This is the debut film from Czech director Karel
Zemal. I will admit that his name was vaguely familiar but I had no idea
why. Turns out he was a pioneering animator and has been praised by Terry
Gilliam, Wes Anderson, Ray Harryhausen and Tim Burton as influential on their
own work. He uses a combination of puppets, stop-motion and sketching. Wikipedia
says of this film "The film's style is an experiment in combining two- and
three-dimensional animation, including hand-drawn backgrounds and figures
animated in relief". Not sure I understand all that but it creates a very
unique and at times stunning look. It also looks like it was very time consuming
with 75-minutes of stop motion with multiple moving parts. Unlike Harryhausen
who mixed stop-motion with live action, this film is all animation.
He went on to make nine more films - one based on the work of Jules Verne
and one about Baron Munchausen.
This story is based on a Persian folktale but there is a moral lesson and
perhaps a political one as Czechoslovakia was a Communist country at the
time. The lesson is work hard and be happy. Don't be lured by riches - Capitalistic
ones? Being part of a society in which there is no income disparity among
the workers is what is most satisfying.
Every winter the swallows head south to a small island where the people are
kind to them and the weather is warm. This is all being narrated by one of
the swallows but when they reach the island, they ask one of the human inhabitants,
Alieek a young fisherman, what has taken place over the last year. The narration
is handed over to Alieek and he tells them a tale which takes up the remainder
of the film. It all begins with him. He looks forward to a life as a fisherman
with dread. He wants to be rich so that he can sleep all day. He begins jumping
to the bottom of the ocean in search of pearls but instead on the surface
finds a man near death. He takes him in and in gratitude this man who is
a pirate tells him where he buried his treasure. But the whole town learns
of it and they decide to share it making them all rich. They immediately
stop working and soon there is no bread to eat. People are starving rather
than working. It isn't the story that is of interest but the animation -
much of it is very clever and very detailed.
