Jirí Trnka
Encyclopedia
Jiří Trnka (ˈjɪr̝iː ˈtr̩ŋka) (24 February 1912, Plzeň - 30 December 1969, Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

) was a Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....

 maker, illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

, motion-picture animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...

 and film director. In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

, he is best known for his work in animation with puppets, which began in 1946. Most of his movies were intended for adults, and many of them were adaptations of literary works of Czech authors or foreigners. Because of his influence in animation, he was called "the Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 of Eastern Europe", despite the great differences between their works.

Formative Years

The Trnka family lived as middle class citizens in Pilsen, in western Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

. Although his father was a plumber and his mother a dressmaker, both remained very close to their peasant origins. As a child, young Jiří enjoyed sculpting puppets made ​​of wood and put on stage small shows for friends.

He later attended classes at a vocational school in his hometown, where he met his teacher Josef Skupa, who eventually would become a leading public figure in the world of Czech puppeteers. Skupa was his mentor, entrusted Trnka with certain responsibilities, and managed to convince his family, who initially were initially reluctant, to allow him to enroll at the prestigious School of Applied Arts in Prague (today the Academy of Architecture, Art and Design in Prague), where he completed his apprenticeship between 1929 and 1935.

Career as illustrator

With the training received in the school of arts and his experience working in a printmaking workshop, Trnka soon began a successful career as an illustrator. He was hired by the Prague publishing house Melantrich, and his first illustrated work was Mr. Boska The tiger of Vítezslaw Šmejc, published in 1937.

Since then, Trnka illustrated numerous children's books. Throughout his life, he illustrated 130 works of literature, most of them for children. Especially famous are his illustrations for the tales of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

, as well as collections of folktales from Czech authors such as Jirí Horák and Jan Pálenícek. Also related to his native folklore are his illustrations for Bajaj by Vladimír Holan, published in 1955, that would also be the starting point for his future in animation. In addition to the above, Trnka illustrated, among many other books, the tales of Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...

 and Perrault
Perrault
Perrault may refer to:*Perrault , a British-bred Thoroughbred racehorse*Charles Perrault, French writer*Claude Perrault , French architect and scientist, brother of Charles...

, the fables of La Fontaine, The Thousand and One Nights, several works of Shakespeare and Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland. In honor of his entire career as an illustrator, he was awarded in 1968 the Hans Christian Andersen Award by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY)
International Board on Books for Young People
The International Board on Books for Young People is a non-profit organization based in Switzerland committed to bringing books and children together.-History:...

.

In some cases, his job as an illustrator gave him ideas for making animated films, as happened with Bajaj and A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959 film)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1959 Czechoslovak animated puppet film directed by Jiří Trnka. It is based on the Shakespeare play of the same name. It was entered into the 1959 Cannes Film Festival...

.

Beginnings

After graduating from the Prague School of Arts and Crafts, Trnka created a puppet theater in 1936. This group was dissolved when World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 began, and he instead designed stage sets and illustrated books for children throughout the war. Several years later, at the end of World War II, he founded with Eduard Hofman and Jiří Brdečka a real study animation, called bratří v Triku. He began his activity in the study of animation by making some short films: Zasadil Dedek Repu (Grandfather planted a beet, 1945); Zvířátka to petrovští (Animals and Bandits, 1946), awarded at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...

 just one year after he began working in films, Perak SS (The Springer and the SS men, 1946), an anti-Nazi film, and Darek (The Gift, 1946), a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 on the values ​​of middle class close in a style echoing surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

. Despite his early success, Trnka did not feel comfortable with traditional animation, which in his opinion required too many intermediaries that prevented him from freely expressing his creativity. In the fall of 1946 he first considered puppet animation films, and began to experiment with the help of Bretislav Pojar.

Early films (1947-1950)

The result was his first feature film Špalíček ("The Czech years", 1947), based on a book illustrated by Mikoláš Aleš. The film consists of six short films, which put on stage the legends and customs of his country: Carnival (Masopust), spring (Jaro), the legend of St. Procopius (Legenda or svatem Prokopu), the procession (Pout), party in the village (Posviceni) and Bethlehem (Betlem). The film attracted the international attention to Czech animation and was awarded at many festivals, including the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

.

Since 1948, the studios of Trnka began receiving subsidies from the government. The next film they produced was Cisaruv Slavik ("The Emperor's Nightingale", 1949), based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Unlike the previous, it is a real feature film with one single storyline. The movie also includes real actors (two kids, Helena Patrocková and Jaromir Sobota), although only in the prologue that precedes the story itself. The puppets and sets are significantly different from the previous film, given the setting in an idealized imperial China. Cisaruv Slavik also won numerous awards at international festivals across Europe and America.

