René Laloux is best known for his direction of the 1973 animated film
La Planète Sauvage, titled
Fantastic Planet in English, but
his life in film started earlier. His first shorts came from
his painting and shadow puppetry workshops with the patients of
La Borde psychiatric clinic. Laloux continued to work in animation, making one short himself, then collaborating with four different artists (
Roland Topor,
Moebius, and
Caza), turning out a total of 10 shorts and 3 feature films. [Surreal, NSFW videos and images inside]
Laloux filmed two shorts with the patients of La Borde psychiatric clinic:
Tic-tac (
Tick-Tock, 1957) and
Les Dents du Singe (
The Monkey's Teeth, 1960) (13:51). Between those two shorts, he made an abstract animation short by himself in 1958, using backlit, tinted glass. It was titled
Les Achalunés.
Laloux's next films were collaborations with
the "leprechaun-like" surrealist artist Roland Topor. They made three shorts:
Les Temps Morts (
The Dead Times, 1964) (9:47) [
alternate video w/subs, 9:49];
Les Escargots (
The Snails, 1965) (11:13) [alt:
YT, 10:51]; and
Le Jeu (
The Game, 1975 - not online). Their most notable collaboration was
La Planète Sauvage, (literal:
The Savage Planet, retitled:
Fantastic Planet,
1973). The film was a collaboration also between French and Czechoslovakian animators, but the project was started just after
Prague Spring, a time of upheaval. Due to this timing, the film was created from 1969 to 1973. (Streaming online:
English trailer,
French with English subs (part 1 of 5),
complete English dub,
playlist of the dub in pieces, or oddly enough,
rescored by a fan, using tracks by various electronic artists). Bonus bit: the soundtrack by
Alain Goraguer has been sampled in
various hip-hop tracks.
Following the success of
La Planète Sauvage, René Laloux was able to start his own animation studio, where he was approached to help create an animated TV series. Laloux worked with a group that included Moebius, the surrealist alias of French comic book artist
Jean Giraud, to create the series.
Bolstered by financial support, they convinced the series producers taht the pilot could be extended into a feature-length film. The series never happened, but the movie
Les Maîtres du temps (
Time Masters) did, in
1982 (
French with English subs, part 1 of 8). Falling short of the peak that was
La Planète Sauvage, this film was little known outside of France, where it did relatively well in theaters. Probably due to the TV pilot history, this film differs from Laloux's first film in that there is no nudity and little violence. Two years after the release of their feature film, the duo of Laloux and Moebius released the short
La Maîtrise de la qualité (
Quality Control, 1984 - not online).
Laloux's third film could have been his second, if his attention wasn't taken elsewhere. Even before his collaboration with Giraud, Laloux was working with another artist from the new-found
Métal Hurlant/
Heavy Metal magazines.
Caza, aka Philippe Cazaumayou, had discussed making a film based on
Jean-Pierre Andrevon's novel
Les Hommes-machines contre Gandahar (trans:
The Machine-men vs. Gandahar) since the late 1970s. Throughout the production of
Les Maîtres du temps,
Gandahar was being promoted to potential supporters. Laloux ended up working with
SEK Studios in North Korea, in part because of the reduced costs for animation.
Gandahar was released in 1988
to critical and public acceptance in France, but it was edited for US audiences, where it then flopped. The US edit, retitled
Light Years was
the product of Harvey Weinstein (yes,
CEO of Mirimax Harvey Weinstein).
Most of the editing was in the first 36 minutes of the film, altered to remove some of the nudity. The soundtrack was re-scored, dialogue re-written (by Isaac Asimov) and
voices re-dubbed by an all-star cast. Streaming online:
French version with Spanish subs, or US re-edit in 7 parts (
part 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6, and
7).
Laloux and Caza also made two shorts:
Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé (
How Wang-fo Was Saved, 1987; in 2 parts on YT:
part 1,
part 2), and
La Prisonnière (
The Captive, 1988).
Laloux's final, uncompleted work, was to be a feature film with the artist
Patrice Sanahujas (French site;
Babelfish translation).
A short teaser video with audio and still images "animated" through camera pans and zooms is online. Laloux also scripted the adaptation of
L'Œil du loup (
Eye of the Wolf, 1998), one final short animated film.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:28 PM on March 11, 2011