imprints: Essays on Czech Music and Aesthetics, Praha: Togga, 2005, pp. 37–49.
27
Surname first, given name second, according to the Hungarian customary use.
28
Journalist, cartoonist, playwright and painter, Hadžić was born in Bileća (Bosnia, then Yugoslavia) on 23 April 1922, and died in Zagreb
(Croatia) on 3 January 2011.
both the Cannes and Oberhausen festivals, a clever and
entertaining reprimand of warmongering.
An innovative, high-calibre film was A pirospöttyös labda
(The Ball with White Dots, 1961), featuring a little girl
who daydreams about the fantastic adventures she might
have with her ball. With this film, which won a Gold Lion
at the Film Festival of Venice, Csermák Tibor (Kapos-
vár, 1927–Budapest, 1965) reached the apex of his brief
directing career begun in 1957.
Yugoslavia: The First Stage of
the Zagreb School
When, in 1945, Yugoslavia was free again, she was also
proud to have defeated on her own, on the battlefield,
the Nazi troops. In 1948, Marshal Tito let it be clearly
understood that he would go his own way, instead of obey-
ing Stalin’s orders. The clash forbade the Soviets to have
access to the Mediterranean and put a question mark to
the dogma of the unity of action and opinion of the com-
munist parties of the world under the leadership of the
Soviet Union. After some years of adjustment, Yugosla-
via became sort of a ‘Fourth Way’ after capitalism, com-
munism and social democracy: a mild dictatorship that
guaranteed full employment (at low salaries), a combina-
tion of state enterprise and private enterprise, a moderate
freedom of speech and so on. The country was ethnically
and linguistically disunited, but Tito’s personal charm and
prestige, and the fear of an invasion by the Soviet troops,
maintained stability. After all, it didn’t seem an impossible
project: eighty years before, the much more diverse, neigh-
bouring Italy had become united and still was.
Croatia
The new Yugoslavia did not have any background in ani-
mation. Production was not suggested or managed by
the state, but was rather the work of a few Zagreb-based
enthusiasts. Fadil Hadžić was one of them.28 As editor of
the satirical magazine Kerempuh, Hadžić decided to invest
its profits to celebrate the detachment of Yugoslavia from
the East European countries with a satirical short. Veliki
miting (The Big Meeting, 1951) was nominally directed
 Chapter 3: Yugoslavia: The First Stage of the Zagreb School  69

by Norbert Neugebauer (1926–2009), although the real The first short to be released by Zagreb Film was Nestašn
soul of the project was his brother Walter (1921–1992), robot (The Playful Robot, 1956) directed by Dušan Vukotić,
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the designer and animator. Among the assistant animators
was Borivoj Dovniković, who was to make a name for him-
self in later years.29
Having gained some governmental support, Hadžić
founded Duga Film.30 With more than one hundred
artists, the artistic team included some of the best of
Croatian-Yugoslav animation, such as the Neugebauer
brothers, Vladimir Delac (1927–1969), Borivoj Dovniko-
vić, and the newcomers Aleksandar Marks, Zlatko Bourek,
Boris Kolar, Zlatko Grgić, Vlado Kristl and Dušan
Vukotić. Inexperienced in technique, the animators pro-
ceeded by trial and error, imitating a bit of Disney here
and a degree of Czechoslovakian films there. Five shorts
were produced,31 but Duga only lasted from spring 1951 to
spring 1952, until the federal government diverted fund-
ing towards schools and hospitals rather than animation.
Architect Nikola Kostelac, who had fallen in love with
animation, managed to preserve some minimal activities
(in his own apartment!) with the help of Zora Film, a pro-
ducer of educational shorts. By that time, Yugoslavia had
become a modified version of a free-market economy, and
required some advertising campaigns. Both the Kostelac
group and another one led by the Neugebauer brothers
(within the advertising company Interpublic) jumped into
this field, and created quite a few successful commercials.
It was then that the Yugoslavs started to abandon their
original imitation of Disney and developed the style of
limited animation. This trend was similar to the one pur-
sued by the American UPA a few years earlier, though the
Zagreb designers and animators could only view some
photographs of the UPA films in the press. Stylistic roots
are more likely to be found in the tradition of excellent
Yugoslav comic strip and in Middle European illustration
of the 1920s, 1930s and even 1940s.
The distributor for the group was Zagreb Film which,
between 1956 and 1957, incorporated both Duga and Zora.
