The last time I mentioned Jiri Barta’s extraordinary animation of the Pied Piper story there were only short clips on YouTube. That was several years ago, in which time the 53-minute film has been posted in its entirety. Barta pulls the tale away from its sanitised derivations back to its darker origins in the folk mythology of Central Europe; he also gives the end of the story a twist which I won’t reveal here. The characters are almost all angular wooden figures, while their rat-infested town is constructed from the disjunctive perspectives of German Expressionism. The whole effect is so successful it makes you wish even more that Barta might have completed his feature-length version of the Golem story.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gloves
• More Golems
• Barta’s Golem
Excellent find! Unique style of Stop motion.
It is as if Ernst Barlach was reincarnated as a stop-motion animator.
There’s a good region 1 DVD compilation of his works called ‘Labyrinths of Darkness’ that I’ve got and is still available on Amazon. It contains this, the previously featured ‘The Vanished World of Gloves’ and several others including a fine one called ‘Club of the Laid Off’ in which Barta animates decaying shop mannequins living out their lives in an abandoned warehouse.
Thanks! Looks very interesting, very different. Shall have a peek when I find a stray hour.