Tulips Shall Grow

Filmmaker and puppeteer George Pal remains a severely underrated legend in the realm of fantasy filmmaking. His films have remained fairly unknown yet were still prominent accomplishments in their own right. While I haven't seen many of his Puppetoon series, Tulips Shall Grow stands out for its fascinating anti war commentary.

This might have some of the most haunting imagery I've ever seen in a seemingly cutesy wutesy fairy tale. Pal did not shy away from depicting just how deadly the affects of WWII were to the general public, especially with him being a native Hungarian.

Hard to say what would happen if this short won its Best Animated Short Oscar, but it's certainly easy to imagine how much of an impact it would've continued to have.

The story begins in Holland in happy times, until a bunch of fascist war machines come in and destroy everything. A boy and girl are in the middle of it and experience incredible sadness. The arrival of the awful machines is really the high point (though violent) as the devastate the country.

February 1st was Hungarian animator/film producer/director George Pal's birthday, so I decided to include his Oscar-nominated "Puppetoon" shorts as part of my Academy Awards marathon: he actually received 7 such nods, but I only managed to locate 4 of these films. This begins as a fairly ordinary romance between a young couple, albeit in an atypical and appealing Dutch setting, but soon adopts an allegorical stance to effectively present a standard WWII theme. In fact, the peaceful village is overrun by mechanical "Screwballs" (obviously standing in for the Nazis); despite the extensive damage done to the land, the tulip (the country's national flower) still grows and even forms a victory sign in defiance at the end!

A young boy and girl, dressed in costumes based on Dutch traditional clothes, find their idyllic, windmill-laden countryside is being over-run by unfeeling, unthinking mechanical men that lay waste to everything in their path.

Some have said this is a propaganda film, albeit a very good one. And that is true. But what is the message? Jan and Janette are not fighting the Screwballs, but merely just trying to live their happy lives. If the message is anything, it is that happiness is eternal, hardly something that would be considered a propaganda message.

I absolutely love the skill involved. I don't know if this is stop motion (though I assume it must be). Quite possibly this was the finest work of its kind in the 1940s.

For no other reason than curiosity, I have watched all the short animated films nominated for the Oscar in the 15th Academy Awards. Most of them (including the winning film) are propaganda pieces and this includes Tulips Shall Grow which is a very specific one. The film is targeted towards the resistance in Holland during the occupation and, although it is not light in its touch, it is a more engaging message than some of the other propaganda films which are heavy on the criticism of the enemy and the glorification of the home nation. Of course I understand why such films are this way, but it is nice that this is a little different.

The difference is that the message is one of resilience, survival and resistance – not one of dominance or mockery and for the time and situation this is more appropriate and also more palatable as a message. The film is simple; done in stop-motion we see Holland attached by machines which destroy the images that we are used to seeing (windmills, clogs and of course tulips). The victory does come of course but I additionally liked that it was a victory that was brought about more or less by the very things that makes Holland be Holland – the elements, the nature, the conditions. The symbolism is very obvious but it is effective and it is a nice message from the film and one that I personally prefer to some of the more flag-waving shorts in the same category, even if technically several of the other animated shorts are better than this one.

So it is still another propaganda piece but it is a nice change of pace that it has a message of resistance rather than dominance and it was refreshingly free of flag waving and the like.