An excerpt from the booklet essay by Graham Williamson
Eastern European animation has always been one of the region's most successful cinematic exports for precisely this reason. Even someone who did not grow up enjoying Zeman's work - as generations of Czech and Slovak children did - will find his work blissfully nostalgic, if only because it has been so inescapably influential on all the stop-motion and puppet-animated cinema that came after it.
This accessibility allowed his work to gain fans all over the world. Notable admirers of Zeman's work include Terry Gilliam, Kobo Abe, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson, who must surely have been influenced by this film's montage of Baron Munchausen's former lovers when he wrote a similar sequence for Gwyneth Paltrow's character in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Yet it has also, perhaps, resulted in Zeman not receiving the auteurist attention he deserves. Unlike most Czech and Slovak films, viewers are generally introduced to Zeman's pictures as pieces of entertainment rather than works of serious art. In fact, they're both; delectable, lighter-than-air novelties whose technical genius has rarely been matched.
To understand Zeman's achievements, we must look at the history of three-dimensional animation before CGI. The road to stop-motion begins with Georges Méliès, the first person to realise objects could be made to move, appear and disappear through editing and substitutions. His status as the first occupant of the territory later claimed by Eastern European animators was made literal when Ladislas Starevich (Władysław Starewicz), the Polish-Lithuanian director of The Cameraman's Revenge (Miest Kinomatograficheskovo Operatora, 1912) moved into Méliès's old studio.
Today Méliès is often remembered as the father of special effects, and this dual legacy hints at an early advantage stop-motion had over hand-drawn animation. Until the rise of CGI animation, no other form of animation could share the frame with live action without calling attention to its status as animation. The sequences where Gene Kelly and Bob Hoskins interact with cel-animated characters in Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988) respectively are certainly designed to astonish, but their wow factor rests on the audience recognising that they are cartoons.
By contrast, a stop-motion animator like the Hungarian George Pal could handle a special effects blockbuster like War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin, 1953) using techniques not far removed from his earlier 'Puppetoons' like Tubby the Tuba (1947). Ray Harryhausen may be an animator, but few refer to Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) as a part-animated film. Harryhausen's contributions sit naturally alongside the live action, never appearing to be part of a different universe. The line between animation and effects is interestingly porous in stop-motion, and Zeman's features hop all over it with infectious mischief.
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Graham Williamson's complete essay, from which this excerpt is taken, appears in the booklet which accompanies the release.
Essay
A short excerpt from the booklet
Blu-Ray & DVD Reviews
SFX Magazine
by Kimberley Ballard
DVD Beaver by Gary Tooze and Gregory Meshman
Front Row Reviews
by Simon Kennedy
Close-Up Film by Colin Dibben
Blueprint: Review
by David Brook
Psychotronic Cinema
by Ian Schultz
Backset Mafia by Rob Aldam
World Cinema Paradise
by Dusty Summers
The Arts Desk
by Graham Rickson
Mondo Digital
by Nathaniel Thompson
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Jeff Heinrich
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Video Watchdog by Tim Lucas
Starburst by Ian White
Sight & Sound
by Michael Atkinson
CineVue by Ben Nicholson
Digital Fix by Clydefro Jones
Home Cinema Choice
Cine Outsider by Slarek
Film Reviews
Senses of Cinema
Film Walrus
Time Out
Reviews of documentary
Film Adventurer Karel Zeman
Hollywood Reporter
VFX Magazine
Connections
(i) Tim Burton interviewed aout Zeman on Radio Prague
(ii) Fly Me to the Moon - on The Fabulous Baron Munchausen by Cerise Howard
(iii) The Fabulous World of Karel Zeman
(iv)On writer Jiří Brdecka by animator Gene Deitch
(vi) The Magic World of Karel Zeman (1962) - a short documentary by Zdeněk Rozkopal.
(vii) The Karel Zeman Museum
Czechoslovakia, 1961
Length / Feature
(Blu-ray/24fps): 85 minutes
(DVD/25fps): 81 minutes
Blu-ray Special features: 163 mins
DVD Special features: 59 mins
Sound:
Blu-Ray: 2.0 Dual Mono LPCM (48k/24-bit)
DVD: 2.0 Dolby Dual Mono
Colour
Original aspect ratio:
1.37:1
Language: Czech
Blu-ray: BD50 / 1080 / 24fps / Region ABC
DVD:
PAL / DVD9 / Region 0
Blu-Ray: £19.99
DVD: £12.99
Release Date: 24 July 2017
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