Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– We all know that Snow White was the first Hollywood animated feature. Many of us also know that Lotte Reiniger directed the very first animated feature in 1926, Prince Achmed. (This film is occasionally shown on TCM, though it’s not scheduled within the next 3 months.)

Some others of us may also know that Alexander Ptushko directed the first animated puppet feature, The New Gulliver in Russia.

This 68 min. film is discussed in that history of Russian puppet animation book, My Puppet Friends, which I described and featured last week. It’s a film which isn’t very well known in the West, although its title has been a part of my liturgy of animation history since I was a child. Only once in my memory, can I recollect a public screening in NY, and I wasn’t able to attend it. Presumably, with dvd it’s going to be available soon – if not already.

By all accounts, this must be a somewhat difficult film to sit through. Even this book, My Puppet Friends, tells how they chose to change the Jonathan Swift story since, obviously, no one could relate to his political critique of the capitalist 18th Century England under King George III.

Per all commentaries I’ve read, the Russian film makers chose, instead, to make it a polemic espousing the Marxist beliefs of their day. Since this poiint seems to show up in every criticism of the film, one can only assume they wield a heavy hand in their interpretation.

There is also, often, strong criticism of the puppetry in the film comparing it unfavorably to the work of Ladislas Starevich. That’s understandable given the amazing talents of that artist, who was working in France at the time of this film’s production, 1935.

The New Gulliver was actually a combination of live action and puppet animation. Peter, a young boy, falls asleep and awakens to find himself bound to the ground by all his dolls. Thus he is thrown into a variation of Swift’s story.

Here are the rest of the illustrations for The New Gulliver which are included in this 1971 book, My Puppet Friends.

If anyone knows how to get a copy of this film, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

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