The King And The Mockingbird(1980) Fixed
In his secret apartment, the King dreams of the beautiful shepherdess whose painting he keeps on his wall, but the shepherdess is in love with the chimney sweep whose hated portrait is on the opposite wall. At night, the paintings come to life and attempt to escape from the palace, but are pursued by a non-cross-eyed painting of the king that also has come to life. He deposes the real king, takes his place, and orders the capture of the shepherdess and the sweep, but the bird is there to help when called upon.
The King and the Mockingbird(1980)
Later, the shepherdess and the chimney sweep find themselves in the lower city, where the inhabitants have never seen the light. Meanwhile, the King summons a robot built for him, and he attacks the village. He takes the shepherdess and captures the chimney sweep, the bird, and a blind organ-grinder from the village, putting the organ-grinder in a pen of lions and tigers. The King forces the shepherdess to agree to marry him, threatening to kill the chimney sweep if she does not accept. When she does, the King sends the chimney sweep and the bird to paint manufactured sculptures of his head on a conveyor belt. They begin to ruin the sculptures, and are sent to jail, where the lions and tigers have been listening to the organ-grinder playing. The bird convinces them to help the shepherdess, saying that her marriage to the King prevents her from tending to the sheep, which the animals eat. The animals break out of the jail and attack the interviewers and king in the chapel. The bird and his sons take control of the robot and start destroying the castle. Once the castle is in rubble, the King attacks the couple, but the robot grabs him and blows him into the distance. Sitting on the ruins of the castle the next morning, the robot sees one of the bird's sons trapped in a cage. After freeing the bird, the robot smashes the cage.
Only the early scene in the secret apartment is based on "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep", while the rest of the movie focuses much more on the king and the bird, hence the ultimate title. In Andersen's tale, the shepherdess and the chimney sweep are china figurines, rather than paintings, and a wooden (mahogany) satyr wishes to wed the shepherdess, supported by a Chinaman, rather than a king and a classical statue. In both tales, the Chinaman statue breaks, and the duo escape up the chimney, and delight in celestial bodies, but in Andersen's tale the shepherdess is afraid of the wide world and the duo return; this is echoed in the movie where the statue predicts that they will return.
The completed film uses 42 of the 62 minutes of the 1952 footage,[8] and, at 87 minutes, includes significant new animation, completely different music, and a very different, more symbolic ending. Some footage is cut, such as the bird taking over the role as announcer at the wedding and the original ending. The new footage includes both entirely new scenes, and changes to existing scenes. For example, in the completed film, the initial scenes of the king practicing target shooting and having his portrait painted are new, while the scene of the king shooting at the baby bird, which falls between these two, was from the 1952 footage. The differences between the old and new animation are visible at some points in a single scene, most noticeably in the lion pit, where the lions are drawn in two very different styles;[9] the simpler, more abstract lions are the new animation.
The king's number alludes to Louis XVI of France, though visually the film recalls more the "Sun King" Louis XIV,[11] and parts of the castle resemble Venice, with the canals, gondola, and Bridge of Sighs. The mustached, bowler-hatted police recall Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond) from The Adventures of Tintin.[10]
The film had a profound influence on Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, who later founded Studio Ghibli.[6] Miyazaki states, inter alia, that "We were formed by the films and filmmakers of the 1950s. At that time I started watching a lot of films. One filmmaker who really influenced me was the French animator Paul Grimault."[15] and "It was through watching Le Roi et l'Oiseau by Paul Grimault that I understood how it was necessary to use space in a vertical manner."[16] For his part, Takahata states "My admiration towards Paul Grimault and Le Roi et l'Oiseau has always been the same, probably because he achieved better than anyone else a union between literature and animation." The influence is also visible in The Castle of Cagliostro, whose castle resembles the castle in The King and the Mockingbird. They discuss this at length in a documentary on the deluxe edition of the Japanese DVD, noting for example that they took frame-by-frame photographs of some sequences (such as the king elbowing the court painter aside) to be able to study how the animation was done.[17] The film would be dubbed into Japanese for the release and star the voice of Gorō Naya, the voice of Koichi Zenigata, who had reprised his role for The Castle of Cagliostro.
