Spirited Away (2001)

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Japan 2001
125 min
Studio Ghibli

Spirited Away was the first anime I ever saw, and it turned my prejudices against the anime craze upside down. Of course, there are loads of really meaningless and bad anime too, as in any film genre: but I realized that this film is an example of creativity and imagination I had never seen the like of. In the same way Tim Burton creates his own universe, so does Studio Ghibli.

The protagonist is a young girl called Chihiro, who at the beginning of the film is moving to another town. They stop at the way when they are fascinated by a strange building, and soon they end up in a pleasant little town. "Pleasant" might be the wrong word, since everything seems strange. There are no people in sight, but like any film seen through the eyes of the child, the parents do not thing anything is odd and continue to stroll along. Unfortunately the town proves to be a link to the spirit world, and when Chihiro's parents start gorging on the local town food, they turn into pigs. Chihiro is captured in the spirit world, where she is stripped off her name by the witch Yubaba. Chihiro, or "Sen" as she is now called, has to try to survive in the strange spirit world and find a way to rescue her parents, who risk getting eaten if they turn too fat.

The original title "Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" literally means "Sen and Chihiro's spiriting away", and refers to an occurrence in Japanese folklore where a person mysteriously disappear when an angered god has taken the person away (that's the word "kamikakushi" in the title). I get a strong feeling that there are a lot more references to tales and folklore in Spirited Away and its likes - thank God there is Internet.

Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981)

Today is the birthday of the brightest shining female animation pioneer in motion picture history - Lotte Reiniger. She was also a director, in collaboration with her husband, and most of her films were based on famous children tales.

Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin, Germany, June 2, 1899. As a child, a fascination for the Chinese art of puppetry commenced - a fascination that would colour the rest of her life. As a teenager the works of the technical film pioneer George Méliès and Der Golem director Paul Wegener would enchant her even more, that lead Lotte to convince her parents to register her in the theatre group Wegener belonged to - the Theatre of Max Reinhardt.

Her fascination for Paul Wegener developed into something more like a devotion, and attracting the attention of her busy hero was not the easiest task. She succeeded by starting to make silhouette portrait of the actors of the group, showing her natural talent ofr handling paper and scissors. She soon got the job of creating title cards of Wegener's films.

In 1918 the 19 year old Lotte Reiniger impressed with her work of making wooden rats for Wegener's The Pied Piper from Hamelin (Der Rattenfänger von Hameln, 1918), and was admitted to the Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute of Cultural Discovery), an experimental animation studio. There she met her future husband and co-worker Carl Koch.

Lotte's first work as a director resulted in a short animation film called The Ornament of the Love Struck Heart (Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens, 1919), a film involving two lovers and ornaments that reflect their moods. The film was very well recieved, and over the next few years Lotte mad six more animated films, all produced and photographed by her husband. She also worked with Fritz Lang, making the silhouette falcon for a dream sequence in Die Niebelungen: Sigfried (Sigfried's Death, 1924).

Lotte Reiniger made a Cinderella animation in 1922, Cinderella (Aschenputtel), and in 1954 the text was replaced with an English narration. Here is the latter version:

In 1923 Lotte's big breakthrough came along. With the help of a banker, who had Lotte as his protegée and his children's Art Teacher, Lotte Reiniger worked hard for three years with an animated film, which would result in The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuerdes Prinzen Achmed, 1926). The plot is put together by pieces from "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights", and by the support of her friend Jean Renoir the film became a huge success when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Even though many people think that the first feature-length animated film was Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Adventures of Prince Achmed really is the oldest surviving animated feature film. Lotte Reiniger was also well over a decade before both Walt Disney and his special effect favourite Ub Iwerks when it came to the use of multiplane camera for certain effects.

Working with the first multiplane camera on the Prince Ahmed project. The multiplane camera was used to be able to animate different types of actions at the same time.

