La linea

Fine Art of Simplicity. It might be exaggerated comparing it to invention of wheel or wedge, but it is easily yet another example of achieving greatness through simplicity.

Each of the less than 3 minutes long shorts is initiated and terminated one-dimensionally, restricted to a single line (la linea in Italian), while the middle part gets more "complex", both visually and aurally, thanks to the noisy little fellow whose two-dimensional adventures we're in to follow.

Moody little chap is a collection of extremes. Redrawn (reborn!) at the start of each new episode, enthusiastic about his (coming to) existence, stretching and happily sighing out of contentment, not before long he's, at first curious about, then eventually puzzled with, and finally upset with the usual absence of the line ahead, finding himself either irritated or delighted with the easily recognizable line gap-filling shape, subsequently outlined, or alternatively deleted by the only other permanently accompanying character, pencil-holding hand, apparently belonging to his author, Osvaldo Cavandoli.

When annoyed, The Line (La linea) bitterly complains, angrily mumbling inarticulate words, that - not only due to their forte-to-fortissimo dynamics - easily sound like scrambled Italian, a native language of his author. However, when happy "with his new (drawn) toy" he childishly vocalizes in falsetto voice, or murmurs his simple tune. Easy to please, even easier to displease, his vocal repertoire includes sweetest humming and the loudest of laughter, pouting noise and mockery... to name a few.

Palette of background colours provide for the whole spectrum of mood changes: from happy serenity of (nature's) green, carefree tranquility painted in light blue, via suspicious hesitance reflected on the deep blue (sea), through the whole scale of intense feelings (anywhere from unpleasant surprise to utmost infuriation) backed by range of red tones, while darker gray tones, culminating in black, add up to troublesome, occasionally fearsome, eventually gruesome moments of difficulty or "serious" disaster, with expected final comic relief.

Of course, extensive continuous watching might be end-impression counterproductive. Therefore, it should be consumed as a medicine, in small portions, an episode or two at the time. Ideal as an entertaining time filler, to keep the (TV) program schedule accurate.

Oh yes, there *are* plenty of real words in there, not in every episode but - according to my impression - in more than half of them, one key word comes near the beginning as part of setting the basic scene, like when he starts to interact with an object - international words which everyone will recognise, like 'love', 'microphone' or 'umbrella', and the Italian numbers one to five for fingers as they appear one by one, and so on.

A fascinating link with the Italian and French traditions of mime. Another example of a (feature) film which doesn't depend on language and works internationally is Tage Danielsson's 'The Adventures of Picasso' - Swedish, but also distributed in America and Hungary at least: in the subtitles of the Hungarian DVD version each language is shown in a different colour, there are 10 of them including Latin, but you don't need to understand any of them to follow what's happening and how people are reacting.

This show was sent on children's TV in Norway (under the name "Streken" ("The Line")), and is therefore of nostalgic value to me. When I recently came by some online videos of this old cartoon, I discovered that La Linea can still be funny.

I like this show, it's brilliantly put together: The simplexly drawn character and his environments and the constant drawing hand interfering the history.

The plot is quite trite. The little guy walks on a straight line and runs into various problems (such as a hole in the ground or an object he can play with). If there's an obstacle, the cartoon yells at the drawer, and he (the drawer) promptly draws a solution. A lot of nonsense happens in the episodes, and it doesn't seem to always be any clear red lines the story follows.

The little fellow is enormously moody; he gets angry very easily, but is just as quick happy again if he likes the solution the cartoonist draws him. It's interesting how the background colour changes depending on La Linea's mood (blue when happy, red when angry).

Although the show originally is Italian (the creator is Italian), it works in every language. As far as I know, La Linea doesn't speak any actual words, but my rediscovery of him made me aware that he babbles with an Italian accent.

La Linea, never listed in the television schedules (at least not here in Britain), occasionally popped up as a filler during the school holidays, and good Lord, it was completely weird. Against a bright, primary coloured background, a human hand drew the outline of a big-nosed, bad-tempered, constantly squawking little man, whose strange 'adventures' always started out well, but then bad things began to happen to him well before the end. I remember him having half his face shot off and being tormented by a monkey in a palm tree, with that unsettling bass-voiced "Ah yom be dom, a yom be dom" scat-singing going on in the background all the while. It was a warped precursor to the 'Mr Bill' shorts made famous by Saturday Night Live, if you like. La Linea has recently been released on DVD, but a little of this stuff goes a long way. Don't overindulge.