Fermé le lundi

It's the one-woman show of "Celia Crazelsnuk" that our visitor has come to view. It's supposed to be closed on Mondays, but armed with his bottle and a very limited knowledge of art - in he goes! There are paintings and there are sculptures - and when they start to come alive it gives him (and us) an opportunity to see some vibrant and quite emotional animations. These work well offering quite a wide variety of subject matter and even a very talkative robot, but it's the stop-motion of the man himself that's most impressive. The facial expressions and muscle definition is worthy or Ray Harryhausen himself. I loved the ending, too!

To clear the record and correct you all. Bob Gardiner wrote, directed, and made Closed Mondays and California Raisons. Vinton claimed both films along with many others that Gardiner made. Vinton in no small way contributed to Gardiner's decline in later years and helped to cut down one of the greatest minds in the history of stop motion animation. Vinton was a partner in these projects, but its Gardiner's vision and execution that gave the world these films. Please, if you are to discuss these films further, give Bob Gardiner the credit he deserves and thank him, not Vinton, for Closed Mondays. Thank you for time and enjoy this great piece of stop motion animation.

It's been 25 years since Closed Mondays was released, and at least 20 since I've seen it... so my fond memories of this short are a testament to it's lasting impact. I too lament it's unavailability on video. I just saw the Wallace and Gromit series, and would love to see Closed Mondays again to remember all the little details.

I've always preferred traditional animation to stop-motion/claymation. Whether it's Wilfred Jackson's 'The Old Mill (1937)' or Chuck Jones' 'What's Opera, Doc?,' classic animation indefinitely retains its timelessness and the ability to transport the viewer into a visual dimension entirely different from our own. When done correctly, claymation can, of course, be equally effective, but I didn't find this to be the case in 'Closed Mondays (1974),' an Oscar-winning short directed by Bob Gardiner and Will Vinton. When I looked at the old man in the art gallery, I wasn't transported into the film's world, but, rather, I recognised the character as a mass of shifting clay – several inches in height – and grimaced wryly as he shuffled across the floor in a completely awkward and unrealistic gait. The film contains some interesting ideas, but the animation is accomplished so clumsily that I was barred from entering its world; if films like 'A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit (1989)' and 'Harvie Krumpet (2004)' were able to avoid these complications, then I'm less willing to cut this one some slack.

Nevertheless, I was certainly impressed with what 'Close Mondays' had to say about the nature of art. To consider each picture frame as a window into another world, filled with animate people and objects, is to add a new dimension to how one critically evaluates art. A masterpiece should possess the ability to make itself come to life before our eyes, and it is up to the viewer to contemplate the meaning of what we are seeing, and the events that might have led towards the image depicted in a painting. The frame of the lonely maid, forever condemned to solemnly scrub the cold stone floor, is almost heartbreaking in its poignancy; if only the remainder of the artworks were just as meaningful {I'm still trying to decide what that metamorphic super-computer was all about}. And, of course, I enjoyed the ending, confirming that behind every piece of art there is considerably more than initially meets the eye, an entire story just waiting to be told… even if nobody is watching.

A drunk finds an open door at an art gallery which is usually - for apparently very good reasons - CLOSED MONDAYS.

With this ingenious little cartoon, Will Vinton and his talented artists announced that they had entered the animation world in a big way. Their Claymation magic was able to ring the subtlest changes of emotion and bring out nuances of character remarkable for three dimensional props. As here, where the old inebriate finds himself drawn into the secret life of the various exhibits, so the viewers find themselves falling into a suspension of disbelief both rational & expectant.

Winner of the 1974 Oscar for Best Animated Short.