Jiří Trnka

Jiří Trnka (24 February 1912 in Pilsen – 30 December 1969 in Prague) was a Czech illustrator, set designer and director of animated films. In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books, he is known above all for his work in puppet animation, which began in 1946: throughout his career, he directed more than twenty films, including six feature films, which established what was later called the "Czech style" of animation. His work in this field exerted an undeniable influence on other filmmakers. Most of his films were aimed at adult audiences, and many of them were adaptations of literary works, by Czech or foreign authors. Due to his singular relevance in the history of animated cinema, he was called "the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe", despite the great differences between his work and that of the famous American animator.

Formative years

Residing in Pilsen, western Bohemia, the Trnka belonged to the middle class. Although the father was a plumber, and the mother a dressmaker, both remained very close to their peasant origins, and highly valued woodworking. As a child, the young Jiří enjoyed carving wooden puppets and putting on small shows for his friends.

Later he attended classes at a professional training school in his hometown, where he had the sympathy and support of his teacher Josef Skupa, who over time would become a leading personality in the world of Czech puppeteers. Skupa mentored her, entrusted her with certain responsibilities, and managed to convince her family, who were initially reluctant for Jiří to embark on an artistic career, to allow her to enroll in the prestigious Prague School of Applied Arts (what is today the Academy of Architecture, Art and Design in Prague), where he completed his apprenticeship between 1929 and 1935.

However, the young man had to pay for his studies, which is why he worked at the same time in the engraving workshop of another of his teachers, Jaroslav Benda.

Career as an Illustrator

With the training he received at the art school, and the experience that his work in the engraving workshop provided him, Trnka very soon began a brilliant career as an illustrator. He was hired by the Melantrich publishing house, in Prague, and the first work he illustrated was Mr. Boška's Tiger , by Vítezslaw Šmejc, which was published in 1937.

Since then, Trnka has illustrated numerous children's books. Throughout his life, he was involved as an illustrator in some 130 works, the majority of children's literature. His illustrations for the tales of the Grimm brothers, as well as for collections of traditional Czech tales by authors such as Jirí Horák and Jan Pálenícek, were especially celebrated. Also related to the folklore of his country are his illustrations for Bajaja , by Vladimír Holan, published in 1955, and which would be the starting point for a later animated feature film. In addition to those mentioned, Trnka illustrated, among many other books, the stories of Andersen and Perrault, the fables of La Fontaine, The Thousand and One Nights, several works by Shakespeare, and Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Many of his works are true classics of children's literature: many children have grown up reading the adventures of Micha the bear, written by Josef Menzel and illustrated by Trnka. For the whole of his career as an illustrator, he was awarded the 1968 Hans Christian Andersen Award by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).

In some cases, his work as an illustrator gave him the ideas for making animated films, as happened with Bajaja, or Sen noci svatojanske ( A Midsummer Night's Dream).

The master of Czech animation

Beginnings

Trnka, passionate about puppets since his childhood, formed his own puppet theater in 1936, although it did not last long. Several years later, at the end of World War II, he founded with Eduard Hofman and Jiří Brdečka a real animation studio, called Bratři v Triku. He began his activity in the studio by making some cartoon short films on celluloid: Zasadil dědek řepu ( Grandfather planted a beetroot , 1945); Zvířátka a petrovští (Animals and Bandits, 1946), awarded at the first Cannes Film Festival; Pérák a SS (The Jumper and the SS Men, 1946), an anti-Nazi film; and Dárek (The Gift, 1946), a satire on the values of the middle class with an experimental tone close to surrealism. Despite the undeniable value of these early Trnka films, and the international recognition they brought him, the author was not comfortable with traditional animation, which in his opinion required too many intermediaries, preventing him from freely expressing his creativity. In the autumn of 1946 the possibility of making animated films with puppets was raised for the first time, and he began to experiment with the help of Břetislav Pojar.

First feature films (1947-1950).

