Film: Le Roman de Renard (The Tale Of The Fox)
Director: Ladislas Starevich
I started with this film because I wanted to begin with something light. This was a film made between 1929 and 1930 by French animator Ladislas Starevich. It's a collection of French fairy tales in the vein of the original Grimm's Fairy Tales. All and all, quite dark stuff. Still good fun.
From the start you can see Starevich's influence on both Ray Harryhausen, Willis O'Brien and, more recently, Henry Selick. Selick seems more his spiritual successor, while Harryhausen and O'Brien seem more of a technical proteges. This seemed odd as Harryhausen and O'Brien would be considered more contemporary with this film's creator.
All the fine touches in the animation in this film; the depth of field, the motion blurring, the expression of the puppets - these all show a desire to make true cinema, rather than just exhibit an affluence of technical repertoire. If you look at O'Brien's King Kong, or Harryhausen's Voyage of Sinbad, the animated characters feel like automata. Yet in this movie the characters are full of life and expressive in ways many modern CGI films cannot hope to achieve.
Also, the film is in public domain. You can watch it on YouTube here.
Reminds me of:
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