The best foreign puppet cartoons. Puppet animation - hand-made masterpieces The highest-grossing puppet cartoons
Puppets are the oldest animation technique, and although there were periods when the popularity of puppet cartoons waned, the tradition was never completely interrupted. Arzamas collected not the most famous, but important works over the past half century
"Little Frog is Looking for Dad"
Director Roman Kachanov, 1964
One little frog didn't have a dad, and he was very sad. So much so that he went looking for him. This seemingly simple film is used to teach dramaturgy to students at animation schools. The legendary Roman Kachanov is one of the creators of puppet animation in our country. It was he who made both “Mitten” and “Cheburashka” (Leonid Shvartsman worked as the artist on these two cartoons).
"My green crocodile"
Director Vadim Kurchevsky, 1966
“All the crocodiles were like crocodiles, but this crocodile was somehow strange...” A poetic movie about love based on the script by Genrikh Sapgir and Gennady Tsyferov, in which Yuri Norshtein worked as an animator, and Alina Speshneva worked as an artist. Vadim Kurchevsky is an animated film director, book illustrator, screenwriter, production designer, TV presenter, art teacher and set designer for children's plays.
"Clew"
Director Nikolay Serebryakov, 1968
Very sad story the importance of stopping in time is told with the help of dolls and yarn. Nikolay Serebryakov - Soviet and Russian director animated films; his most famous works- “I want to be brave” and “Gilded foreheads.”
"The Little Goat Who Counted to Ten"
Director Vladimir Degtyarev, 1968
One day the little goat learned to count. But not everyone in the forest liked it. Vladimir Degtyarev is a legend of puppet animation. This film adaptation of a fairy tale by Norwegian writer Alf Preusen is one of his most famous cartoons for children.
"Moomintroll and others"
Directed by Aida Zyablikova, 1978
The first of three cartoons about the Moomins. Director Aida Zyablikova is a classic of puppet animation. It was she who filmed Tatyana Alexandrova’s fairy tale “Kuzya the Brownie.” The composer of the cartoon is Alexey Rybnikov, and the lyrics for the songs were written by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. The cartoon was voiced by Zinovy Gerdt and Olga Gobzeva.
“Moomintroll and the Comet”, “Moomintroll and the Comet. Way home"
Directed by Nina Shorina, 1978
The director of the second and third series about the Moomins was Nina Shorina, and the artist was Lyudmila Tanasenko (she was also the artist of the famous films “Last Year’s Snow Was Falling”, “ Big secret for a small company”, “The boy walked, the owl flew”), etc. These episodes were also voiced by Zinovy Gerdt and Olga Gobzeva.
"New Year's Adventure"
Directed by Julian Kalisher, 1980
A New Year's movie about how Papa Man and Papa Bear forgot to buy Christmas trees and are trying to fix it. The Soviet fairy who helps the heroes is especially good. Julian Kalisher directed a lot of musical cartoons, for example “A Big Secret for a Small Company” or “Who Are the Birds.” "New Year's Adventure" also has a funny song.
"Hedgehog plus turtle"
Director Ivan Ufimtsev, 1981
A film by one of the classics of puppet animation - Ivan Ufimtsev, creator of “38 Parrots” and “Losharik”. This film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's tale "Where the Armadillos Come From" begins with the song "On the Distant Amazon" performed by Tatyana and Sergei Nikitin. The roles were voiced by Oleg Tabakov, Vsevolod Larionov, Nadezhda Rumyantseva and Tatyana Peltzer.
"Little Imp No. 13"
Directed by Nathan Lerner, 1982
It’s an important day at school for devils: in class they study the question “Who should the devil love?” Of course, yourself! But main character I don't agree. A witty and gentle cartoon by Nathan Lerner, to whom we also owe the animated images of Baron Munchausen and the Fleeing Mook.
"Vrednyuga"
Director Yuri Trofimov, 1987
Yuri Trofimov has several cartoons based on fairy tales by the English writer Donald Bisset. In this episode, Drakosha and his friends fight the insidious Vrednyuga, who wants to steal the rainbow. Script by Vadim Kurchevsky, text from the author read by Alexey Batalov.
"Amorous Crow"
Directed by Maria Muat, 1988
One day a crow fell in love with a sideways hare. And then a fox, and then a wolf, and then... You can’t order your heart! A touching and absurd cartoon about love based on a script by Irina Margolina with memorable characters performed by Georgy Burkov, Roman Filippov and Larisa Udovichenko. Maria Muat is a student of Sergei Obraztsov, a leading director of modern puppet animation.