After the success with The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Lotte could now continue with animation without having to worry about being noticed. She soon came up with a Dr. Doolittle and His Animals (Dr. Doolittle und seine Tiere, 1928), and also co-directed her first live-action film with husband Carl Koch and Rochus Gliese. The film was called The Pursuit of Happiness (Die Jagd nach dem Glück, 1930) and starred earlier mentioned Jean Renoir. It told the story about a shadow-puppet troup, and included a 20 minute animated sequence by Lotte Reiniger. The film did however finish just as the sound film arrived to Germany, so the film was delayed for a year to add dubbed-in voices of other actors - of course with the result of ruining the film and making it unsuccessful.

Working with Prince Achmed and his magic horse. Look at that lulu haircut!

When the Nazi Party started taking a grip on Germany, Lotte and Carl Koch (who were Leftists) tried to move out of the country. They spent 1933-1939 travelling from country to country, staying as long as their travel visas allowed them. Even if they had to move all the time, they still managed to make animated films such as Carmen (1933) and Papageno (1939) , based on famous operas.


Lotte Reiniger also made a few short advertising films for the General Post Office. Here you can see the four minute long The HPO - Heavenly Post Office from 1938.

When World War II started they had to stay in Berlin, and somehow they managed not to upset the regime. In 1949 the couple finally was able to move to London and become British citizens. In 1955 she got the commission from Telecasting America to make animated shorts of the Grimms' fairy tales, thus resulting in Hansel and Gretel (1955) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1955).

Hansel and Gretel (1955). The squirrel the children follow is a perfect example of Reiniger's expertise.

Carl Koch passed away in 1962, and Lotte Reiniger died at the age of 82 in Germany, 1981.

Three Little Pigs (1933)

Notice the portrait of their father hanging on the wall?

Disney's 8 minute animated version of Three Little Pigs was released on this day, May 27, 1933. The audiences loved the cartoon, and theatres actually continued running it several months after its release. (Some theatre owners even draw beards on the posters of the cartoon, to mock the fact that they were still running it.) It's hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" immediately stuck. (Try listen to it and not sing it for the rest of the day... I failed, epically.) The song reflected and encouraged the people's attitude to the Great Depression as "the Big Bad Wolf", and even transcended into representing Hitler during WWII.

According to IMDb, Walt Disney himself actually has one of the voices to the Practical Pig. (For some reason there are two people doing his voice.)

The cartoon actually had to be cencored, believe it or not. Originally the Big Bad Wolf dressed up as a caricature of a Jewish peddler (!), but was changed to a Fuller Brush man instead (still having a Yiddish accent, though).

I read some interesting trivia about schools in England actually modified the classic tale to "Three Little Puppies" in 2007, "to avoid offending Muslim families". A man called Ibrahim Mogra from the Muslim Council of Britain made the statement "bizarre" about that move, and the tale was changed back to its original form. Jeez...

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf - big bad wolf - big bad wolf? Who's afraid of the bid bad wolf? Lalalalala...

Black and White 1932

Think about it. Americans are divided into two parties. Either they are beyond-reason-rich capitalists, or they are used working class men, working for slave wages like the poor negros.

Chernoe i beloe (Black and White)
Animator: Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Leonid Amalrik
Soviet Union, Russia 1932
3 min

After a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Mayakovsky is often called the loudspeaker of the Bolshevik Revolution. Yet he was also a most talented poet, whose works are widely quoted even today. As a graphic artist, he was one of the founders of the Okna Rosta (Rosta Windows) a massive media publicity blitz which used posters to spread word of the Revolution via the Russian telegraphic agency.

The animation in “Black and White” is based on his drawings.

In 1922, Mayakovsky received special permission to travel to America. En route he stopped in Cuba where Americans controlled the sugar and tobacco industries. “Black and White” tells the story of Willie, the shoe shine boy, who makes the fatal mistake of asking the White Sugar King Mister Bragg, “Why should white sugar be made by a black man?”

Audio commentaries from Animated Soviet Propaganda DVD-box

Bring out the whip, I say.