The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird: The folks at Digiview give us a dollar dvd presentation of this wonderful, surreal and downright bizarre bit of French animation from 1952.

The story is very loosely based on a short story by Hans Christian Andersen, The Shepherdess and the Sweep, except in this story they are paintings and not china figurines. There is also a king who lives in an extremely tall castle tower and his only goals seem to be to make more pictures of himself and to shoot small birds. When he tries to shoot a bird at the beginning of the story, we meet the hero and title character, Mr. Wonderbird.

After Mr. Wonderbird taunts the king for a while he returns to his chambers and examines his paintings again. When he sleeps his painting of himself comes to life, disposes of the real king and goes on a hunt for the shepherdess and the chimney sweep.

The plot is merely secondary in this film as the true delight comes in the visuals. The animation is much different from most of the animation being made at the time. In some ways it felt like watching an experimental film with all the expressionistic visuals such as the amazingly drawn scenery, flying policemen whose coats look like bat wings etc. This is the kind of film which makes me wish I had studied art a bit more. Of course, some elements are hard to miss with the king being up higher than everyone with the lowest classes being kept underground.

All in all, it's an interesting film and props to Digiview for putting it on DVD for a buck.

Labels: Cartoons