Paris L'Étranger Fest: Day 11

Friday, September 13

There were no seat reservations at this film festival, so getting a good spot in the theater was entirely contingent on being there early enough to beat the crowds. I already knew i was going to be scrambling from the Eiffel Tower to here, so i'd resigned myself to ending up in a horrible spot, but it didn't matter. I just really wanted to see this rare film. Leaving the tower early helped, but all of that extra time was used up as i chased the GPS point for the theater around a public park before figuring out it was underground, and i needed to enter through the mall.
    Finally finding myself in the right place, i walked up the stairs of the theater, looking for Salle 500. At Forum des Images, the theaters themselves are numbered 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 300, and 500, and they are not placed in numerical order around the building. 500 was on the second floor of the theater, or level -2 of the mall, right at the spot where the stairs emptied into a second lobby.
    It was crowded. I recognized the line leading into 500, on my right, snaking backwards through the lobby, and pushed myself through clusters of people, excusing myself on the way. I heard some French, and it took a moment to realize it was directed at me.
    "Désolée, my French is not good," i said. Every time i try to get that phrase out, less and less of the French vocabulary is preserved. Almost three years of Duolingo, and i can't even say this one phrase consistently.
    "Oh, that's fine. Are you looking for..." She hesitated for a second, trying to find the English title for The Thief and the Cobbler. I showed her my ticket. "Yes! The end of the queue is here." She gestured to the left, and i realized that the line went all the way down this hallway, wrapped completely around the upstairs lobby, and came back down the hallway almost to the stairs i'd just come up.
    Cool.
    "Oh, okay, thank you!" i said.
    "Thank you," she replied.
    I did end up in a seat pretty far to the side of the screen, but it wasn't too crowded...at first. I had to cross over two people's laps to get to this open seat, and left two open seats between them and me, to my left. To my right, the whole row was empty.
    People kept coming in after i was seated. I was surprised there were still so many after me. Someone sat to my right, leaving one empty seat between us. Someone came in from the right, crossed over me, and sat next to the person to my left, so now i had one open seat on either side. A moment later, two people came in from the left, and started crossing over the three people near the aisle. I saw them coming, and casually slid one seat to my right.
    The man spoke French to me. "I'm sorry, i don't speak French," i said, giving up entirely.
    "Oh, no worries," he said. "There are just the two of us, so we were wondering if you wouldn't mind moving one seat to either direction."
    I nodded and gestured toward the seat i had already vacated. I must have been so subtle in my move that he hadn't noticed i'd already done it.
    "Oh! Thank you!"
    The theater ended up packed nearly full.
    The emcees came in for an introduction. The first person, predictably, addressed the crowd in French, so je ne comprends rien du tout.
    Then they brought a second guy up, who spoke in English.
    "This is The Thief and the Cobbler, one of my favorite films," he said. "My girl got me into this recently, actually, she grew up with it. I had never heard of it. I felt like this film had been hidden from me."
    I'm assuming the version his partner grew up with is one of the several butchered cuts released to VHS without the director's input in the early 90s. It certainly couldn't have been what was about to be screened.

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The Thief and the Cobbler (Re-Cobbled Cut)

This film is legendary in animation circles. Director Richard Williams's white whale, what should have been his masterpiece. He started production in 1964 and worked on it tirelessly until he lost the rights in 1992, which were bought up by many studios in different markets, who created their own finished versions, which bear little resemblance to Williams's vision.
    What i was viewing that night was the director's fully restored workprint, as it appeared in 1993. It uses as much completed animation as possible, and fills in the rest with animatics, storyboards, and concept art, as much as it can, anyway. There are still a few spots with "SCENE MISSING" cards.
    It's really sad how little animation there is, as a percentage of the full film. But what there is, oh boy, sure is incredible. I'd heard over the years about how this film pushed the boundary of what was possible out of animation, and for its time, it absolutely does. You look at everything that's being done here, and remember that it's entirely hand-drawn, and your jaw drops. Williams's vision certainly exceeded the technology available to him in his time. Or at least, if he was to get it done on time and on budget.
    Physics are largely a suggestion in this movie. Characters chase each other through the palace, and suddenly fall into an Escher-esque parallel universe where geography is nonsense, and it's never explained.
    The plot is paper-thin, and is largely only there as an excuse for shenanigans. It is visually extravagant and almost brain-breaking at times.
    The use of unfinished elements is certainly going to be a barrier for general audiences, so unfortunately, this can really only be viewed as a historical document, for people who are interested in and care about complex animation. So i wouldn't recommend it for everyone. Also, there are a lot of bits that are very "of its time," ie, some casual racism, particularly in the characterization of the guard characters from Mombasa. Also, the King's daughter is named Princess Yum Yum and is portrayed...exactly the way you'd expect.
    All in all, i'm really happy i got to see this. I've heard about it for years, from educational texts on film, to internet articles about lost media, to YouTube videos about "films you will never see." I do kind of want to check out some of the old VHS releases, to see how it compares; they must have filled in a whole lot of bullshit, because there is nowhere near enough completed animation in this thing to pull together a cohesive plot.
    Also, since the workprint is out now, i guess this is technically the final released films of the late Vincent Price and Donald Pleasance.