Le Roi et l'oiseau

Le Roi et l'oiseau
Directed by	Paul Grimault
Written by	Hans Christian Andersen (story) Paul Grimault Jacques Prévert
Starring	Jean Martin Pascal Mazzotti Raymond Bussières Agnès Viala
Music by	Wojciech Kilar
Cinematography	Gérard Soirant
Editing by	Paul Grimault
Release date(s)	1952 (France) -------- March 19, 1980 (France) November 5, 1983 (USA) (festival)
Running time	63 minutes (1952) 87 minutes (1980) 81 minutes (2003)
Country	France
Language	French

Le Roi et l'oiseau (The King and the Mocking Bird, literally The King and the Bird) is a 1980 traditionally-animated feature film directed by Paul Grimault. Begun in 1948 as The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep (loosely based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen), it underwent a long production, eventually being finished over 30 years after it was started. The film is today regarded as a masterpiece of French animation^[1] and has been cited by the Japanese director Isao Takahata as an influence.

As of 2010^[update], the completed version of the film has not been released with English subtitles on home video, nor is it available in the English-speaking world except by import, although the film does not contain a lot of dialogue, and is available in France and Japan. Various low-budget English-language editions have been released of the 1952 version, and it is now in the public domain, with a version with Peter Ustinov voicing the main role of the bird available at the Internet Archive at The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird.

Plot

The huge kingdom of Takicardia is ruled by a king under the unwieldy title of Charles V + III = VIII + VIII = XVI. He’s a heartless ruler, hated by his people as much as he hates them. The king is fond of hunting, but is unfortunately cross-eyed – not that anyone would dare acknowledge this in front of him, as the numerous statues and paintings that adorn the palace and the land show. Occasionally the king does hit his target though, notably the wife of the bird, known only as "l'Oiseau", the narrator of the story who takes pleasure in taunting the terrible king at every opportunity.

In his secret apartment, the king dreams of the beautiful shepherdess whose painting he keeps on his wall, but the shepherdess is in love with the chimney sweep whose hated portrait is on the opposite wall. At night the paintings come to life and attempt to escape from the palace, but are pursued by a non-cross-eyed painting of the king that also has come to life, deposed the real king and has taken his place. He orders the capture of the shepherdess and the sweep, but the bird is there to help when called upon. They are pursued to the depths of the Lower City where the inhabitants have never seen the light of the sun and strange creatures including bat-police take up their chase.

Connection with The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep

Further information: The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep

Only the early scene in the secret apartment is based on The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, while the rest of the movie focuses much more on the king and the bird, hence the ultimate title. In Andersen's tale, the shepherdess and the chimney sweep are china figurines, rather than paintings, and a wooden (mahogany) satyr wishes to wed the shepherdess, supported by a Chinaman, rather than a king and a classical statue. In both tales, the Chinaman/statue breaks, and the duo escape up the chimney, and delight in celestial bodies, but in Andersen's tale the shepherdess is afraid of the wide world and the duo return; this is echoed in the movie where the statue predicts that they will return.

Production

Originally titled La Bergère et le Ramoneur (The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep), Grimault and Prévert began the film in 1948 (following their first collaboration, Le Petit soldat (The Little Soldier), also a Hans Christian Andersen adaptation), and it was highly anticipated, but in 1950 the film was taken out of their control, and subsequently the expense of the film caused the failure of the studio (Les Gémeaux). Grimault’s partner André Sarrut (the producer) then showed the film unfinished in 1952, against Grimault and Prévert’s wishes, which caused a rift between partners, and they went their separate ways. In 1967, Grimault got possession of the film, and spent the next decade lining up financing. By 1977 he had arranged financing,^[2] and thus the film was completed over the two year period of 1977–79. In 1980 the finished film was finally released under a new title, Le Roi et l'Oiseau – to make clear the distinction from the earlier version – and shortly after the death of Prévert, to whom the film is dedicated.

In English, the film has been released under many names. The official international English name is The King and the Mockingbird. Others include: The King and the Bird, The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird, The King and Mr. Bird, Mr Bird to the Rescue and Adventures of Mr. Wonderful.

