In the twelve years since The Nightmare before Christmas, which was directed by Henry Selick but conceived by Tim Burton, stop-motion animation has become almost an endangered technique. The makers of new versions of King Kong and The Magic Roundabout, properties associated with ‘traditional’ dimensional animation, used CGI to bring their creatures to life. But now Burton has returned to frame-by-frame puppet manipulation with Corpse Bride, co-directed by Mike Johnson. Perhaps because he began his career (with the 1983 short Vincent) as an animator in the tradition of Ray Harryhausen (who gets a name-check in this as a make of piano), Burton retains a powerful affection for the technique and deems CGI (which he has used often) as just a tool.
The new film showcases the subtle effects the technique can manage, with texture and detail, lighting and costuming still beyond anything computers can achieve, and a satisfying physicality entirely apt in a tale so intent on the flesh. Like Edward Scissorhands, this is one of Burton’s more personal projects. The story has roots in a Russian folk tale, but the character designs are Burton’s (in partnership with Carlos Grangel), and the film is unmistakably set in a world that is wholly his rather than, say, partly Bob Kane’s, Roald Dahl’s or Washington Irving’s.
Burton’s visual influences are often noted: the cartoons of Charles Addams, the illustrated books of Edward Gorey, the expressionist stylings of Universal horror films, the bebop animations of Max and Dave Fleischer. Echoes of all these recur here, along with signature touches like the perky skeleton dog Scraps, exhumed from his cigar-box coffin and reunited with his former owner Victor (if you doubt how complex stop-motion ‘acting’ can be, note Scraps’ expression when Victor thoughtlessly asks him to ‘play dead’), and the decaying waif, voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, who is literally falling apart with yearning for the self-absorbed leading man. It is perhaps indicative of Bonham Carter’s increasing presence in Burton’s personal and artistic lives that in this film the marginalised living doll of Nightmare is promoted to active heroine as the eponymous corpse bride.
After the reassessment of parent-child relationships in the slightly syrupy Big Fish (2004), we are back to a world of grown-ups who don’t understand, with nastily amusing caricatures of both the social-climbing Van Dorts (voiced by Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse) and the decayed Mervyn Peake-style aristocratic Everglots (Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley). Burton’s love of horror-movie arcana surfaces in his casting of Christopher Lee and Michael Gough, antagonists in Hammer’s first Dracula, as parallel spiritual figures: respectively, the dry-as-dust, bullying pastor of the living world and the skeletal but humane elder of the dead.
As Burton has been saying since Beetle Juice (1988), the dead have more fun – or at least afford more opportunities for inventive sight gags. This film boasts a skeletal soldier with a cannonball-shaped hole in his ribcage, a dead Napoleon clone called General Bonesapart with a kiss-curl painted on the front of his skull and a head waiter who is nothing more than a severed head carried around by scuttling beetles. The graveyard humour that was so appealing in Nightmare returns in extremis: a hep-cat number is performed by a singing skeleton; the maggot that lives inside the heroine’s head (and often pops out of her eye sockets) poses briefly as a Jimmy Cricket-style conscience and then shows a face and voice modelled on the Warner Bros. cartoon version of Peter Lorre. But the film also works hard with its living characters. The hero’s demure fiancée Victoria, given vocal bite by Emily Watson, and the dastardly villain Barkis Bittern, purred smugly by Richard E. Grant, are figures from Wilkie Collins, lightly satirised but nicely rounded.
As with Pee-Wee Herman and Willy Wonka, Burton projects the image of someone too conscious of the not always admirably childish aspects of his nature to get on all that well with real children. Nightmare did manage to become some sort of holiday classic, but Corpse Bride might be a more fragile prospect. Could its title contain two more unappetising words for a young audience? Kids who chuckle at gruesome gags about decay might find the ‘bride’ bit most difficult to swallow. But it’s played with utmost sincerity. Like Beetle Juice, this has an interrupted wedding at its climax, with the dead freak not going through with entrapment of the living partner. Unusually, the Burton stand-in, voiced by Johnny Depp, represents normality, and the woman, albeit played by Mrs Burton, is the defiant and flamboyant outsider who must step aside to allow for a restoration of balance.
