Fantastic Planet (1973) - René Laloux
Related: animation - fantastic - 1973 - seventies film - French cinema - science fiction film - Stefan Wul - Alain Goraguer - René Laloux - Roland Topor
Fantastic Planet (1973) - René Laloux [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Fantastic Planet (1973) [Soundtrack] [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Description
Fantastic Planet is the English language version of an animated 1973 science fiction film directed by René Laloux. The film was an international production between France and Czechoslovakia and its original title is La Planéte Sauvage. It was distributed in the United States by Roger Corman. It won the special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973
The story is based on a novel, Oms en Serie, by the French writer Stefan Wul.
The film is chiefly noted for its surreal imagery, the work of French writer and artist Roland Topor. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Planet [Aug 2005]
Amazon review
Based on French science fiction novelist Stefan Wul's Oms en Serie ("Oms by the Dozen"), René Laloux's La Plančte Sauvage (its title changed to Fantastic Planet for the U.S. release) paints an animated tale of humans kept as domesticated pets by an alien race of blue humanoid giants called Traags. The story takes place on the Traags' planet Ygam, where we follow our narrator, an Om called Terr, from infancy to adulthood, when he escapes his subjugation with a Traag learning device with which to educate the savage Oms and incite them to revolt. As a French-Czech coproduction, this story had much resonance for its makers as an allegory of Czechoslovakia's invasion by Soviet troops in the late '60s, and had to be completed in Paris due to political pressure. While the story does not distinguish itself in the annals of science fiction, the imagination invested in the surreal backdrops, with its eerie creatures and landscapes, does. The animation technique--moving paper cutouts across backgrounds--contributes to the overall feeling of other-worldliness. Fantastic Planet won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. Included on the DVD are three early short subjects by Laloux showing his evolution toward Fantastic Planet. You have your choice of audio: French with English subtitles, or English with English subtitles. But choose the latter so you can see how much the subtitles are cheating you. --Jim Gay for amazon.com
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