Since then, under the white horse logo of Zagreb Film,
Vukotić, Marks, Kolar, Bourek and other artists resumed
their activity in the field they favoured, fiction animated films.
on a subject by Andre Lušičić, with drawing by Aleksandar
Marks and Boris Kolar, scene design by Zlatko Bourek and
animation by Vjekoslav Kostanjšek and Vladimir Jutriša.
Shown at the Pula film festival, the film won an award – the
first to be presented to the Zagreb School.
In 1957, Vatroslav Mimica (Omiš, 1923) joined the ani-
mation section. Writer, critic and journalist, in 1952 and
1955 Mimica had directed two live-action feature films
from which he had gained neither money nor popularity.
Mimica, who did not know how to draw, was co-opted as
a scriptwriter. Soon he teamed up with excellent designer
Aleksandar Marks and switched to directing; from that
time on, his dedication and personality influenced every-
body. The year 1958 was important for production: Mim-
ica’s Samac (Alone, 1958) was awarded a prestigious prize
at the Venice festival, and the entire animation section of
Zagreb Film was praised by critics and audiences alike at
the Cannes Film Festival.
The news of this success reached Vlado Kristl (Zagreb,
24 January  1923–Munich, Germany, 7 July  2004), one
of the first wave of animators, who had migrated with-
out much luck to South America and was hoping now to
return to Zagreb. Vlado Kristl had a destructive, malevo-
lent personality and suffered from persecution mania. But
he was, if not a genius, an extremely gifted artist. In 1951,
he had been among the founders of the Exat ’51 group,
which introduced again the Bauhaus and the Construc-
tivism issues and slapped Socialist Realism. His abstract/
geometrical paintings were certainly strong and original.
Back to Yugoslavia and to animation, he injected his
talent in Kradja dragulja (The Theft of the Jewel, 1959),
but the film should better be credited to director Mladen
Feman (1927). In Šagrenska koža (La peau de chagrin, 1960,
based on Balzac’s horror story), which he co-directed with
Ivo Vrbanic´ (1916–81), Kristl anticipated a revival of
Art Déco and created a tense atmosphere. Finally, Kristl
directed his masterpiece Don Kihot (Don Quixote, 1961),
a difficult but very poetic film for which he used state-of-
the-art graphics.

29
‘The film was completed in one year. Within those 12 months we managed to learn animation and make the film. We had just one
manual on animation then: How to Make Cartoons by Preston Blair. It was sent to us from the States by Louis Adamich, American writer of
Yugoslav origin’. (Borivoj Dovniković Bordo, Zagreb and UPA, manuscript provided by the author to Giannalberto Bendazzi, May 2002)
30
Duga means ‘rainbow’ in Croatian.
31
The first was Norbert Neugebauer’s Veseli doživljaj (The Happy Event), in the style of the Silly Symphonies. Dušan Vukotić then made
his debut as director, chief artist and animator of Kako se rodio Kićo (How Kićo Was Born). Vukotić did not try to imitate Disney; instead,
he attempted to give animated film a sense of immediacy and involvement in its content.
 70  Chapter 3: Yugoslavia: The First Stage of the Zagreb School

In 1962, Kristl moved to Viba Film in Ljubljana and

there he made General i resni řlovek (The General-in-Chief,
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1962), a satirical, live-action short aimed at Tito, which

put him in trouble. Annoyed, he moved to Germany,
where he filmed several live-action shorts and two fea-
ture films, Der Damm (The Dam, 1965) and Der Brief (The
Letter, 1965), in which he made acting appearances.
Kristl returned briefly to animation in 1967, with Die
Utopen (Utopia) and Das Land des Überflusses (The Land of
Plenty) and, in 1982, with Verräter des jungen Deutschen Films
schlafen nicht! (The Traitors of the Young German Films
Don’t Sleep), but never could match the artistic quality
of Don Quixote.32
The Zagreb School is usually thought of as being
divided into two periods. The first, from 1957 to 1964,
is dominated by such authorities as Vukotic´, Mimica and
Kristl. During this era, the Zagreb School legitimized
its style of limited animation, with its marked tendency
towards avant-garde graphic and pictorial techniques
(such as collages and assemblages) and its subjects. Yugo-
slav artists no longer dealt with brief stories of caricatural
characters, but rather with anguish, incommunicability
and Evil. Films provoking liberating laughter still existed,
but Zagreb’s films gradually grew into long, painful moan-
ing about the horrors of existence. This became the
school’s trademark – a common inspiration generated by
shared experiences, despite different artistic personalities,
and thoughts.