The result was his first feature film, the film Špaliček ("The Czech Year", 1947), based on a book illustrated by Mikoláš Aleš. The film is made up of six short films, in which the legends and customs of their country are brilliantly staged, taking the seasons of the year as the plot line: carnival (Masopust), spring (Jaro), the legend of Saint Procopius (Legenda o svatem Prokopu), the procession (Pout), village festival (Posviceni), and the nativity scene (Betlem). The film drew critical attention to Czech animated cinema and was awarded at numerous international festivals, including Venice.

From 1948, Trnka's studios began to receive state subsidies. The next film they produced was Cisaruv slavík ("The Emperor's Nightingale", 1949), based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Unlike the previous one, it is a true feature film, with a plot unit. Real actors also took part in the film (two children, Jaromir Sobota and Helena Patrocková), although only in the prologue that precedes the story itself. The puppets and sets are markedly different from those of the previous film, given the story's setting in an idealized imperial China. Cisaruv slavík also won numerous awards at international festivals in Europe and America.

Throughout 1949, Trnka also made three short films with animated dolls: Román s basou ("Historia de un contrabajo", or "Novel with double bass& #34;), adaptation of a short story by Anton Chekhov; Certuv mlýn ("The Devil's Mill"); and Arie prerie ("Song of the Prairie"), a parody western loosely inspired by John Ford's Stagecoach. This allowed her to perfect his animation technique and style.

The following year, Trnka produced his third puppet-animated feature film, Bajaja ("Prince Bayaya", 1950), based on two short stories by writer Bozena Nemcová. Set in a fantastic Middle Ages, it is the story of a peasant who manages to become a knight, defeat a dragon and win the love of a princess.

The Fifties

During the first half of the following decade, Trnka experimented with other animation procedures in his short films. He returned to cartoons with O zlaté rybce (& # 34; The Golden Fish & # 34;, 1951), and animated shadow plays in Dva mrazíci (1953). In Veselý Circus (& # 34; The Merry Circus & # 34;, 1951) he employed the stop-motion technique with two-dimensional paper cutouts. He did not neglect, however, the production of animated puppet films. Apparently, for a time he had the project of shooting a film about Don Quixote, but the project was not well received by the Czechoslovak authorities. In 1953 he released Staré povesti ceské ("Old Czech Legends", 1953), his fourth full-length film. Like Spalicek , his first feature film, Staré povesti ceské is structured in several episodes (seven) that narrate the legendary history of the Czech people. The film is the result of the adaptation of a work by Alois Jirásek (1851-1930), very popular among young Czechs, and has an obvious patriotic tone.

In the same vein of exploring the classics of Czech literature, in 1955 Trnka faced the challenge of adapting to the screen an immensely popular work, the anti-war satire The Good Soldier Švejk, by Jaroslav Hašek. There were already film adaptations of this work made with real actors at that time, but Trnka was the first to make an animated film about the character. For the construction of his puppets, he was inspired by the illustrations that Josef Lada had made for the original book, which in the popular imagination were closely associated with Hašek's characters. The film, humorous in tone, is divided into three episodes, which recount Švejk's grotesque adventures during the First World War. It is not considered one of Trnka's best works, despite which, as was usual in the Czech filmmaker's productions, it received several awards at festivals.

In 1959 Trnka shot his last feature film: Sen noci svatojanske ("A Midsummer Night's Dream", 1959), an adaptation of one of William's most famous works Shakespeare. Trnka had previously illustrated this work, which she knew well. In his adaptation, he focused not only on the image, but also on the music of Václav Trojan, and he strove to give the film a ballet air, for which he even hired a prestigious dancer as a consultant. The dolls used in the film were not made of wood, but of a specially manufactured plastic, which allowed greater detail in the modeling of the faces. Although it was not spared from some criticism, Sen noci svatojanske it was a resounding international success and is recognized as one of Trnka's masterpieces.

The sixties

Jiří Trnka tomb in the Central Cemetery in Pilsen

During the following decade, the filmmaker made only a few short films, which gradually colored his work with a pessimistic tone. The first of them was Vásen (& # 34; The Passion & # 34;, 1962), the story of a young man passionate about his motorcycle. He followed, that same year, Kybernetická babicka (& # 34; The cybernetic grandmother & # 34;), a satire against the growing importance of technology in everyday life. Archandel Gabriel a paní Husa ("The Archangel Gabriel and Mrs. Goose", 1964), set in medieval Venice, adapts one of the tales from the Decameron of Boccaccio.