Kim Newman, Sight and Sound, November 2005
TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE
Directed by: Mike Johnson, Tim Burton
©/Production Company: Patalex II Productions Limited
Production Companies: Tim Burton Productions, Laika Entertainment
Presented by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Executive Producers: Jeffrey Auerbach, Joe Ranft
Produced by: Tim Burton, Allison Abbate
Associate Producers: Tracy Shaw, Derek Frey
Production Accountant: Jeffrey Broom
Production Co-ordinators: Victoria Bugs Hartley, Fleur Jago
Production Co-ordinator US: Sarah Faley, Dale A. Smith
Animation Co-ordinator: Portia Wilson
Production Manager: Harry Linden
Post-production Supervisor: Jessie Thiele
Post-production Co-ordinator: Katie Reynolds
1st Assistant Director: Ezra J. Sumner
Casting: Michelle Guish
Casting Associate: Gaby Kester
Screenplay: John August, Caroline Thompson, Pamela Pettler
Original Characters Created by: Tim Burton, Carlos Grangel
Head of Story: Jeffrey Lynch
Storyboard Artists: Chris Butler, Patrick Collins, Dean Roberts, Sharon Smith, David Stoten, Tim Watts
Additional Storyboard Artists: Alex Hillkurtz, Andreas Von Andrian, Alberto Mielgo, Brendan Houghton, Mike Cachuela, Matt Jones, Kaz
Character Designers: Jordi Grangel, Carles Burges, Huy Vu
Director of Photography: Pete Kozachik
Lighting Cameramen: Melissa Byers, Jamie Daniels, Stuart Galloway, Malcolm Hadley, Simon Jacobs, James Lewis, Simon Paul, Graham Pettit, Peter Sorg, Mark Stewart
Chief Lighting Technician: Clive Scott
Visual Effects Editor: William Campbell
Visual Effects Supervisor: Pete Kozachik
Visual Effects Consultant: Chris Watts
Visual Effects by: Moving Picture Company
Art Department (Modellers): Andy Baker, James Barr, Stevie Bettles, Alice Bird, Mick Chippington, Mark Cordory, Charles Fletcher, Mike Gould, Andrew Howard Green, Mark Gunning, Nicola Hatch, Chris Hepple, Valma Hiblen, Penny Howarth, Barry Jones, Oliver Jones, Clare Kinross, Amy Mabire, Ian MacCabe, Thecla Mallinson, Martin Mattingley, Cathy Maze, Steve McClure, Cormac McKee, Angela Pang, Wendy Payne, Gavin Richards, Steven Riley, Will Sumpter, Hilary Utting, Sarah Wells, Terry Whitehouse, Dan Wright
Art Department (Graphic Designer): Paul McBride
Character Colourist Art Department: Annie Elvin
Visual Development Artists: Simón Varela, Sean Mathiesen, Luc Desmarchelier
Animation Supervisor: Anthony Scott
Animators: Phil Dale, Brian Demoskoff, Drew Lightfoot, Charlotte Worsaae, Pete Dodd, Jo Chalkley, Mark Waring, Anthony Farquhar-Smith, Malcolm Lamont, Chris Stenner, Brad Schiff, Tim Watts, Jason Stalman, Brian Hansen, Matt Palmer, Chris Tichborne, Tim Allen, Tobias Fouracre, Trey Thomas, Jens Jonathan Gulliksen, Antony Elworthy, Mike Cottee, Stefano Cassini, Chris Tootell
2D Animators: Michael Schlingmann, Joris van Hulzen
Puppets Made by: MacKinnon & Saunders, Ian MacKinnon, Peter Saunders
Puppet Fabrication Supervisor: Graham G. Maiden
Puppet Co-ordinator: Libby Watson
Puppet Modeller (On-set Puppet Fabrication): Fiona Barty, Richard Blakey, Deborah Cook, Nigel Cornford, Georgie Everard, Michele Gelormini, Jonathan Grimshaw, Maggie Haden, Janet Knechtel, Thalia Lane, Andy Lee, Lara Lodato, Shannon O’Neill, Richard Pickersgill, Caroline Wallace, Adam Wright
Puppet Wrangler: Dan Pascall
Junior Puppet Wrangler: Trevor Poulsum
On-set Puppet Fabrication (Armatures): Merrick Cheney
Edited by: Jonathan Lucas, Chris Lebenzon
Production Designed by: Alex McDowell
Art Director: Nelson Lowry
Draughtsmen: Poppy Luard, Hannah Moseley
Digital Grade Supervisor: Begoña López
Colourist (Moving Picture Company): Max Horton
Score/Songs by: Danny Elfman
Score Conducted by: Nick Ingman
Supervising Orchestrator: Steve Bartek
Orchestrations: Edgardo Simone, David Slonaker
Supervising Music Programmer: Marc Mann
Score Programmer: Jake Jackson
Score/Songs Produced by: Danny Elfman
Music Editors: Michael Higham, Shie Rozow
Score Recorded/Mixed by: Dennis Sands
Sound Designers: Martin Cantwell, Steve Boeddeker
Production Mixers: Sandy Buchanan, Paul Langwade, Rupert Coulson
Re-recording Mixers: Michael Semanick, Mike Prestwood Smith, Chris Burdon
Supervising Sound Editor: Eddy Joseph
Dialogue Editors: Tony Currie, Colin Ritchie
Foley Supervisor: Harry Barnes
Foley Artists: Paul Hanks, Ian Waggot
Foley Mixer: Phillip Barrett
Foley Editor: Simon Chase
Production Consultants: Poster Pictures
Voice Cast
Johnny Depp (Victor Van Dort)
Helena Bonham Carter (Corpse Bride)
Emily Watson (Victoria Everglot)
Tracey Ullman (Nell Van Dort/Hildegarde)
Paul Whitehouse (William Van Dort/Mayhew/ Paul the head waiter)
Joanna Lumley (Maudeline Everglot)
Albert Finney (Finis Everglot)
Richard E. Grant (Lord Barkis Bittern)
Christopher Lee (Pastor Galswells)
Michael Gough (Elder Gutknecht)
Jane Horrocks (black widow spider/Mrs Plum)
Enn Reitel (maggot/town crier)
Deep Roy (General Bonesapart)
Danny Elfman (Bonejangles)
Stephen Ballantyne (Emil)
Lisa Kay (solemn village boy)
UK/USA 2005©
77 mins
Digital
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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