At Zagreb, exchanging roles and forming new teams
for new projects was common practice. Directors would
become artists or designers for their colleagues, and
vice versa. Nikola Kostelac (Zagreb, 1920–99) was the
first of the distinguished directors, and his name can’t
be mentioned without his innovative designer Vjekoslav
Kostanjšek. His Premijera (Opening Night, 1957), and Na
livadi (In the Meadow, 1957) were partially indebted to the
best of the American and Canadian productions, but still
exhibited cleverly incorporated novelties of style.
After his debut film, Alone (1958), Mimica made Inspek-
tor se vratio kući (The Inspector Comes Home, 1959), Mala
kronika (Everyday Chronicle, 1962) and Tifusari (Typhus,
1963, based on a poem by Jure Kastelan). In 1963, he left
animation to devote himself to live-action cinema, his first
love, and became one of the most important Yugoslav
Figure 3.8  Dušan Vukotić, Surogat, 1961.
filmmakers of the new generation, together with Alek-
sandar Petrovic´ and Dušan Makavejev.
Dušan Vukotic´33 (Bilec´a, 7 February  1927–Zagreb, 8
July  1998) filmed Koncert za mašinsku pušku (Concerto for
Sub-Machine Gun, 1959) and Krava na mjesecu (Cow on the
Moon) in 1959. Surogat (Substitute, 1961), his best-known
work and one of the finest in the history of animation,
won him an Oscar. Critic Ranko Munitic´ wrote:
Vukotic´ chose simple caricatural drawings moving like
arabesques against a white neutral background. He
also used colour as the element which best defined his
highly decorative concept of surface. As for Mimica, he
paid attention to the pictorial aspects of animation. He
favoured rich and complex graphic structures over neu-
tral planes or surfaces and bare drawings. In his scene
design, space consists of parallel strata of colour which
articulate in depth, subordinating figures to a broken,
maze-like fabric.
This way of using material, already in 1959,
transformed collage into an expressive solution. As a
symbolic synthesis of the contemporary concept of
absurdity, Mimica/Marks’s figures are not as natural
or mobile as Vukotic´’s caricatures, but their external
rigidity is a poetic metaphor for the desperation of
man caught in the web of modern civilization. Mim-
ica uses the expressive value of colour in its entirety.
His world is characterized by a keen awareness of the
tragic conflict of our times, which forces man to adapt
to the fast technological rhythm at the cost of personal
integrity.34

32
For a deep study of this film, see More About It 1.
33
Midhat Ajanović kindly provided some thoughts about Dušan Vukotić. See More About It 2.
34
‘Ranko Munitić on Yugoslavia’, in Orio Caldiron and Turi Fedele (eds.), Il film d’animazione d’Europa, Festival catalogue, Abano Terme,
Italy, 1971.

Bulgaria
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In the 1920s and 1930s, the whole of Bulgarian anima-
tion consisted only of sporadic works by Vassil Bakard-
jiev (Ruse, 1 January 1906–Sofia, 5 April 1980), an artist
involved with advertising and education (one of his best
films, made in 1931, taught about the fight against insects).
At the end of World War II, in the wake of renewal and
reconstruction, several painters joined forces and made
two short experimental films. Under the leadership of
Alexander Denkov, a renowned illustrator (Prague, Czech
Republic, 10 September  1925–Sofia, 31 March  1972),
they produced A Sick Person (a political caricature, 1946)
and The Little Thief (1946).
Dimitar Todorov-Zarava (Sumen, 21 September 1901)
inventor of a sort of phenakistoscope, convinced the
authorities to open an animation section within the new
state-run cinematographic industry. The studio was
started in May  1948 but, because of scarce means and
lack of experience, the first films proved quite unsatisfac-
tory. Todorov-Zarava directed He Suffers in His Mind (1949),
Wolf and Lamb (1950) and The Republic of the Forest. Aron
Aronov (17 April 1921–Pleven, 17 April 1987) was a pup-
pet animator, starting in the 1950s (The Man from the Other
World, 1956; The Robot Uprising, 1960). Dimo Lingurski also
worked with animated puppets, making his debut with The
Terrible Bomb (1951) and directing Master Manol, the first
animated colour film (1951). He was joined by Stefan
Topaldjikov (Constantinople [now Istanbul], Turkey, 26
March 1909–Sofia, 21 April 1994) director of Event in the
Nursery School (1953), The Little Painter (1954) and several
other films of the 1950s and 1960s. As an animator of
puppets, Topaldjikov followed the lead of Karel Zeman
rather than Trnka, thus taking a direction opposite to
that of Lingurski. He devoted the rest of his career to
live-action films.