His artistic testament is considered to be the short film Ruka ("La mano", 1965), the last shot by the filmmaker. In Bendazzi's words, Ruka is "a kind of rabid hymn to creative freedom". In the short film, a sculptor is visited by a huge hand, which demands the realization of a sculpture of herself. When the artist rejects the imposition, he is constantly persecuted by the hand, which ends up inducing him to commit suicide and even officiating his funeral. This last short film by Trnka is considered a protest against the conditions imposed by the Czechoslovak communist state on artistic creation, and some have even seen in it an anticipation of the so-called Prague Spring. Although the film did not initially have problems with the censorship (which the author blamed on simple carelessness or ignorance), after Trnka's death the copies were confiscated and banned from public display in Czechoslovakia for two decades.

Jiří Trnka died of a heart condition in 1969, when he was only 57 years old. His funeral was a huge public event.

Animation techniques

Throughout his career Trnka experimented with different animation techniques, from traditional cartoons, in his early shorts, to shadow play animation. However, his favorite method, and the one that brought him worldwide fame, was the so-called stop-motion animation with puppets. Actually, Trnka was not in charge of the animation itself, but mainly of the elaboration of the scripts and the manufacture of the puppets. His studio had a well-trained team of animators, most notably Břetislav Pojar, credited as being responsible for the animation of many of Trnka's films, and who would later go on to have a remarkable career as a director. Other prominent animators of Trnka's studios included Stanislav Látal, Jan Karpas, Bohuslav Srámek, Zdenek Hrabe and Frantisek Braun, to name just a few.

Although animated films with dolls had already been made before Trnka, he was responsible for the main impulse behind this technique, which would later be used in many parts of the world. Unlike what had been done before, Trnka preferred not to alter the physiognomy of the dolls with false elements to denote their emotions, but to keep it unchanged, achieving its expressiveness through changes in framing and lighting. According to Pojar:

He always gave his eyes an indefinable look. With the simple twist of their heads, or with a change of light, they gained smiling expressions, or unhappy, or dreamers. This gave one the impression that the doll hid more than he showed, and that his wooden heart even stored more.

The scripts for the films were also the work of Trnka himself, who frequently used works by Czech authors (many of them related to popular folklore), as well as classic authors of universal literature, such as Chekhov, Boccaccio or Shakespeare.

In Trnka's animated films, music also played an important role. In all of his feature films and in several of his shorts, the composer of the music was Vaclav Trojan (1905-1983).

Other activities: theater, painting, sculpture.

National Theatre of Prague.

In the late 1930s, Trnka formed his own puppet theater, the Dřevěné divadlo ("Wooden Theatre"), but had to dissolve it shortly before the start of World War II. Never losing sight of his interest in puppets, Trnka also had the opportunity to demonstrate his talent in the theater with live actors when he worked as a set designer for the National Theater in Prague, between 1941 and 1944, during the German occupation, before starting his successful film career. Following the prestigious national tradition, he created numerous sets and costumes, and participated in the staging of works by Plauto, Carlo Goldoni, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega and Franz Grillparzer. Later he also worked designing sets for Czech films with live actors.

Although his pictorial work is little known outside his country, Trnka painted dozens of oil paintings and watercolors on the most diverse subjects. His portraits are especially important. As if he were fascinated by his own image, he periodically painted his self-portrait (for example, in 1933, 1935, 1944, 1945, 1955 or 1966). Many of these works are currently on display at the National Gallery in Prague. Nor is the universe of stories and legends alien to his pictorial work, which was so important in his work as an illustrator and filmmaker. He also painted several winter passages, which may recall those of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, as well as still lifes, ballet dancers, and variations on the theme of the Commedia dell'arte. He even has some works related to surrealism.

Accustomed to working with wood since childhood, Trnka alternated periods in his career dedicated to animation with others dedicated to sculpture, which interested him especially at the end of his life. Some 50 of his sculptures have survived, generally small in size (30, 50 or 80 cm), in which he carried out intense aesthetic research.

