Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Jiří Trnka is, I must confess, not an artist I was familiar with until researching this episode, by which I mean a Google search, so I’m going to assume his description as the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe means a storied and respected career dedicated to illustration, animations, and, naturally directing this stop-motion work inspired by Shakespeare, rather than a weirdo that took far too much acclaim rightly sue to the people doing the actual work and ruining the copyright system forever. Although according to that Google search he was more interested in the creation of the puppets used in his works rather than the animation itself, which was handled by a team of animators, so perhaps it’s not too far off.
Now, this is an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that is intended to be more like a ballet performance than a stage play, with a heavy focus on Václav Trojan’s music with some narration to explain things a little. And I should say that this was the Czech version we watched, as going by the cast list on an English language version there must have been a very differently dubbed approach taken for that.
Why I point this out, alongside the adjunct fact that I’ve never read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is to say that I’m not 100% clear on what was going on in this film, or why it was going on. For this I am thankful, as I’ve often wondered what it must have been like to watch David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune without having read the book first, and it’s probably approximate to the level of confusion and wonder I felt during this.
As such I shan’t attempt to recap the four interconnecting romance plots with diversions into Fairyland (thanks Wikipedia) of the original that I presume are present in this, and instead just appreciate the spectacle of the striking character designs, the intricate animation, and Václav Trojan’s compositions.
I’m not sure I’d recommend this to anyone that doesn’t already have a working knowledge of the source material – my apologies for being an uncultured oaf – but it’s a striking film that shouldn’t take the fall for my ignorance.