Romania
The communist regime first promoted state-funded
live-action cinema. True professional animation began
later in the 1950s.
Ion Popescu-Gopo (Bucharest, 30 April 1923–Bucharest,
3 December 1989), debuted in 1951 with Albina si porum-
belul (The Bee and the Pigeon), produced by Bucharest
Studio. The country’s productions gradually increased in
number, from the one film in 1951 to ten in 1956. Until
then Popescu-Gopo and his colleagues had followed a
traditional style, without much fantasy. In 1956, with a
Chapter 3: More About It 1  71
sudden change, Popescu-Gopo got rid of his ‘classical’
heritage and directed an innovative short, Scurta istorie
(Short History, 1956). The protagonist is a primitive naked
little man, with an oblong head, who goes through all the
evolutionary stages of history until he reaches Space and
discovers a new life. A philosophical film, cleverly fanciful
and characterized by compact editing and by drier-than-
usual drawings, it was well received both in Romania
and abroad. 7 arte (Seven Arts, 1958), Homo Sapiens (1960)
and Allo, allo (Hallo, Hallo) in a series of similar comic,
gnomic films. Meanwhile, Popescu-Gopo concentrated
on language problems, developing a theory of expressive
synthesis which favoured minimal-length films. He enti-
tled his offering ‘pill-film’ and presented it in a series of
lightning-like animated sketches (often no longer than fif-
teen seconds) which opened the evenings at the Mamaia
Film Festival of 1966.
In 1967, Popescu-Gopo released a second anthology of
Pills, followed by Kisses (1969) and Hourglass (1972), and by
a quite pale production which included some live-action
feature films as well as experiments with various materi-
als (pins, hair). Popescu-Gopo’s best period was the span
between 1956 and 1962, when he filmed the four-part
work on the naked little man. A  clever essayist, he used
the history of human kind, the birth of the arts and the
history of communications as themes on which to develop
his variations.
Popescu-Gopo’s somewhat professorial, pedantic tone
emerged whenever he neglected plot to rely exclusively on
expedients. Then his humour came out as gratuitous or
expected, no longer supporting the subversive and some-
what absurd taste he displayed in his early works. Kisses
marked a return to the style Popescu-Gopo had displayed
in 1956 (although his leading character did not appear in
this film). The bare apologue is vaguely moralistic, how-
ever it does convey Popescu-Gopo’s point on the subjects
of cheating and exploitation.
Popescu-Gopo’s proposal of making animation the
place for cinematographic epigram was certainly prolific.
In 1967, the Montreal Expo held a competition with a
fixed theme for one-minute maximum films. This con-
firmed that Popescu-Gopo’s revolution had come at the
right time, summarizing a need – the detachment from
standardization, even in footage – which was greatly felt in
the fast expanding world of animation.
More About It 1
At first, Don Quixote irritated everybody with its unintelligibility and
was considered unworthy of any attention. But it was sufficiently
 72  Chapter 3: More About It 1
imposing and powerful that younger critics re-evaluated it. Mid-
hat Ajanović’s ‘Pokušaj ěitanja i razumijevanja animiranog filma
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Don Kihot Vladimira Kristla’ (An Attempt at Reading and
Understanding the Animated Film Don Quixote by Vladimir Kris-
tl), Hrvatski Filmski Ljetopis, No. 40, 2004, is especially remarkable.
Here are the last two paragraphs of it:
Perception/The true work of art always lives in the future,
and Don Quixote is, above all, exactly that; the instinctive glance
into the future. Kristl is calling upon the ‘ideal’ spectator, the
imaginary person who knows very well conventions, trends, art
history, theory of film and animation, the basics of perception
of the space; the spectator who, most of his time, is exposed to
the influence of the media.