The completed film uses 42 of the 62 minutes of the 1952 footage,^[2] and, at 87 minutes, includes significant new animation, completely different music, and a very different, more symbolic ending. Some footage is cut, such as an elaborate dance by the lions, the bird taking over the role as announcer at the wedding, and the original ending. The new footage includes both entirely new scenes, and changes to existing scenes. For example, in the completed film, the initial scenes of the king practicing target shooting and having his portrait painted are new, while the scene of the king shooting at the baby bird, which falls between these two, is from the 1952 footage. The differences between the old and new animation are visible at some points in a single scene, most noticeably in the lion pit, where the lions are drawn in two very different styles;^[3] the simpler, more abstract lions are the new animation.

The production of the music is unusual in that Grimault left it entirely in the hands of Wojciech Kilar – Gimault gave no instruction as to what music he desired, nor was there any back-and-forth, but simply shared the movie with Kilar, who studied it carefully, then went to Poland, recorded it, and returned with the completed score, which was accepted unchanged.^[2]

Reception

It is popularly considered one of the best animated feature films of all time. As of 2011^[update], it has an average vote of 8.0/10 on IMDb.com, making it number 13 on the site's list of animated feature films (including films with at least 1,000 votes).^[4]

It has been called one of the greatest French animated films.^[5] In July 2006 Studio Ghibli decided to release a Japanese-dubbed version of the film to theatres under the name The King and the Bird (王と鳥, Ō to Tori^?). Starting in just one cinema, it became a hit and spread out to many other theatres, eventually reaching over 20,000 people.^{[citation needed]}

Cultural references

The movie is rife with cultural references.^[6][7] Most basically, the castle is similar to 19th century fairy-tale castles, the best known of which is Neuschwanstein Castle, while the best-known such model in France is the medieval town Carcassonne, which notably has a surrounding ville basse (lower city), as in the movie. The city, with its dark, industrial underbelly recalls Metropolis by Fritz Lang,^[6] and the enslaved work recalls Modern Times of Charlie Chaplin.

The long staircases in the film recall the walk down from Montmartre

The castle, presiding over a city, has been compared to a "Neo-Sacré-Cœur",^[2] this basilica being the highest point of Paris, presiding over the city from the top of Montmartre. The visual style is painterly, with strong perspective, recalling surrealist artists, most notably Giorgio de Chirico, but also Yves Tanguy,^[7] friend of Prévert's youth. See this article^[8] for a sampling of scenes.

There are extensive allusions to Germany, particularly connections between the king and Adolf Hitler, most obviously in the king's appearance on leaving water (mustache and hair strongly resembling Hitler's) and in the cult of personality, but also in the king's statement that "work…is liberty", alluding to the infamous "Arbeit macht frei" (work makes [you] free), written over the entrances to concentration camps, and also the iconic Stahlhelm (steel helmets) seen in places.

The king's number alludes to Louis XVI of France, though visually the film recalls more the "Sun King" Louis XIV,^[7] and parts of the castle resemble Venice, with the canals, gondola, and bridge of sighs. The mustached, bowler-hatted police recall Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond) from The Adventures of Tintin.^[6]

The robot's behavior recalls King Kong,^[6] notably both in his chest-pounding and in his waving off the circling bird. He also rests in the figure of The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin.

Some potentially unfamiliar phrases and concepts used in the movie include lettres de cachet, gallows birds (gibier de potence), lèse majesté (Contempt of the Sovereign), and the Mayor of the Palace. The bird also mentions having seen Les cloches de Corneville, having been to the Place d'Italie, and having attended the Neuilly festival (Neuilly-sur-Seine is the birthplace of both Prévert and Grimault). It also mentions dernières cartouches (Last Cartridges) which alludes to an episode in the Franco-Prussian War involving the Blue Division of the French marines, memorialized in a painting by that name by Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville.

