"Who is the most powerful?" is Czech short cartoon from the beginning of fifties. It was a time of intensive propaganda after criminal communistic putsch in 1948. The art was meant as particular instrument of the diffusion of socialist ideology. Even the fairy-tales for children! It this one the elements of workers fight against the ruling power and solidarity between proletarians are emphasized. These constituents which devise to dialectical Marxist philosophy were commonplace in this time. The story based on an oriental fairy-tale is simple. A kind servant helped an old man and got a magical gem. This thing enables him to metamorphose to everything. He starts to be gluttonous of power and he changes himself to more powerful persons and parts of nature (sun, tempest cloud). Finally he petrifies and this rock is broken by an another worker. This man and his friends throw down his masters and start a new world.
This ideological potential is tiresome (because the situation of this time), but the aesthetics of the film is nice. Animation is perfect (director and author of the screenplay was Zdenek Miller, designer was Antonín Strnadel). Music by E. F. Burian is also fine. The characters don't speak, but there is narrator (Karel Höger) who comments the process with the words in verses.
This ideological potential is tiresome (because the situation of this time), but the aesthetics of the film is nice. Animation is perfect (director and author of the screenplay was Zdenek Miller, designer was Antonín Strnadel). Music by E. F. Burian is also fine. The characters don't speak, but there is narrator (Karel Höger) who comments the process with the words in verses.