In the age when media were coming to life, he finds that
kind of spectator in the future. The ideal perception of the
film Don Quixote is the one in which the spectator is interactively
involved with it, and that became possible with the arrival of
the film in our homes, in forms of video or DVDs, when we
could watch it closely as it if were a building or a painting.
The first important element concerning the perception and
total experience of Don Quixote is related to the rule that says: in
order to recognize something we ought to have previous experi-
ence or knowledge about it.
That rule applies to all films, whether they are photograph-
ic, artificial (animated) or digitalized. We elaborate information
received from the film according to our experiences, beliefs and
faculties.
Today we can talk about new perception where our experi-
ences gained with senses are only one component of our percep-
tion formed by accumulated information and pictures, films, TV,
music clips, digitalized pictures, Hollywood and the Internet. We
find ourselves in the fictitious world most of the time because of
the presence of media in our lives. Media prolong but also direct
our view, media potentiate our hearing but also select what we
want to hear; thanks to the media our perception is in the condi-
tion of constant transformation. In everyday, natural perception
we see only details; consciously or unconsciously we choose the
ones to focus on. In the media someone else made a selection for
us – hence our experience of the world is constantly exposed to
the influence of someone else’s choice of information and repre-
sentations. Modern people turn from those who choose informa-
tion by themselves into those who only receive it. The boundary
that divides physical and semantic, perception and recognition,
has almost faded away.
Another important component of the film perception is the
treatment of time. In over one hundred years of the moving pic-
tures history the concept of time has been changed; twenty sec-
onds in a real life and on the screen are experienced differently.
The mute burlesques at one time were called ‘accelerated films’
because of the projection of twenty-four pictures in a second
instead of 16 pictures shot in a second. In animation the time
is even more compressed; the transfer of the molecule from one
to another state, the complete existence of a single individual
in uninterrupted course or the story about the duration of the
human species has already been shown in the compressed time
of animation and its uninterrupted duration. The duration of the
film Don Quixote is ten minutes, but its ‘real’ time, the one that
describes events in the film, spreads one entire day, from dawn to
dusk. The time of metaphorical dimension of the film sums up
two eras, the one in which the idea of Don Quixote is originated
and the one being developed in the course of making of the film.
Set design is the next important element of perception of
this film. The events of Don Quixote are settled in two sets, in a
city and in something that could be defined as natural environ-
ment, because of the lack of urban indicators. The first space
is overloaded with cars, traffic signs, whistles, firemen, cannons
and airplanes, while the second one is practically void, with natu-
ral elements such as the stone that falls on Don Quixote where
he, like Sisyphus, is pushing it uphill. Kristl constantly relativizes
space; he creates the feeling of continuous instability by rotat-
ing the scene upside down: all of a sudden the upper line of the
screen becomes the standing line where the characters move.
Kristl obtains such effects by spinning the whole picture or by dis-
playing the horizon as a vertical line in the middle of the screen.
The real photographic sights represent a third space in the film,
for example in one subjective shot of Don Quixote, where he sees
photographically offered (un)reality and in an objective shot in
which we see a windmill and a sunflower. A fundamental charac-
teristic of the photography is its superficiality – in the context of
the filmic reality it figures as an imprint of the surface of things
and beings. The photography functions as a synonym for our
conscious experiences, while animation and drawing represent
the naked body, essence and construction of the picture itself, its
inner sight.
The fourth element is in the characters that don’t possess any
human anatomic features but are represented in the form of geo-
metrical sketch of things. Animation is a phenomenon born in
the time of industrial revolution and is a result of fetishism of
things, its ‘life’ and most probably the first animated film is about
making things alive. Don Quixote is represented as a water pipe
with a beard and a hat, and his companion Sancho Panza as an
egg with a couple of hairs on top and with the hat on. He (or ‘it’)
is fitted into the general mechanistic and geometrically shaped
film world, and that is evident, for example, in the scene where
he uses a gramophone loudspeaker instead of an eye or an ear or
when he injects into the ‘head’ the content of the bottle with the
inscription ‘acqua destilata’.
