Il barone di Münchhausen

I don't see how anyone will ever top Karel Zeman's version of this story. It's unfortunate that it is so difficult to find. It has a beautiful score and the execution of the animation and visual effects are flawless. Zeman's artwork is quite amazing and is the grandfather of the look in films that was yet to come with the advent of CGI. He combines animation, matte paintings and stop-motion puppets to create the world of Baron Prasil or Baron Munchausen if you saw it in the United States. Released to laserdisc back in 1989, it is now only available on Japanese Region 2 NTSC DVD. I managed to get a copy but it is not dubbed or subtitled into English but that's okay because in a Karel Zeman movie, the visuals ARE the story so you can probably figure out what is happening without understanding the dialogue. Some people consider this to be Zeman's finest film. I have a hard time deciding if I like this one better than INVENTION OF DESTRUCTION or JOURNEY TO PRIMEVAL AGES. In any case, it's a remarkable and unique film so catch it if you can.

By now, nearly everyone should be familiar with the Munchausen story or, at least, some portion of it even if shi didn't grown up on these German drinking boasts which got way out of hand.

This is not the first or last treatment of the braggart Baron, but this version has a charm that many others lack.

The film is shot, predominantly in sepia tone with occasional bits in exaggerated color for artistic emphasis. Those who recall the pink coat in Schindler's List will have some idea of what is happening. But, in this case, the effect is not so much an attempt to indicate a major event that was necessarily slighted in the film. Rather, it helps to emphasize the aspects of the fantastic and the fairy tale romanticism that the director is emphasizing.

The live actors are shot against an animated background and are often blithely unaware of the fantastic things that are sweeping around them while they concern themselves with the essentially silly issues of their lives. This is Czech animation which seems rather exotic to those of us raised on Disney-esque 'realism'. Still, it's stylism adds a charm to the film that helps to reinforce the multiple layers that the director has built into this piece.

You should not attempt to become involved in the film so much as to sit back and marvel at the world that is passing unobserved by those passing through it.

When it has finished,you will want to watch it again and again to catch how all the different visual layers interact in your mind if not on the screen.

If I had to compare this effect to any other film, I suppose I would choose the way that Altman weaves the foreground and background into the midground in "M*A*S*H", though the two films are very different and have completely different statements about the world.

This is a fantasy and it is truly fantastic, but only on an adult level. Children will have many questions that all come down to 'why is it happening that way?' For children, fantasy is a chance to dream dreams and play games. This is a film for adults that has found an adult way to present the wit and contradiction of the original stories while acting out the ingenuousness of the characters' actions.

See this one. It deserves your attention.

Live action with stop-motion and puppet animation. A modern astronaut meets Baron Munchausen on the Moon after landing his spacecraft there. The entire film has a quaint, charming 19th-Century look, mood and feel, thanks to the Baron himself narrating the picture, and some of the most imaginative production design, special visual effects and movie sets ever put on celluloid. Like his previous film, The FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE (AN INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION), Zeman uses 19th-Century woodcut engravings modeled after those of Gustav Dore as his guides for most of the intricately-fashioned backdrops in this marvelous movie. Highly imaginative in every way possible, this film is like a turn-of-the-century Georges Melies nickelodeon reel in appearance, but has a mysterious, mystical, dreamlike quality which makes this look like a lurid, delightful dream. Often hilarious, it is full of humor, wit and charm. Zeman is clearly a master in control of his medium. One of his best films ever. Another film I would love to have on Video that is still inexplicably unavailable in America.

"Baron Munchausen" ("Baron Prasil" in Czech) is one of the most charming and poetic movies among those thousands which I saw ...

It is that very rare kind of movie I love to see for dozen and dozen of times, in virtually any mood and time ...

Old illustrations by Gustave Dore brought to life by an unforgettable visual imagination of Karel Zeman ...

Everything dressed in a soft melancholy of an enchanting music by great Zdenek Liska, so simple and sophisticated at the same time...

Though Zeman is mostly painting his magic world by his unique visual creativity, those able to understand the Czech dialogues get another lovely dimension, inhabited by fine jokes and never-tiring games with words...

And of course, Milos Kopecky as the Baron is the very symbol and soul of Munchausen ...

An essential classic movie for every true film fan (not recommended for nervous consumers and victims of Hollywood moneymakers, however).

How much those modern versions of Munchausen (and whatever are their modifications and names) miss the point of this magic Zeman's version: its fundamental visual craftsmanship, soft melancholy of a fable, an inspired music, and everything in a perfect union ...

How poor and tedious is 99.99% of that Hollywood stuff in comparison with this Zeman's masterpiece ...

No, they cannot do such a movie any more with all those naturalistic computer tricks, but a total lack of Karel Zeman's insight and visual poetry...

It begins with cosmonaut Rudolf Jellinek landing on the moon. He follows footprints which lead him to the gentlemen of Jules Verne's expedition. They introduce him to their seniors on the site: Cyrano de Bergerac and the Baron Munchausen. Munchausen takes the Moon Man (for so he must be) on a trip to the Earth in what appears to be the 18th century. There they rescue the fair princess Jana Brejchová from the Sultan of Turkey and go on a series of imaginative adventures.

It must have been a dangerous movie to produce in Czechoslovakia in 1962. It celebrates imagination. It's not even imagination in the service of anything except itself. It's the imagination of a boy, just looking up from his loved library of Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas and noticing girls for the first time. The set designs reinforce this. They look like Dore steel engravings, and the stock is toned, occasionally for what seems to be early two-strip Technicolor, with flashes of bright colors. Munchausen fights ten thousand bashi-bazouks; he flies about on cannonballs and dwells in a whale for months. He does whatever he pleases, as the fancy strikes him, and Jellinek follows along. Will he ever develop an imagination of his own?

It's clear to me that Terry Gilliam mined this movie extensive for his own MUNCHAUSEN; there are too many settings and incidents for it to be otherwise. He would have been 24 when it premiered in the US at Pacificon. I have no doubt that he saw it there and it left an impression in his mind at least as great as in my own.