Please note that the few sentences in French in the short film The Mascot are not subtitled, but you’ll find a translation below.
A crafty fox that keeps tricking people becomes the source of much irritation for a town’s populace. He is arrested but tries to outwit those who want to hold him accountable for his actions. Based on medieval fables, pioneering animator Ladislaw Starewicz collaborated with his daughter Irène on this influential early work, which makes great use of his intricately designed puppets to tell a story rich in dark and dazzling leaps of the imagination.
bfi.org.uk
A legend among animation fans, the work of Wladyslaw Starewicz (or Starevitch in the French spelling) is more often heard of than seen. Although more material has wandered in from the archival wilderness lately, for the most part his reputation has been built on the slender but sturdy edifice of short films like The Cameraman’s Revenge and Frogland. In the former, a traditional comic melodrama, similar to those made by Biograph in the 1910s, is enacted by a cast composed entirely of animated insects, while the latter concerns a political coup in an amphibian community.
Starewicz’s career in animation grew out of his interests in photography and entomology. Along with technical precision and dark satirical humour, his films exhibit a scientist’s passion for observing intricate details. This delight is especially evident in The Tale of the Fox, his only feature, where for all their anthropomorphic gestures, the naturalism of the animals’ movements closely mimics that of their real counterparts. Starewicz puts one in mind of another entomologist whose own biography parallels his in many ways – Vladimir Nabokov, who once wrote, ‘I discovered in nature the non-utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.’
Deception is very much at the heart of The Tale of the Fox. If the film were made today, its star, a confidence-fox who is rewarded for his deviousness, would raise an outcry for setting a bad example to children. So too would some of the film’s saltier jokes, like a flirtatious hen being described in the subtitles as a ‘cockteaser’. Compared with current animation techniques, the film might seem charming but a little primitive. In fact, considering that it is primarily the work of one man with a few assistants, it is an astounding example of cinematic prestidigitation. The battle scene is an achievement on the level of staging Ben Hur in a show box. As in Frogland, there seems to be subtle political allegory afoot about the ineffectuality of government, but the screenplay – by Starewicz and his daughter Irène touches on this only delicately.
Finally getting its British premiere 50 years after it was made, The Tale of the Fox is mandatory viewing for anyone interested in animation or early cinema, or simply looking for animal stories as different from Disney’s recent Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey as a film could possibly be. It supports Charles Ford’s 1958 claim that ‘Wladyslaw Starewicz is one of those cinemagicians whose name deserves to stand in film history beside those of Méliès, Emile Cohl and Disney.’
Leslie Felperin Sharman, Sight and Sound, January 1994
Russian animation pioneer Starewicz was an entomologist who discovered an affinity for animation while goading into battle a pair of stag beetles overly soothed by the warm lights of his tabletop studio. After establishing his name with the delightfully buggy short The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912), he experimented in live-action fantasy until his love for animals prevailed. Made a decade after the Russian revolution forced his relocation to France, Le Roman de Renard became the grand showcase for his uncanny ability to create fully articulated animal puppets distinguishable from taxidermy only by their abundance of character, pathos and vitality. Based on a Goethe fable, the film chronicles the comic revenge strategies of the wily fox whose food-stealing pranks are thwarted by the Lion King’s ruling that all his subjects must adjust to a vegetarian diet because ‘love [between the animals] must prevail.’ Featuring a hundred or so mischievous, weirdly grizzled, wildly unDisneylike characters – whose naturalistic breathing and convincingly blurred movement are decades ahead of any other technique in this field until the advent of CGI – the entire 63-minute film was animated by Starewicz and his daughter Irène over an 18-month period. It was intended to be the first animated feature produced with sound, but difficulties with the soundtrack held up its release for nearly a decade. The work of an outstanding artist, yes, but also a film that could only have been made by a great scientist and naturalist.
Tim Lucas, Sight and Sound, August 2007
The Mascot
From the rolling credits:
In 1933 Ladislas and Irène Starewitch produced and directed a film of approximately 1000 meters initially entitled L.S. 18.
Under pressure from the distributors the length was greatly reduced, the film became Fétiche Mascotte, approximately 600 meters, distributed from 1934, first episode of a series.
In 1954 L. Starewitch designed Gueule de bois using footage from L.S. 18 not retained in Fétiche Mascotte.
Recently we undertook the reconstruction of the original film based on the several copies of Fétiche Mascotte distributed in the UK and USA, the negative of Gueule de bois and the outtakes preserved in the archives of L. and I. Starewitch.
In 2012 L.S. 18 regained its length and its 1933 editing, hence the title of Fétiche 33-12 presented for the first time to the public in the version initially designed by Ladislas and Irène Starewitch.
Translation of the missing subtitles
Musical, singing and spoken.
Living actors and puppets.
Story simply human and sentimental
With some mysterious visions,
Those that can be created by the feverish fantasy of a sick child.