The fifth important element is the sound. In his Der Geist des
Film, published in 1930, Béla Balázs prophetically wrote that the
film picture will teach us to see differently and the film sound will
teach us to hear differently. But film in general, and especially
animation, will not be able to use the sound potential for a long
time. For decades, after the discovery of sound picture, the sound
in animated films will appear mainly as or in the form of per-
fectly synchronized sound illustration (so-called Disney Mickey
Mousing concept) or it will be founded on already concluded and

independent music forms, where animated film picture functions
as a mere music visualization. Don Quixote is a European version of
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the process initiated in WB Studio and followed by UPA later on,
where some important animators like Avery, Cannon and Hubley
studied the problem of activating the interrelation between pic-
ture and tone. These animators will discover that in animation
sound can be divided in congruent and incongruent sounds. Due
to the possibility of incongruent sound of the film picture, the
animation masterpieces – such as Gerald McBoing Boing (1951) by
Cannon and Rooty Toot Toot (1951) by Hubley, which have marked
the new era in the history of media – could be realized.
The sound background of Don Quixote is a collage of mecha-
nized sounds, mainly congruous while illustrating swarms of per-
sonalized geometric signs that hum in the ‘city’ where paranoia
and a constant war situation, chaos and general frenzy reign.
The only musical motif in the film is a kind of a military march,
in addition with constant explosions, whistles and screeching of
automobiles. On the other hand, Don Quixote is mainly ‘sounded’
by incongruent sounds. For example, the moment of his weakness
and indecision before the crucial battle is represented in the first
moment by the tube that ‘breaks’ to be followed in the second
moment by Don Quixote’s encouragement where he reads the
book with photographs of Dulcinea depicted at the same time
as a woman with a moustache and as an airplane pilot. Glanc-
ing through a book is followed by some kind of ‘metal’ sound
that doesn’t at all resemble the sound of the paper. By using
incongruent sound, Kristl underlines the ‘factory error’ of Don
Quixote – his individuality and diversity is thus opposed with the
city’s paranoid world and its squared inhabitants that act as his
enemy.
The next, sixth element is editing. At a first glance, the edit-
ing of Don Quixote looks like a standard process of the chase
cartoons with linear directions of movement and connecting of
frames according to the simplest rules of editing continuity. But
it’s a very complex editing that we are talking about here. In
Don Quixote we are practically watching two films whose actions
are taking place in two separated pictures that differ in texture.
Since two pictures very rarely coincide, it is clear that Kristl
is leaning on the characteristic of our conscience to fill in the
time and space gap between the frames. By zooming the pic-
ture, by activating a frame of a film picture, by hardly noticed
subliminal hints and metadiegetic inserts and by reduction of
space and time density, Kristl composes the drama dynamics in
abstract form. Its aim is to invoke the images that derive from
our experience and memory as well as to challenge our instincts
and subconscious.
Directly connected with editing is the animation method
that could be described as arrangement of signs, mosaic in the
process of transformation, putting together pieces of time, the
segments of that process. Kristl’s idiosyncratic drawing is fully
realized only in animation: ‘a filmic dream about contemporary
painting’ (as P. Adams Sitney called it) is thus realized by intui-
tive topography of his drawing, by fluctuating signs, by rhythmic
virtuosity and by parallel spectrum in the background of space
Chapter 3: More About It 1  73
prospective. Animation becomes part of total editing of the film:
it represents the finest texture of complete editing complex. Each
phase appears as a totality (and not as a part of the movement)
and when mutually connected by animation technique they figure
like consonants of the language that in their interrelation create
vowels. Or, as it is formulated in a famous and often quoted defini-
tion of animation given by Norman McLaren (written on a wall
during the Montreal Expo of 1967): ‘Animation is not the art of
drawings that move; but the art of movements that are drawn.
What is between each picture is much more important than what
is in the picture’.
An interpretation/The theme of the film is not a real text
but its medium reduction, which is suggested in the first frame of
the film where we see both the title Don Quixote and the drawing
of the windmill. In the epoch where books are not being read
and their plots are circulating in the media, Don Quixote fights
windmills and that is the only known fact about that work. It is
not a film based on the book, unlike his former project Šagrenska
koža, where the action strictly follows the story written by Balzac.
Don Quixote is about symbolic meaning of the work in question
and consequently it is impossible to communicate with it without
some previous knowledge.
