Le roman de Renard

It took ten years to make it.I must confess I was not expecting much when I began to watch it.What?A puppet animated feature film from the thirties?For the kiddies??

"Le Roman de Renart" (it was originally a "t " ,for Renart was a proper noun;the old FRench word for fox was "goupil" ) is 65 minutes of constant innovation.Borrowing from La Fontaine his "Corbeau et le Renard " (the Raven and the Fox)and smartly integrating anachronisms (the dream of Renard :the tournament is given a live commentary treatment complete with microphone,the sentence which the Lion King (!)says when he's attacking Renart's fortress is from Napoleon in front of the pyramids.),Ladislas Larevich does not forget humor (the message the Lion King finds in his cassette)and by several respects it's also a musical: there is a frog chorus fifty years before Rupert the Bear (and Paul Mac Cartney),Italian serenades ..

It's very faithful to the spirit of the book:by no means a film for children (it would be interesting to watch a movie of that time targeted at the children market,if there were any),it's a work for the grown-ups like Grimault/Prévert's "Le Roi et L'Oiseau" or Dunning's "Yellow Submarine" .Yes,it's that much good.My favourite scene is when Renard has fallen to the bottom of the well and he pretends he is in Heaven: the pictures almost predate pop art and psychedelic state !The spoof on religion is always present ,the "love one another" becomes " don't eat one another" ,and the Lion King asks his subjects to go veggie (except for his royal majesty on Thursday and on Sunday);another stupefying scene shows the rabbit who begins to shake his small bells frenetically after having drunk the sacred wine (the blood of the Lord)in the church.

In France,it's completely forgotten.It's a buried treasure.

I watched this 1937 French stop-motion animated film last night on YouTube, and I thought it was a great film.

This film is also the second stop-motion animated film in animation history. The film is based on the old medieval stories of Reynard the Fox and all the tricks he plays with the animals in King Lion's court, who are trying to bring him to justice and whose punishment is being hung. You know, I could clearly see the inspiration for Disney's animated version of "Robin Hood," as well as the inspiration for the 2009 stop-motion animated film "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

Overall, I really enjoyed this film, and it is now one of my favorite foreign animated films.

I saw this last night as part of the Exeter animation festival. It was preceded by two great shorts, but nothing prepared me for the Tale of the Fox. You might expect stop-motion animation from 1930 to be stilted, with locked-off camera set-ups and slow, jerky animals with ruffling fur (see King Kong, for instance). Starewitch's (this, according to his grand-daughter's website, is the correct way to spell his name) characters are incredibly expressive, fast moving and dynamic, and he includes crash zooms, whip pans and close-ups to stunning effect. If you've studied animation before, you'll be blown away by the use of motion blur, and the compositing of animated creatures with seemingly flowing water, but for non-nerds there is a fast, very funny story to be enjoyed. The Tale of the Fox might just be the single greatest achievement in animation there has ever been. That includes Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Walt Disney and perhaps even Hayao Miyazaki.

I love this little gem of a film. It does deserve a place along side Snow White and the New Gulliver. I saw this quite by accident on Youtube and I am glad I did. I don't want to tell you anything about the story. Instead, read the great story it is based on. I read it in French. It is a refreshingly medieval take on morality, refreshing compared to the tales of Perraut or La Fontaine. Some here say the film can't be shown in the US because of some law or other forbidden the exhibiting of Nazi financed films. That could be, though I would find that very hard to believe as I saw both Triumph of the Will (at a theater in San Francisco) and Olympiad (on television-AMC I believe, though maybe not) in the USA. How more Nazi can you get than those two films and yet they are both distributed in the USA. So, to me, there should be no reason that this true, and joyful, classic should not be seen in the US. If not, see if you can see it on Youtube. It comes in six parts with English subtitles. There it is called 'Tale of the Fox.' Hope you can see it and laugh along.

Even in black and white, and years after it's been supplanted, stop-motion animation still impresses with the lush detail it's able to convey. The best movies rendered with graphics programs on a computer can tug at our heartstrings, but there's vivid, tangible life and texture in the meticulous frame by frame movement of figures and set pieces that is at least as awe-inspiring. It requires terrific imagination to produce any such feature, let alone a fable that anthropomorphizes animals and embraces pure fantastical whimsy. And that's just what we get in 'The story of the fox,' complete with a medieval setting and sometimes jarringly dark overtones. For various reasons this may not be for everyone, but one way or another there's no mistaking that this is a vibrant, dazzling viewing experience.

Inspired by classic folklore of the vulpine as a trickster figure, this treatment especially highlights the wily, sometimes cruel cunning. As it does, the picture bursts with wit, intelligence, and heart to build each scene and the overall story - figuratively and literally, as there are many small elements to painstakingly adjust from one shot to the next. All my congratulations to directors Ladislas and Irene Starevich, editor Laura Sejourné, and all others involved in the fundamental crafting of the picture: 'The story of the fox' is unquestionably a labor of love, and the hard effort shines through with rich, fanciful storytelling and film-making that stands tall and stands out even 85 years later.

Barely over 1 hour, the picture still arguably is a tad overlong, perhaps particularly at the climax. Nevertheless, the writing is excellent and whole, weaving in timeless archetypes, themes, and otherwise notions. Every square centimeter of the tableau laid before us, down to the slightest facet of a character's appearance, is considered and executed with utmost care. It's one matter to watch a Pixar film and recognize the 0s and 1s on the other side of the screen; it's another to see stop-motion animation and know there's not one scrap of the presentation that wasn't handmade, probably from scratch, and moved by hand. I feel like I'm repeating myself in saying so, yet that's just the point: most any film can tell an engaging story, as is true here as well, but the way in which the tale is told can make all the difference. This movie is simply a delight in every capacity.

For non-French speakers who don't care for subtitles, or for those whose personal preferences lie outside old titles or black and white imagery, some viewers may be better served seeking their entertainment elsewhere. Even for devoted cinephiles, I won't say that 'The story of the fox' is perfectly, absolutely enthralling. Yet it represents such a tremendous endeavor, and is so enjoyable on its own merits, that it's hard not to offer a blanket recommendation. It's not so essential that you need to go out of your way for it, but if you get the chance to watch this 1937 picture, it's well worth 62 minutes of your time.