This cartoon of the Ionescu play is sometimes very funny. I don't think it sticks too closely to the original, which I can barely recall from fifty years ago, although I do remember seeing Joan Plowright, probably mistakenly.
I suppose it's impossible to squeeze the absurd play into a ten-minute cartoon, but this film is enjoyable in its own right. I don't think it raises the same questions about conformity. How could it? However, it parodies so many elements of high culture that I laughed out loud. There's a conductor trying to guide the orchestra through a manic version of the William Tell Overture, only the audience keeps falling asleep and he must pop a balloon now and again to keep them awake. A terrible soprano sings a sappy song and the heavy black curtain abruptly plops down and shuts her off.
Two men sit in a cafe, one drunk, the other an "intellectual" who spouts all these high-blown names before stomping out. (I think that scene, at least, is derived from the play.) A secretary who ignores the demands of a ringing phone while she applies make up to her face -- at first a complete blank, then gradually filled in with eyebrow pencil and lipstick.
There is no dialog to speak of. The music sounds as if a percussionist had gone mad. The images are all crudely drawn, as if with a laundry marker. It's pretty funny. I wish I'd been able to show it to my kid when he was about twelve. He'd have enjoyed it too.
I suppose it's impossible to squeeze the absurd play into a ten-minute cartoon, but this film is enjoyable in its own right. I don't think it raises the same questions about conformity. How could it? However, it parodies so many elements of high culture that I laughed out loud. There's a conductor trying to guide the orchestra through a manic version of the William Tell Overture, only the audience keeps falling asleep and he must pop a balloon now and again to keep them awake. A terrible soprano sings a sappy song and the heavy black curtain abruptly plops down and shuts her off.
Two men sit in a cafe, one drunk, the other an "intellectual" who spouts all these high-blown names before stomping out. (I think that scene, at least, is derived from the play.) A secretary who ignores the demands of a ringing phone while she applies make up to her face -- at first a complete blank, then gradually filled in with eyebrow pencil and lipstick.
There is no dialog to speak of. The music sounds as if a percussionist had gone mad. The images are all crudely drawn, as if with a laundry marker. It's pretty funny. I wish I'd been able to show it to my kid when he was about twelve. He'd have enjoyed it too.