Puppet animation, thank the cinematic gods, is alive and well. At least, judging by the new films appearing at the box office - in 2012 alone, “Pirates! Band of Losers" and "ParaNorman", with a difference of a couple of months, and in a couple of months the premiere of Tim Burton's "Frankenwinnie" will take place.
This means that the form lives, breathes and develops - which cannot but rejoice. To further this joy, let's look at some recent examples of the creative use of stop motion animation that has given us wonderful films.
ParaNorman, or How to Train a Zombie
New greetings from the animation studio with the charming name Laika, which gave us Henry Selick. “ParaNorman,” although it is not based on the books of the wonderful storyteller Neil Gaiman, is made in a similar vein. This is a wonderful, in every sense, scary fairy tale about a child’s meeting with the otherworldly, tender, touching, scary and Miyazak-like wise (and sometimes just as bitter) in matters of the real alignment of the forces of good and evil in the relationship between the living and the dead. In other words, “ParaNorman” is a real modest diamond of this cinematic year, the kind of film that you always want to carry with you in your pocket closer to your heart.
The wonderful English studio “Aardman” does not live alone with Wallace and Gromit - their latest swim through the waters of full-length puppet animation together with a company of cheerful pirates turned out to be delightfully funny, terribly hooligan and infectiously cheerful. Plus, “Pirates” once again confirmed a long-known truth - that English humor is a very unique and terribly beautiful thing.
The debut entry of Wes Anderson, a clever man and a misanthrope, into stop-motion animation (based on the book by Roald Dahl) turned out to be almost his best film in his fifteen-year career. The life's vicissitudes of a sly fox with the voice of George Clooney, who had to simultaneously solve the problems of his neighborhood with three evil farmers and delve into the issues family life and raising children, as well as dealing with self-identity, gave Anderson a lot of opportunities to develop his usual tragicomic drama (or dramatic comedy), performed in individual intonation - at the junction of a kind smile and almost elusive evil sarcasm. Well, “Mr. Fox” looked wonderful - bathed in an amazing amber-yellow light, which clearly made you want to settle in this wonderful puppet world forever.
The Australian answer to Chamberlain is a wonderful full-length cartoon by a man named Adam Elliot, a work with a very special intonation, at a complex intersection of macabre absurdity and the most tender family melodrama. "Mary and Max" is Elliott's debut feature film; I would like to think that this unpredictable and unafraid author of difficult topics will surprise and delight us all more than once.
Panic in the village
Greetings from Belgian animators, a movie about the adventures of a toy cowboy, an Indian and a horse, through whose efforts their entire toy village is turning heads. It is distinguished by a pleasant degree of general madness of what is happening - the word “panic” in the title perfectly conveys the feverish intonation of this rather crudely executed, but despite this (and perhaps because of this) irresistible work.
Remembering the worst bummers of a Soviet child, I put Puppet cartoons in first place - when the long-awaited cartoon (underlined in the program with a red pen) in fact turned out to be “a wooden doll in the middle of artificial, sunless scenery.” I couldn't agree more with her. But were there really no good puppet cartoons in those days?
Were! And not only good ones, but even quotes.
First of all, what comes to mind in this regard is a series of cartoons about the brownie Kuzya. “I’m not greedy, I’m home-loving”, “Nafanya! The chest was stolen! With fairy tales!”, “Oh, trouble, trouble, disappointment”, “From an early age I didn’t eat enough, slept without much sleep... In general, I didn’t get enough sleep ", "Where I want - I fly there! Where I want?! ", and so on.
Next, I would like to recall a series of cartoons about the crocodile Gena and Cheburashka. Actually, Cheburashka generally became almost a symbol of Soviet animation. Well, my favorite quotes: “Whoever helps people is just wasting their time. Ha ha! Good deeds You can’t become famous!”, “We built and built and finally built. Hurray!”, “Listen, Gena, let me carry the things, and you take me?”, “I’ll show them how to offend Cheburashkas!”
You can say that the success of these cartoons was due to a good literary basis. But “The Adventures of Dunno” and “The Wizard of the Emerald City” also had a good basis, but the puppet cartoons “didn’t work”
The third series of puppet cartoons that even children liked - a cycle about the funny relationships between four animals - Monkey, Baby Elephant, Parrot and Boa Constrictor. “I have a thought, and I’m thinking it!”, “Come on! Let’s ask me!”, “I don’t want to be, excuse me, for example,” “We won’t say who, although it was a baby elephant”
Another series of puppet cartoons that did not cause disgust in childhood - about a forest boy named Uncle Au - “Cuckoo”, “cuckoo”... Cuckoo! I’m bored... Without you, I know that it’s time to go to work..."