The King and the Mockingbird has been released in various editions, in various languages. Beyond the fundamental distinction between editions based on the incomplete 1952 version and the 1980 version, the film has been dubbed in many languages, including Japanese and Dutch.
It was re-released as a DCP in cinemas in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2014[22] by the Independent Cinema Office, both in French with English subtitles and in the King and Mister Bird dub,[4] and on DVD with English subtitles and this dub, for the first time in both cases, on April 28, 2014.[5] Previously, it was not available in the English-speaking world except by import of the French, Japanese and German editions. Although the film does not contain a lot of dialogue, fan-created English subtitles for the completed 1980 edition are available at this page at Open Subtitles. Rialto Pictures released the film in select theaters in the United States and Lionsgate made it available on Amazon Prime Video and on Vudu.
This animated fantasy tale follows the romance between a lovely shepherdess and a handsome chimney sweep. The land's imperious king falls for the beautiful woman and tries to thwart her relationship, but a kind mockingbird assists the lovers in evading the ruler. On the king's command, the chimney sweep and his bird friend are imprisoned, and they must escape in order to rescue the young man's true love.
This film is cited as one of the key influences on the creation of Studio Ghibli, so that was more than enough to pique my interest. This was a pretty sweet film that is weird in all of the best ways and has a nice and playful sense of humor that I'm always looking for in a film.
There's a lot of excellent worldbuilding in this film as well as some fun quirks of each of the characters. The animation was charming and nice to look at for the most part (there were some really ugly looking moments, though). The story itself is nothing too groundbreaking, but it possesses a charm to it that absorbs you into the weird little world presented to you for a short time. It's a light watch, and certainly worth it just for its influence on Studio Ghibli alone.
The King and the Mockingbird is one of the most influential works of animation to ever grace the screen. The film features a seemingly simplistic storyline, yet it's complex in so many ways. The King and the Mockingbird started production in the 1950's, and in '52, a 63 minute version of the film was released. But nearly 30 years later, the director came back and finished the film in its entirety, using 42 minutes of the original 63, and adding on another 39 to make the 1980 French masterpiece of Animation.
It's unlike most animated films that I've seen in the sense that it feels like it's making the most of the medium in order to showcase its fullest potential. Far before the peaks of the Disney Renaissance or the start of Studio Ghibli, it's hard enough to imagine that those films would have ever come about had The King and the Mockingbird not laid the foundations to begin with.
Because beneath all of that gorgeous animation, embodying a style that can't simply be associated with one era, it's also utilized in such a way that it deconstructs that very sense of tyranny that builds up that mentality building up a king figure. It's a simple story, but told in the most beautiful way possible.
A pompous, cross-eyed king is in love with a shepherdess in a painting. The two-dimensional beauty, however, desires the dashing young chimney sweep in the frame next door. The two seek to escape the dastardly clutches of the tyrant with the help of a brightly feathered mockingbird.
Video archive for the film The King and the Mockingbird, which has a domestic theatrical release in the year of 1980. There is currently one video available for the film, of which one and only one is a trailer, as listed below. Happy viewing!
Strictly speaking, the term mecha originates in Japanese from the English "mechanism", and refers to any form of machinery. A concentration on the workings or design of a particular machine is not uncommon in Manga, particularly those in which a named creator has many art assistants, as a draughtsman-like recreation of real-world machinery is a task that can often be left to a deputy. Hence, in Gunsmith Cats (graph 1991-1997) by Kenichi Sonoda, the action is often paused for loving beauty-passes of various firearms and vehicles, and part of the appeal of the car-racing series Initial D (graph 1995-current) by Shūichi Shigeno rests on sudden cutaway appraisals of the conditions of car engines. 041b061a72