O'brien and Harryhausen Contemporaries – 1930-1970
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pp144-175 Chapter 5 18/7/08 12:13 Page 144 CHAPTER FIVE O’BRIEN AND HARRYHAUSEN CONTEMPORARIES – 1930-1970 pp144-175 Chapter 5 18/7/08 12:13 Page 146 During the 1930s, when Obie was working on Konstantinovich Konstantinov whose only film BELOW LEFT ‘The Ptushko Collective’. Between 1936 and 1938, film’s release in 1972, Ptushko died. Like O’Brien, his greatest creation and Ray was only just begin- this was) who falls asleep during a commune out- A scene from The New Gulliver (1935) showing the live- the unit would produce fourteen animated short his near contemporary, Ptushko will always be ning his fascination with the art, there were few ing and dreams that he is a new Gulliver, washed action actor’s legs and feet bestriding the marching and films, usually based on Russian folktales, that remembered in film history for one film, The New other individuals taking any interest in model ani- ashore on Lilliput. He finds that he has been tied Lilliputian revolutionaries. This one shot shows just how included Repka (The Little Turnip) (1936), VolkI i Gulliver, and though its message has somewhat mation, and those that were saw it only as one of a up on the beach but is eventually released and many tiny models Ptushko had to animate. Zhuravl (The Wolf and the Crane ) (1936), Lisa i Vino- dated, the film is undoubtedly a classic and a mile- variety of visual effects. Slowly, however, with the becomes the guest of honour at a feast held by grad (The Fox and the Grapes) (1936), Rodina Zovet stone in the history of model animation. BELOW CENTRE advent of the 1950s, interest in the art increased, the monarch of Lilliput. Being a good Stalinist, One of the ‘thousands’ of miniature puppets used in the film. (The Motherland Calls) (1936), Vesyolye muzykanty Although brought up in America, Lou largely as a result of the contemporary cycle of he is appalled to discover that Lilliput is a deca- (The Merry Musicians) (1937), Skazka o rybakeI i rybke Bunin was also Russian. Born in Kiev in 1904, he monsters-on-the-rampage movies. The public’s dent, bourgeois society controlled by capitalist BELOW RIGHT (The Tale of the Fisherman and the Goldfish) (1937), left Russia at a very early age and received a appetite for these fantasy films encouraged a profiteers, and before he wakes up to reality he The Russian poster for The New Gulliver. Zaveshchaniye (The Will) (1937), Lisa i Volk (The Fox training in art at the Chicago Art Institute. His number of individuals to try their hand at model helps the workers in the King’s underground and the Wolf ) (1937), Malenky-Udalenky (The Little ambition was to be an artist and sculptor so he animation and so the 1950s and 1960s would turn munitions factory overthrow their decadent Darling One) (1938) and Pyos i Kot (The Dog and the went to France to attend the Academie de la out to be a golden age for the art. rulers. All a bit heavy, perhaps, but the joy of this Cat) (1938). In most cases Prushko is credited as Grande Chaumiere with the sculptor Bourdelle. Some of this potential new talent had, like film is not in its blatant propaganda storyline or artistic supervisor of these pictures although he was When he returned to the US in 1930 he held a Ray, been inspired by King Kong, which would political aims, but in its conception and execu- occasionally responsible for the story and the one-man show of his art in Chicago and the fol- continue to weave its spell over subsequent gen- tion. It was a remarkable undertaking as Ptushko script, and in some cases directed. lowing year he travelled to Mexico to become erations, but these potential animators were also reputedly utilized some ‘three thousand finger- In 1938 Ptushko began work on another ani- an assistant to the painter Diego Rivera. While being inspired, not just by Ray’s films, but by his size character models of revolutionists, bloated mated/live-action feature called Zolotoy Klyuchik he was in Mexico he developed an interest in methods of bringing his creations to life, using plutocrats, crooners and burlesque queens’ (to (The Golden Key) an adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s marionettes and on his return to Chicago began cheaper and more easily available methods. They quote the publicity of the time). However, it is novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. Although hugely a marionette theatre. This led him to experi- realized that such techniques could help them more likely that there were actually only fifteen successful in the Soviet Union when it was released ment with animating and filming puppets bring