Others see connection with Ubu Roi (King Ubu) of Alfred Jarry, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Magritte.^[6]

Grimault details some of the specific inspirations: for example, the bird was inspired by Jean Mollet (secretary of Guillaume Apollinaire) and by actor Pierre Brasseur, playing the character of Robert Macaire (via the character Frédérick Lemaître) in Les Enfants du Paradis.^[2]

Connections with other works

In the context of the principal authors' other works, it is notable that this is not the only Andersen adaptation that this pair animated – Grimault and Prévert also adapted The Steadfast Tin Soldier as Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) (1947), which is included in La table tournante (The turning table) on the deluxe edition of Le Roi et l'oiseau. In the early 1970s, Prévert and Grimault also made two dark animations, one apocalyptic – Le Chien mélomane (The Megalomaniac Dog) (1973), which features a dog wielding a violin that caused destruction at a distance and leaves the world a gray waste (as in the end of Le Roi); both are collected in La table tournante.

Grimault did not directly reuse characters between his animations, but similar characters recur – the twin police officers in Voleur de paratonnerres (The lightning rod thief) are recalled by Le Sir de Massouf in La Flûte magique (The Magic Flute), then reappears as the chief of police in Le Roi et l'Oiseau. Similarly, Gô from Passagers de "La Grande Ourse" (Passengers of "The Big Bear") is recalled by Niglo in Marchand de notes, then becomes the chimney sweep in Le Roi et l'Oiseau.

For Prévert's part, he had previously written a poem about the Neuilly festival, mentioned by the bird ("La Fête à Neuilly", in Histoires, 1946), featuring lions, and a lion character features prominently in Children of Paradise, as do other bombastic characters, recalling and in fact inspiring the bird. He also wrote of birds in "Pour faire le portrait d'un oiseau" (To make [paint] a portrait of a bird) in Paroles (1945),^[9] which, fittingly, given the long production of the movie, includes the lines "Parfois l'oiseau arrive vite / mais il peut aussi bien mettre de longues années / avant de se décider" (Often the bird arrives quickly / but he can also take many years / before he decides himself).

Influence

Le Roi et l'oiseau had a profound influence on Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, who later founded Studio Ghibli. They discuss this at length in a documentary on the deluxe edition of the DVD, noting for example that they took frame-by-frame photographs of some sequences (such as the king elbowing the court painter aside) to be able to study how the animation was done.^[10]

Miyazaki states, inter alia, that "We were formed by the films and filmmakers of the 1950s. At that time I started watching a lot of films. One filmmaker who really influenced me was the French animator Paul Grimault."^[11] and "It was through watching Le Roi et l'Oiseau by Paul Grimault that I understood how it was necessary to use space in a vertical manner."^[12] For his part, Takahata states "My admiration towards Paul Grimault and Le Roi et l'Oiseau has always been the same, probably because he achieved better than anyone else a union between literature and animation." The influence is also visible in The Castle of Cagliostro, whose castle resembles the castle in Le Roi et l'Oiseau.

Due to their great affection for the film, Ghibli secured the Japanese distribution of the film through their Ghibli Museum Library imprint, and thus it is available in Japan.

Editions

Le Roi et l'oiseau has been released in various editions, in various languages. Beyond the fundamental distinction between editions based on the incomplete 1952 version, and those based on the 1980 version, there have been various English translations of the 1952 version, and more recently, a remastered deluxe (2 disc) edition of the 1980 version, with French and Dutch audio.

In the English-speaking world, the film has been released on video under various titles but these have generally been low-budget releases of the unfinished 1952 version. The 1952 version is now in the public domain, and is available with English language narration by Peter Ustinov at the Internet Archive at The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird. Further, English subtitles for the completed 1980 edition are available at this page at Open Subtitles.

Deluxe edition

The deluxe version includes a 1988 documentary of Grimault and his work, La table tournante, (The turning table), filmed by Jacques Demy, together with various shorts. La table tournante features Grimault's most noted short animations (and some live action), in some cases abridged, namely:

• La séance de spiritisme (The spiritualist seance) (1931, live action advertisement by Jean Aurenche with stop-action animation by Grimault and Jacques Brunius) – features a moving table, after which the documentary is named
• Le Marchand de notes (The [musical] note merchant) (1942)
• Les Passagers de "La Grande Ourse" (The Passengers of "The Big Bear") (1941), abridged
• L'Épouvantail (The Scarecrow) (1942)
• Le Voleur de paratonnerres (The Lightning Rod Thief) (1944)
• La Flûte magique (The Magic Flute) (1946)
• Le Diamant (The Diamond) (1970)
• Le fou du roi (The king's lunatic) (1987–88, made for La table tournante)
• Le Chien mélomane (The Megalomaniac Dog) (1973)
• Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) (1947)

Note that most of these were made during and immediately after World War II, some during the occupation of France; indeed, Les Passagers de "La Grande Ourse" started as Gô chez les oiseaux (Gô among the birds), but was interrupted by the war. During this time, the studio Les Gémeaux was the only animation studio in occupied Europe (Germany did not have an animation industry, and American animation did not come in), and thus found a captive audience.