You can also remember two cartoons about Little Imp No. 13 - “Love yourself, sneeze on everyone! And success awaits you in life!”
This applies to animated series. And there were also some good single puppet cartoons - “The Wolf and the Calf” (“Children need cleanliness!.. Children, they cannot grow up in dirt”, “Well, that’s it, otherwise “Mom, Mom”!”),
“Mitten” (no quotes here - there is not a single word in the cartoon),
"The little goat who counted to ten" ("Well... Now he counted you too!..")
I may have missed something, but by and large, these are rather exceptions to the rule - we didn’t like puppet cartoons as children. But these examples suggest that the point is not that they are dolls, but in the attitude of the creators towards these very dolls. If you set out to make a good cartoon, these examples show that it was possible. But, it seems that the overwhelming majority of animators-puppeteers played with dolls themselves, for their own pleasure, without really thinking about the final result
Sources
All videos taken from www.youtube.com
However, the genre of puppet horror is being secretly revived, in which many screen masters worked enthusiastically, realizing their deepest fantasies - from the erotomaniac Valerian Borowczyk to the visionary Terry Gilliam. For us, shell-shocked by Soviet puppet animation, which scared more than one generation of citizens to death, this topic is especially close to our hearts. Apparently, there is something about dolls that attracts all sorts of strange types and damned geniuses. To study the issue, we have collected ten of the most striking examples of puppet perversions in world cinema. The decadent puppet cartoon is back on the horse.
Guard Dog (Stille Nacht V: Dog Door, dir. The Qui Brothers, 2001)
Convinced decadents, the Kuay brothers are American twins who moved to the Old World in the late 60s and quickly became unsurpassed classics of the “decadent puppet cartoon” genre. The brothers' epigones are countless; they themselves were inspired by the works of Starevich, Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Stravinsky, Borowczyk, and later by Svankmajer, whom Western Europe I didn’t open it right away. IN popular culture the brothers registered thanks to Peter Gabriel, for whom they shot a video for the song Sledgehammer. A dog drooling to the hellish wheezing of Tom Waits is also a clip, although no television decided to show it. Monstrous horror.
Meet the Feebles (1989) (dir. Peter Jackson, 1989)
When the new Middle Ages arrive and they begin to burn the classics, Jackson’s “Show of Idiots” will definitely be in the top twenty martyrs, which, without any exception, can be included in our review almost entirely. The only thing that calms me down is that the manuscripts don’t burn, and at least the immortal “Song of the Sodomite” will definitely be preserved for posterity. Classic.
Adventures of Mark Twain, The/ (1986) (dir. Will Vinton, 1986)
In 1986, director Will Vinton decided to make an educational puppet cartoon based on the works of Mark Twain. It turned out to be a completely harmless story - an American classic flies on a comet through space in the company of teenagers, teaching them wisdom. Everything went well until Twain and the children arrived on the planet where Satan lives. The producers wisely decided not to get involved with Satan - they cut it out. This is such a children's film.
Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, The/ (1993) (dir. David Borthwick, 1993)
In a family of London alcoholics, an underdeveloped embryo with the face of a degenerate is born - Thumb Boy. After the brutal death of his parents in a fire, the midget goes wandering, ends up in a factory of genetically modified products and raises a mutant uprising. The ending of the fairy tale was sad: for ten years director Borthwick was not hired anywhere. In 2005, the cute “Magic Roundabout, The/” (2005) was released under his signature, and one can only guess what was on Borthwick’s mind when he filmed this good, but unremarkable fantasy for family viewing.
“The Happiness of the Katakuri Family” / Katakuri-ke no kofuku / (2001) (dir. Takashi Miike, 2001)
For complete happiness of puppet animation, one talented person was missing - Takashi Miike. Transferred to Japanese soil, Švankmajer, Borowczyk and the Kuai brothers, under his visionary leadership, gave birth to a monster - the initial part of the musical comedy “Katakuri-ke no kofuku” (2001) about a family of killers who are attacked by zombies. A cannibal angel and a deadly teddy bear with iron claws were registered here. To press “play” or not to press it is up to you to decide.