Ladislas Starewitch, 1933
Mummy, I am thirsty
It’s too much, I am suffocating
Mum, is an orange very good?
Yes my darling.
I want one.
When I grow up I’ll buy an orange for you and for me…
…and for Fétiche too.
Buy my beautiful oranges, see these beautiful blood oranges, guaranteed no seeds!
Buy my beautiful oranges for 25 cents. Strength and health for 25 cents!
How many do you want my little lady?
Little scraps, come here to present yourself to your Majesty…
Abandon all hope, ye who enter!
THE MASCOT (FÉTICHE 33-12)
Director: Ladislaw Starewicz
Production Company: Gelmafilm
Script: Ladislaw Starewicz, Irina Starewicz
Music: Edouard Flament
France 1933
37 mins
Digital (restoration)
Copyright collection Martin-Starewicz
THE TALE OF THE FOX (LE ROMAN DE RENARD)
Directors: Ladislaw Starewicz, Irène Starewicz
Production Company: Ladislaw Starewicz
Producer: Louis Nalpas, Roger Richebé
Screenplay: Ladislaw Starewicz, Irène Starewicz
Adaptation: Roger Richebé
Dialogue: Jean Nohain, Antoinette Nordmann
Based on ‘Die reineke Fuchs’ by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Director of Photography: Ladislaw Starewicz
Animator: Ladislaw Starewicz, Irène Starewicz
Editor: Laura Séjourné
Production Designer: Ladislaw Starewicz
Music: Vincent Scotto
Music Director: Raymond Legrand
Voice Cast
Claude Dauphin (Monkey)
Romain Bouquet (Fox)
Sylvain Itkine (Wolf)
Léon Larive (Bear)
Robert Seller (Cock)
Edy Debray (Badger)
Nicolas Amato (Cat)
Suzy Dornac (Fox Cub)
Raine (Lion)
Pons (Donkey)
Sylvia Bataille (Rabbit)
France 1937
63 mins
Digital (restoration)
Copyright collection Martin-Starewicz
STOP MOTION: CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN
Fantastic Mr Fox
Thu 1 Aug 12:30; Fri 2 Aug 20:30; Sun 25 Aug 16:15
The Tale of the Fox Le Roman de Renard
Fri 2 Aug 18:15; Tue 13 Aug 20:30
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas
Sat 3 Aug 14:00; Thu 29 Aug 20:50
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
Sat 3 Aug 15:50; Sun 25 Aug 14:30 BFI IMAX; Fri 30 Aug 18:20
Frankenweenie
Sat 3 Aug 18:00; Sun 11 Aug 14:30 BFI IMAX; Fri 30 Aug 20:30
Jason and the Argonauts
Sun 4 Aug 12:10 (+ intro by Alan Friswell, conserver and restorer of Ray Harryhausen’s models); Wed 14 Aug 18:00
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Sun 4 Aug 14:50 (+ intro by Alan Friswell, conserver and restorer of Ray Harryhausen’s models); Wed 14 Aug 20:30
Chicken Run
Sun 4 Aug 13:00; Sat 24 Aug 11:40
The Emperor’s Nightingale Císaruv slavík
Sun 4 Aug 20:30; Tue 13 Aug 18:20
ParaNorman
Mon 5 Aug 12:20; Thu 15 Aug 12:10; Wed 28 Aug 12:20
The Boxtrolls
Tue 6 Aug 12:20; Mon 12 Aug 14:10; Sat 17 Aug 12:00
Journey to the Beginning of Time Cesta do praveku
Tue 6 Aug 20:30; Thu 22 Aug 18:30
Isle of Dogs
Wed 7 Aug 12:10; Sat 10 Aug 20:30; Sun 25 Aug 18:30
Kubo and the Two Strings
Thu 8 Aug 12:20; Sat 10 Aug 18:15 (+ Q&A with Travis Knight, director and President & CEO of LAIKA); Fri 30 Aug 12:20
Missing Link
Fri 9 Aug 12:30; Mon 26 Aug 15:20
Coraline
Fri 16 Aug 12:30; Sat 17 Aug 15:30; Wed 21 Aug 12:15; Thu 22 Aug 14:20
Stop-Motion Shorts Scene – BFI Backed + Q&A
Fri 16 Aug 18:10
Funday: Stop-Motion Children’s Favourites
Sun 18 Aug 12:20
Stopmotion + Q&A with director Robert Morgan
Wed 21 Aug 20:40
Aardman Shorts
Sat 24 Aug 14:30
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Tue 27 Aug 20:40
LAIKA: Frame x Frame
Embark on a journey behind the scenes of LAIKA, one of the world’s foremost pioneers in stop-motion animation. This immersive new exhibition will transport you into the boundary-pushing art and science behind every one of the nearly one million meticulously constructed frames that bring each of LAIKA’s five groundbreaking feature films to life.
Opens Mon 12 Aug
Thanks to Jez Stewart, BFI National Archive
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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