their own dreams to fruition and they hundred models, although that number, if accu- in 1939 The Golden Key didn’t receive a wide distri- which, in turn, led to his first animated film, a would devise their own methods, working in par- rate, still represents an incredible achievement. bution elsewhere and it was to be Ptushko’s last short subject called Pete Roleum and his Cousins allel with or along similar lines to Ray’s own The models were made largely of clay and the key film featuring model animation. However, after (1938), made for the Petroleum Industry stand Dynamation. Eventually the vogue for the mon- characters possessed detachable heads allowing the war he did made a number of fantasy films at the 1938/39 New York World’s Fair. It was a ster-on-the-rampage movies which had inspired them a range of expressions. Over sixty sets were that included Sadko (heavily cut and retitled the thirty-minute colour film that featured an ani- this renaissance would decline, giving way to used in the film, and a lot of time, effort and Magic Voyage of Sinbad for the States) (1953), Ilya mated bug eating a leaf and when insecticide is more inventive and ambitious science-fiction and resources were spent completing the optical work PREVIOUS SPREAD Muromets (retitled The Sword and the Dragon) sprayed on the leaf the bug rolls over and dies. mythological projects. that combined the models with the one live actor. Left, three of the seven armatured heads (Pan, Lao and (1956) and Sampo (retitled The Day the Earth Froze) Although not exactly a classic it did lead to America was still at the heart of this surge in It is reputed that over fifty technicians, including Merlin) that were seen sprouting from the body of the Loch (1959). In 1968 Ptushko began work on the fea- other offers of work in the field of information the fashion for films that showed people co-exist- artists, modellers and animators, worked on the Ness monster featured in the climax of 7 Faces of Dr Lao ture Ruslan and Ludmila, which took a total of four and industrial propaganda and slowly Bunin ing – not always very peacefully – with impossible picture for two years. It was halfway through the (1964). These were animated by Jim Danforth and are now, years to complete. Sadly, a few months after the began to be noticed. along with two other heads (these can be seen on page creatures. However, there were also a few outside making of Gulliver that Ptushko saw O’Brien’s 172), in The Deutsche Kinemathek Museum Für Film und America who found their own ways of using King Kong and was amazed and inspired by the Fernsehen in Berlin. model animation; some of them would find a film to such an extent that he utilized some of the Right, Ray looking at the models of Pegasus and Perseus market for simple puppet animation but there techniques he had seen. featured in Clash of the Titans (1981) with Jim Danforth. These others who would recognize its versatility when Released worldwide in 1935/36 Gulliver are the same models featured in close-up on page 130. combined with live action. quickly gained international acclaim, more for Alexandr Ptushko was sometimes called ‘The its cinematic innovations than its Stalinist plot- TOP Soviet Walt Disney’ but it would be more accu- line, although one reviewer for The New York Alexandr Ptushko circa 1930s. rate to say that he was a Russian Willis O’Brien. Times wrote, ‘In addition to the technical finesse, ABOVE In 1934 Ptushko saw King Kong, and it convinced the film has genuine wit in its sly assault on bour- Alexandr Ptushko circa 1960s. him that the way forward for model animation geois institutions.’ The New Gulliver counted was to produce films that featured both animat- Charlie Chaplin among its great admirers, which ed models and live actors in the same frame. led in part to Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936). Ptushko was born in Lugansk, now in the Always on the lookout for new animated pictures Ukraine, in 1900 and began his film career in Ray also saw it in 1936, when he was sixteen, and 1927 when he went to work for the Moscow-based he too was inspired, although perhaps not as Mosfilm Studio. Initially he constructed puppets much as by King Kong. Ray remembers that his for model animated films made by other film- mother took him to see the film, which had just makers, but because of his enthusiasm and pro- been released in the US, and he was mesmerized fessionalism he soon became a director and by the huge number of tiny animated figures, designer in his own right, making a series of stop- although the political message contained in the motion films between 1928 and 1932 that fea- story went right over his head.