Along with new experiences and understandings come togeth-
er new points of view and interpretations of an art work, as we
have already seen. Some modern philosophers, such as Gérard
Genette, consider that not only the text but also the so-called
paratext (the title of the work, author’s interviews, critic interpre-
tations and general reception of the work) influences conventions
that make possible a communication with the work of art and
define our way of reading it and experiencing it. We have para-
text examples in the literature – in Joyce’s Ulysses, where the title
is of extreme importance, and in the history of film in disputes
held in the circles of avant-garde films. Forty-five years after its
release, the following paratext interpretations undoubtedly gain
importance in the film Don Kihot: historical and cultural circum-
stances, author’s known ‘eccentricity’ as well as myths about his
work, comparisons of time in which the film was born and the
time in which we read it and analyze it.
We could easily imagine that Kristl could feel just like Don
Quixote, since he belonged to a middle class in an environment
that was affected by the chaotic wave of emigration from villages
to town, followed by new ideology whose visible manifestations
were massive meetings and collectivization that often eroded the
difference between people.
We suppose that his anticommunist attitude derives from that.
Nevertheless, it would be banal indeed to try to interpret this film
merely as a reaction against a certain political system. This film is
not about a certain ideology (or maybe it is, but only marginally),
but it treats a man’s life contradictions as a social being on one
side, and the individual being on the other. It’s about the artist’s
response on important philosophical query given in the form of
animation.
Vibeke Tanberg’s exhibition The Faces, held in 1998, treats
a similar subject. Twelve large-format photographs represent
 74  Chapter 3: More About It 2
twelve persons in their middle thirties, with identical short hair,
with identical grey shirt on and in identical pose against the
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identical background. Upper elements are constant, but they
slightly differ in face shapes, noses, eye colours, eyebrow thick-
ness, while their poses vary from en face to profile. Each photo
caption says that we are looking at a computer image and that
the photos are manipulated, and that enhances our feeling of
uncertainty. There is no possibility to determine whether the
photograph represents one person or several different persons,
possibly close cousins; we cannot even determine the sex of
each of them. According to the artist’s words, the idea for the
exhibition was born during her move to a big city (Berlin),
where she experienced herself how unstable postmodernist
subject is being suffocated by processes that annihilate all its
individuality.
The film Idioterne (Idiots, 1998), directed by Danish filmmaker
Lars von Trier, is based upon the idea of a liberation of the inner
‘idiot’, imprisoned in our body and conscience, chained by society
norms and media terror.
The two cited examples of important contemporary artists,
among numerous others, illustrate the same problems that inter-
ested Kristl almost half a century ago.
Don Quixote is a work that describes (pictures) a mechanized
and dehumanized world characterized by loss of subjectivity,
violent erasing of cultural differences between people; it is, we
could put it this way, a picture of modern globalization. Kristl
announced a self-cantered, cynical world in which individual-
ism and humanism will be appraised as much as a discarded,
rotten water pipe.
But far from everything has been said about this film.
Art is alive if it is good, and everything that lives is growing
old. If the average number of years of a human’s life is, let’s say,
seventy, then the work of art could persist less than double, but
also ten times more, let’s say about seven hundred years. With the
passing of time it inevitably loses the characteristic of art work
and eventually gains historical value. Films and other works of
art last as long as we understand them completely, as long as they
contain secrets that induce us to return to them again and again.
There is no doubt that Don Quixote will last for a long time and
that it will outlive many a recent work of art.
More About It 2
Dušan Vukotić was a young Montenegrin who came to Zagreb
in Croatia to study architecture. This was not unusual, since at
the time, the late 1950s, Montenegro and Croatia were both
part of one state – Yugoslavia. As soon as he arrived in Zagreb,
Vukotić began publishing caricatures and humorous cartoons.
He also participated in the founding of the local animation.
His first work at the soon-to-become-famous Zagreb Film was
Nestašni Robot (The Playful Robot, 1956). Already during pro-
duction of The Playful Robot, Vukotić began work on Cowboy
Jimmy (id., 1957), which was characterized by reduced anima-
tion, rhythmically structured movement and geometrically
formed figures. The characters in the film were constructed as
two-dimensional symbols, which together with the background
reflected the current trends in contemporary art. Dialogue
was eliminated, communication between the characters being
delivered solely through pantomime, sound effects and music.
