Product Description

The Czech stop-motion puppet animation master Jiri Trnka directed some of the most acclaimed animated films ever made. In 1966, four years before his death, Newsday lauded him as "second to Chaplin as a film artist because his work inaugurated a new stage in a medium long dominated by Disney." Trnka continues to astound audiences to this day, particularly those discovering this amazing animation for the first time. This collection includes five of the master's shorts and his feature-length classic "The Emperor's Nightingale" based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale and narrated by Boris Karloff. Includes: The Emperor's Nightingale (1951, 67 min.), The Hand (18 min.), The Story of the Bass Cello (13 min.), A Merry Circus (11 min.), A Drop Too Much (14 min.), The Song of the Prairie (21 min.), Jiri Trnka: Puppet Animation Master documentary (12 min.).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65373 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2000-03-28
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Animated, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 156 minutes

Customer Reviews

The Master of puppets.
What Harryhausen and Pal are to America, Trnka is to Eastern European stop-motion animation; the Master. This collection includes some of his best work, and these short films now shine like never before on this new gorgeous DVD release. -This almost hypnotic new video format (DVD) seem to have a very positive effect on people in the industry, bringing them to seek the release of many a lost or forgotten treasure. I think the future looks golden, indeed. There's something truly unique about the high art of stop-motion, and personally I feel the older it is, strangely enough the better it is somehow. Also adding to the fun in this case, is hearing the wonderfully voiced Boris Karloff narrate one. Let's hope more Trnka stuff (and puppet trickery in general) is on the way; he and other Czech animators, like Karel Zeman, deserves it.

Worthwhile collection
The Emperor's Nightingale is feature-length (67 minutes). There are also five shorts plus a brief documentry on Trnka. I'm not familiar with Andersen's original, but Trnka's treatment of The Emperor's Nightingale makes it perfect for his medium. First of all, it is a story within a story: a live-action unhappy boy dreams the puppet-animated fairy tale. Then, the dream itself revolves around a real singing nightingale and a mechanical singing nightingale. Having this mixture of live action and puppet animation makes the experience more complex and interesting than reading the story in a children's book. Plus, nowadays, with simulated on-line experience competing with "real" get-out-of-doors experience, the story is even more complex. The Emperor of the title is the boy Emperor of China, and this leads to a nice Czech-filtered Oriental flavor to the art design. The shorts are a mixed bag. Story Of The Bass Cello (1949), from a Chekhov piece, and The Song Of The Prairie (1949), a spoof of Hollywood westerns, have humorous moments but felt too much like 1950s TV children shows. The Merry Circus (1951) is unique: the animation is done entirely with paper cutouts. The colors are very beautiful and reminded me of vintage carnival posters come to life. Then there's A Drop Too Much (1954), which is like the Citizen Kane of animation because of the virtuoso display of narrative technique. There is a stunning sequence of a drunk motorcyclist racing everything on the road during a rainy night. The last short, The Hand (1965), is best enjoyed as a Beckett-like short play, rather than a political allegory.

Charming animation
If ever a man was born to his trade and art, it was Trnka. He grew up helping his grandmother make dolls and his mother with her work as a seamstress. By the time started making his movies, in his 30s, he had utter fluency in all of the manual skill needed for success. For new success, that is, because his career as an artist was already well established by then.

This DVD splits almost evenly into a feature length piece and six shorts. The former, "The Emperor's Nightingale," is a wonderful adaptation of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. It touches on many things, including the monotony of mechanical perfection compared to the unpredictable beauty of the organic world. Trnka objected to the Soviet regime that controlled the Czech people during most of his adult life. That was the hand that fed him, though, as well as the hand that could crush him. If there's a subtext of rebellion by a living society against a rigid, mechanical system of control, it's written in very small print.

The shorts varied widely in holding my attention. The cartoon adaptation of Chekov's "The Bass Cello" is warm and funny, with a delightful chill in it for anyone who's had a no-pants dream filled with frustration and embarassment. "A Drop Too Much" could possibly have been a public service feature, about a 15 minute sermon on the evils of drinking and driving. It comes across with the complexity and moral tone of one of those "Davey and Goliath" cartoons I never much liked as a kid. "The Merry Circus" is interesting for an innovative animation technique, one with many strengths and weakness relative to normal model making, and "The Song of the Prarie" is a silly satire of the 1950s Western movies - already pretty silly in themselves.

Only "The Hand" really stands out in that set. It's a modern fairy tale about artistic and personal freedom in the face of massive, controlling social power. Small wonder that this piece won awards abroad and suppression in his home country.

The style is a bit dated, and scripting tends towards a meditative pace. There's not a lot here for the ADHD generation, unless they're truly dedicated fans of animation. For us in the middle ground, there's a lot to enjoy, but the world has other things to enjoy in it, too.

//wiredweird