The additional shorts are

• Les Passagers de "La Grande Ourse" – full version

together with 4 advertisements:

• Le Messenger de la Lumière (The Messenger of Light) – for a light shop
• La Légende de la Soie (The Legend of Silk) – paid for by the silk industry
• Sain et Sauf (Safe and Sound) – for Danon yogurt
• Terre! (Land ho!) – for an optician

See also

	Animation portal
	Film portal

• History of French animation
• List of animated feature films

Other animated movies with long production histories

• The Thief and the Cobbler, in production 1964–1995, released unfinished (or rather, hastily finished)
• The Overcoat, by Yuriy Norshteyn :: still in production, since 1981

References

1. ^ "Attention : chef-d’œuvre !" ("Attention: masterpiece!"), Luc Honorez, Le Soir, quoted in Le Parc Distribution
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Dossier de presse, Le Parc distribution, from Le roi et l'oiseau page (French)
3. ^ Video - Le Roi et l'oiseau (The King and Mockingbird), The Ghibli Blog, by Daniel Thomas MacInnes, 23 April 2009, comment by Chris
4. ^ http://www.imdb.com/search/title?genres=animation&num_votes=1000%2C&sort=user_rating%2Cdesc&start=1&title_type=feature
5. ^ Noel Megahey (December 12, 2003). "Le Roi et L'Oiseau". DVD Times. http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=6335. Retrieved 2006-10-24. 
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} Le Roi et l'Oiseau de Paul Grimault (1980) – commentary
7. ^ ^{a b c} Quelques propositions d’activités – Le roi et l’oiseau, Paola Martini et Pascale Ramel, p. 4
8. ^ The King and the Mockingbird, Eaten by Ducks, Aeron, January 19, 2007
9. ^ Le Roi et l'Oiseau, de P. Grimault et J. Prévert – Poésie et politique 16 August 2008 (French)
10. ^ See Le Roi et L’Oiseau, Home Cinema discussion
11. ^ Midnight Eye
12. ^ Le Monde, quoted on cndp.fr

• Traits de mémoire, Paul Grimault, Éditions du Seuil, 1991; preface by Jean-Pierre Pagliano – Grimault's autobiography (French)
• Jeune Cinéma, n° 128, July 1980, interview with Grimault (French)
• Dossier de presse, Le Parc distribution, from Le roi et l'oiseau page (French)

  Includes "Entretien avec Paul Grimault" (Interview with Paul Girmault) about the movie, collected from 3 interviews (with Bernard Marié (Cinéma Français n° 32), with Robert Grelier (La Revue du Cinéma, March 1980), and with Monique Assouline (film's press agent in 1980))

• Fiche Film, Le roi et l'oiseau de Paul Grimault, Le France

External links

Sites

• La Bergère et le ramoneur at the Internet Movie Database
• Le Roi et l'oiseau at the Internet Movie Database
• Le Roi et l'oiseau is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more] (The 1952 The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird)
• Official internet site of Paul Grimault Films
• Le Roi et l’oiseau – fan site

Trailers

• Original trailer (French)
• Trailer for Studio Ghibli's release of the film (Japanese)

Commentary

• Critics
• Critiques sur Le Roi et l'Oiseau (French)
• Le conte au cœur de l’univers grimalien, Objectif cinema (French)
• Le Roi et l'Oiseau, de P. Grimault et J. Prévert – Poésie et politique 16 August 2008 (French)
• Le Roi et l'Oiseau, reviewed by James Travers 2002, Films de France
• Le Roi et l'Oiseau, Allmovie

Media

• The King and the Mockingbird, Eaten by Ducks, Aeron, January 19, 2007