International recognition

Throughout his career, apart from his work in other artistic disciplines, Trnka directed 22 films, of which 6 are feature films. His cinematographic works were awarded at numerous festivals, such as Cannes, Venice, Locarno, London, Edinburgh, Montevideo, Bucharest, Paris, Oberhausen and Karlovy Vary. In total, Trnka's films received no less than 50 international awards.

Many great intellectuals and artists were admirers of his work: among them the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the French writer and film director Jean Cocteau, the film historian Georges Sadoul, the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg, and the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet.

On the occasion of his success at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival with the film Sen noci svatojanske, a British critic called Trnka "the Walt Disney of the East," a nickname which, although debatable, made a fortune, and has been applied to it on numerous occasions. Western viewers discovered Trnka's work only from the 1960s; since then, he has been internationally considered the leading representative of Czech animation. He was commissioned on two occasions to decorate the Czech pavilion at a Universal Exposition: in Brussels, in 1958, and in Montreal, in 1967. For the latter, he conceived two notable creations: the "Toy Tree"; and the "Tree of stories". Also in 1967 he was appointed a professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, the same school in which he had studied in his youth.

Trnka's inheritance

Jiří Trnka's work has influenced many other Czech animators, such as Stanislas Látal, Jan Karpaš and, above all, Břetislav Pojar, who worked in his studio.

Japanese Kihachirō Kawamoto —one of the main current references in stop-motion animation— also does not hide what he owes to his Czech mentor, with whom he worked around 1963.

As one of his daughters, Zuzana Ceplova, lamented in a radio interview, Trnka's animated films seem to have lost popularity, even though they are occasionally broadcast on television or have retrospectives dedicated to him (as happened in 2003 at the Festival Annecy, or in 2005, at the Quebec Cinematheque). Ceplova admits that her works may seem unrealistic, and even out-of-date, to today's viewers, but she thinks that her work will be rediscovered in the future, recalling that generations of children have learned about Grimm's or Andersen's tales mainly through his father's illustrations.

Filmography

Only those films were directed by Trnka. All films are animated with dolls, except when otherwise indicated.

Short Films

• Zasadil dedek repu ("The grandfather planted a beetle," 1945). Cartoons.
• Zvírátka a petrovstí ("The Animals and the Bandits", 1946). Cartoons.
• Pérák to SS ("The Jumper and the Men of the SS",1946). Cartoons.
• Dárek ("The Gift", 1946). Cartoons.
• Román s basou ("History of a Contrast", 1949).
• Certuv mlýn ("The Devil Mill", 1949).
• Arie prerie ("Canción de la pradera", 1949).
• O zlaté rybce ("The Golden Fish", 1951). Cartoons.
• Veselý cirkus ("The Joyful Circus", 1951).
• Dva mrazíci (1953). Chinese shadows.
• Cirkus Hurvínek ("The Circus Hurvínek", 1955).
• Proč UNESCO? ("Why UNESCO?", 1958).
• Go ("The Passion", 1962).
• Kybernetická babicka ("The Cybernetic Grandma," 1962).
• Archandel Gabriel to Paní Husa ("Archangel Gabriel and Mrs. Oca", 1964).
• Maxplatte, Maxplatten (1965)
• Ruka ("The Hand", 1965).

Feature films

• Spalicek ("The Czech Year," 1947)
• Císařův slavík ("The Emperor's Nightingale", 1949)
• Lower ("Prince Bayaya", 1950)
• Staré povesti ceské ("Ancient Czech Legends", 1953)
• Dobrý voják Svejk ("Good soldier Svejk", 1955)
• Sen noci svatojanske ("The Dream of a Summer Night", 1959)

DVD Editions

• The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka (1951) (2000). Includes feature film Cisaruv slavík ("The Emperor's Nightingale") and Short Films Ruka ("The Hand"), Román s basou ("History of a Against Down"), Arie prerie ("Canción de la pradera"), Dva mrazíci and O sklenicku vic ("A glass is too much", 1954), the latter directed by Břetislav Pojar with puppets designed by Trnka. It also contains a documentary about the filmmaker.

Awards and distinctions

Cannes International Film Festival