Fétiche

A brilliant animated piece that was far ahead of its time, and certainly far ahead of anything that was being released in mass production at the same point in history. The influence of this work upon Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas" is readily apparent. One can only imagine how Starewicz slaved over every beautifully detailed frame of this masterpiece.

There have been very few animated films of this caliber. It's a shame that more people haven't seen this gem.

Apparently, IMdB now requires comments to be at least ten lines long, so this is the tenth line. This must be something new - but I really don't have anything else to say!

If any one feature demonstrates as far as possible Wladyslaw Starewicz's wide range of talents, this might be it. "The Mascot" seamlessly combines top-quality puppet animation with live action; it tells a tale with some humor, some horror, and some humanity; and it does it all with a vivid sense of imagination. At the height of the action, there is a constant succession of detailed images at the same time that the story reaches its peak of suspense.

The story follows a toy dog through an odyssey to fulfill a young child's request. The basic story line would be interesting enough, though now pretty familiar from many similar stories by lesser lights. But it is fleshed out by such an imaginative array of creatures and settings that the only possible way to appreciate it is to see it. The detail is extraordinary, especially since each detail in many of the frames had to be done carefully by hand. Many of the details are quite amusing, while others are sinister, bizarre, or just plain interesting. Nor does Starewicz resort to tired or obvious devices in order to impress - the closer you look, the more you see.

While this is certainly not a children's movie, in every other respect it is more impressive and more interesting than any of the animated features from the computer imagery era. For anyone who enjoys classic cinema, it's not to be missed.

There is a complete copy now available at the Internet Archive - watch it or download it today!

http://www.archive.org/details/The_Mascot_Complete

One of the greatest animated shorts ever made. Starewicz is endlessly inventive and his techniques still astound animation fans 70 years later. We may have computer-generated techniques now, but all he had in 1934 was an imagination that wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Whatever he wanted to see on the screen, he created.

And he wanted to see some truly bizarre stuff - every imaginable piece of scrap is called up for service: old shoes, chicken bones, utensils, broken glasses, dolls, monkeys, rats....seems like there was nothing that was off limits.

A truly eerie, even unsettling film that should be seen by anyone with even a passing interest in animation. This film must be seen to be believed!

It seems likely that anyone who takes the trouble to post a comment on this obscure little masterpiece would be fascinated and entranced by it, as I am, and the previous comments bear that out. It is true that some of the human types portrayed by the puppet figures are distinctly European, but I don't think that makes them inaccessible to non-Europeans. It does, however, add an exotic, foreign cachet for a viewer unfamiliar with European culture, which from my American perspective only enhances the viewing experience. Some of this comes from the musical soundtrack, which has a distinctively French style and tone quality, and attaches signature tunes, or "leitmotivs" as the Wagnerians would have it, to certain characters. Some of these melodies are very old tunes that immediately evoke a state of mind, human emotion, or character trait to go with its subject in the film. The romantic serenade that the garlic-headed clown sings to the weeping ballerina is a venerated old French art song called "Plaisir d'amour" by Johann Paul A Martini. Probably the only way that last sentence can make much sense to you is if you've actually seen this film.

For me one of the most interesting characters is a type of French gangster made universally recognizable by the famous "apache" dance, a brutal but nonetheless charismatic hoodlum whose pockets are filled with deadly weapons and burglary tools. He treats everyone, including women, with violent contempt, even double-crossing Satan himself. His appearances are invariably accompanied by a jaunty tune on the saxophone portraying him as a nasty, but inexplicably attractive, thug. The apache image is emphasized when he disdainfully throws his sometimes girlfriend, the delicate and emotionally fragile ballerina, against a wall!

The hapless ballerina is emotionally overwhelmed by everything, and is thus subject to the random cruelties of circumstance and the whims of those around her. Her only proactive gesture is to slap the face of a sex-crazed monkey who makes advances towards her, demonstrating that even she has some standards.

There are so many details and aspects of this film to ponder and appreciate that I find it endlessly fascinating, and never tire of watching it. Consider how laborious it must have been to actually create these scenes in the absence of all the modern imaging techniques available today. Every detail must have been meticulously planned before the first frame of a scene was shot, as stop-action animation is hardly a medium for improvisation. Just conceiving of all these details of characterization through action, character design, set design, lighting, etc. must have been a Herculean effort. I'm grateful that Starevitch and his people took the trouble, for all these years later we have a bona fide masterpiece to enjoy. "The Mascot" is an under-appreciated treasure trove of imagination and artistry.

I agree with most of Mr. Rivera's comments, and I just want to ad a couple of caveats. This film, "The Mascot" is criminally neglected in its current form. For that matter, so is "Vampyr". "The Mascot" isn't a "bonus feature"-- it's tacked on as a chapter in "Vampyr". Even though it's made very clear that this is a separate movie, it should have been treated as such by the manufacturers. And while I"m at it, "Vampyr" needs some of that same respect and cleaning up as well. I got the feeling the decision to put The Mascot on there went something like this.

Dude A: "We just transferred Vampyr to DVD, but it comes up about 20 minutes short. We need to put something on there that won't cost much money. Can you believe film critics want to be paid to talk about films!" Dude B: "Not to worry. I have this little animation thingy that's been sitting in my drawer. Just go ahead and throw it on as an additional chapter." Dude A: "You're awesome, Dude B." The animation's of The Mascot is great, and there's no need for me to repeat what Mr. Rivera's done so well. However, this thing needs some major cleaning and restoring, especially the audio. The plot comes through in the dialogue. And in my copy there were so many hisses, pops and places where the sound just dropped right off (I would have had no idea what the dog was going after without having read the box). No amount of volume was going to make the words more understandable, it just brought up the tinniness and made the hisses and pops louder.

Bottom line is: Starewicz's films need to be put into a respectful collection, cleaned up, spiffed up, liner notes and the whole nine yards. In other words, they need to be "Criterionized" 9 out of 10 for the movie, not the product which would get only a 5.