Besides pictorial metamorphosis, Vukotić often uses a kind of
defamiliarization, where he effectively combines disparate vis-
ual elements, which strikes us as extremely contradictory even
in a cartoon world. His caricature is clear and pronounced;
he is fully aware of the fact that the art of caricature is not
about nuance and ambiguity – in a cartoon snow is always
white, a lump of coal is always black and so on. He also knows
that you cannot caricature the unknown, so he employs easily
identifiable motifs and well-known representational conven-
tions, and shows already in this film his affection for parody. In
terms of content, the film was a direct answer to Jiří Trnka’s
puppet western parody Arie prérie (Song of the Prairie, 1949),
and the first in a series of films in which Vukotić parodied
the trivialities of popular culture, particularly American film
genres, and satirized both the devastating grip of commercial-
ism on American culture and global Americanization. In 1958
Vukotić made three films, Osvetnik (The Avenger), an animated
adaptation of Chekhov’s short story of the same title, and
two further parodies aimed at capitalism with their starting
point in Hollywood genres: Koncert za mašinsku pušku (Concer-
to for Sub-Machine Gun) – dealing with the gangster movie
and with which Vukotić achieved his definitive international
breakthrough – and Veliki strah (The Great Fear), a parody of
horror movies which British critic Ronald Holloway judged
‘the weakest of Vukotic’s satires’ (Ronald Holloway, Z Is for
Zagreb: A  Guide to the Films of One of the World’s Major Cartoon
Studios, New York: The Tantivy Press, 1972, p. 56).
In his following two films, Vukotić would fully realize his
potential as a cartoonist and combine his stylized imagery with
a rhythmically reduced animation under the influence of mod-
ern artists such as Klee, Kandinsky and Chagall. With those two
films, Piccolo (id., 1959) and Surogat (Substitute, but often translated
as an adjective, Ersatz, 1961), he attracted a great deal of atten-
tion at several important festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, London,
Oberhausen, Annecy, Mamaia, etc., and even won Europe’s first
Academy Award for animation.
Unlike his parodies, in which his all-embracing gaze was main-
ly turned towards the Western Hemisphere, Piccolo was a univer-
sal satire, clearly influenced by Norman McLaren’s well-known
film Neighbours (1952), which was about the arms race and in that
way criticized both sides in the Cold War. As the film opens, we
see two neighbours who live in the same house and get along
quite well. This is illustrated among other things by a successful
defamiliarization scene in which we see one of the neighbours
use a pair of scissors to cut off the rain above the other. They
call round and help each other, until one of them buys a little
piccolo and starts to play. The other becomes jealous and gets a
bigger instrument and starts playing louder than the first, who
then acquires an even bigger and more powerful instrument and

so on. So begins a brutal war in which each neighbour’s whole
family becomes involved, and in the end the house collapses.
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The piccolos and the other bigger instruments act as symbols
for the arms race, and in hindsight it is almost inevitable that the
piccolo be interpreted as a symbol for nationalism. In this way
Piccolo can be seen as emblematic of the war which split Yugosla-
via in the 1990s, the two neighbours representing the Serbs and
the Croats, the two largest Yugoslavian peoples.
Substitute (or Ersatz) is a satire of life in the modern consumer
society and the general emptiness brought about by humanity’s
love of money. Everything we see around us is illusory and arti-
ficial, the only purpose of existence has become to consume and
be consumed. Man is depicted in the film as a consumable being
whose fundamental characteristic is replaceability. All characters
and objects are inflated balloons which burst in the end. Even the
film’s main character turns out to be a balloon puppet, when he
eventually treads on a nail and bursts. An effective experimental
device which dominates Ersatz is a reduced movement in the form
of a distinctive animated jump-cut where the figures are trans-
planted from one place in the indeterminate space to another
Chapter 3: More About It 2  75
without moving. They simply appear in a new position without
travelling from point A to point B and consequently completely
without in-between frames.
After making Igra (The Game, 1962), a combination of ani-
mated children’s drawings and live action and his last to attract
international attention, Vukotić decided to devote himself to
live-action feature films. He returned briefly to animation with,
among others, the films Opera Cordis (id., title in Latin, 1968), Ars
Gratia Artis (id., title in Latin, 1970), and the special effects he
created for the film adaptation of Bulgakov’s novel The Master
and Margaret (Il Maestro e Margherita, Aleksandar Petrović, Italy and
Yugoslavia, 1972).
For Vukotić animation became, besides an art form with
manifold possibilities for self-expression, a political tool. His
view of the outside world chimed absolutely with his society’s
ideological foundations, but he was considerably more inclined
to scrutinize its western hemisphere. He pointed out modern
mankind’s insignificance before death, the vulgarization of
emotion and the idealizing myths created by the demands of
capitalism.