Throughout 1949, Trnka also made ​​three short films with animated puppets: Roman s basou ("Story of a Bass," or "Novel with Bass"), adapted from a story by Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

; Certuv mlýn ("The Mill Devil "), and Arie prerie ("Song of the Prairie"), a western parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 loosely based on The Diligence by John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

.

The following year he produced his third feature Trnka animation with puppets, Bajaj ("The Prince Bayaya", 1950), based on two stories by writer Bozena Nemcova
Božena Nemcová
Božena Němcová was a Czech writer of the final phase of the Czech National Revival movement.-Biography:...

. Set in a fantastic medieval time, it is the story of a farmer who succeeds in becoming a knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

, defeats a dragon, and wins the love of a princess.

The fifties

During the first half of the next decade, Trnka experiment with new techniques in his short animations. He returned to the cartoon or zlaté rybce ("The Golden Fish", 1951), and animated shadow puppets in mrazíci Dva (1953). In Veselý Circus ("The Gay Circus", 1951) he used a technique that involved stop-motion with two-dimensional paper cutouts. He neglected, however, the production of any animated feature-length puppet film. Apparently, for a time he had the idea of making a film about Don Quixote, but the project was not well received by the Czechoslovakian authorities. In 1953 premiered povesti Stare Ceske ("Old Czech Legends", 1953), his quarter-length movie. As Špalíček, his first feature, Staré povesti Ceské is structured in seven episodes that tell the legendary history of the Czech people. The film is adapted from a work by Alois Jirásek
Alois Jirásek
Alois Jirásek was a Czech writer, author of historical novels and plays. Jirásek was a secondary-school teacher until his retirement in 1909. He wrote a series of historical novels imbued with faith in his nation and in progress toward freedom and justice...

 (1851-1930), then a popular author among the Czech youth, and has an obvious patriotic tone.

In the same vein to explore the classics of Czech literature, Trnka in 1955 faced the challenge of adapting to the screen a work immensely popular, the anti-war satire Svejk in Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier). At the time, there already existed film adaptations of this work done with real actors but Trnka was the first to make an animated film about the character. For the construction of the puppets, Trnka was inspired by the illustrations for the original book made by ​​Josef Lada, which in the popular imagination were closely associated with the characters of Hasek. The humorous film is divided into three episodes, which tell the grotesque adventures of Svejk during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. It is not considered one of his best work. In spite of this, it received several awards at international festivals.

In 1959 he made ​​his last feature film: Sen noci svatojanske ("A Midsummer Night's Dream," 1959), adapted from one of the most famous works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. Trnka had previously illustrated this book so he knew it well. In his adaptation, he put focus on, besides the images, the music of Václav Trojan, and strove to give the film an air of ballet, for which even hired as an adviser to a renowned dancer. The puppets used in the film were not constructed of wood, but a specially-made plastic, which allowed for a more detailed modeling of faces. Although it did not escape some criticism, Sen noci svatojanske was a resounding international success and is recognized as one of the masterpieces of Trnka.

The sixties

Over the next decade, the filmmaker made only a few short films, which were progressively in a pessimistic
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...

 tone. The first was Vasen ("The Passion", 1962), the story of a young man passionate about his motorcycle. He followed that same year with Kybernetická Babicka ("Cyber ​​Grandma"), a satire on the increasing importance of technology in everyday life. Archandel Gabriel Pani Husa ("The Archangel Gabriel and Ms Goose", 1964), set in Venice medieval, adapts one of the stories of the Decameron by Boccaccio.

He considers his greatest work to be the short Ruka ("The Hand", 1965), his last film. In the words of Bendazzi, Ruka is "a kind of hymn to the creative freedom raging." In short, it is about a sculptor visited by a huge hand, which seeks the completion of a sculpture of itself. By rejecting the imposition, the artist is constantly pursued by the hand, ending with induced suicide and the hand officiating at his funeral. Ruka is considered a protest against the conditions imposed by the Czechoslovak communist state to artistic creation, and even some have seen in it an anticipation of the so-called Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

. Although the film initially had no problems with censorship (which Trnka blamed on carelessness or simple ignorance), after his death copies were confiscated and banned from public display in Czechoslovakia for two decades.

Jiří Trnka died of a heart condition in 1969 when he was just 57 years old. His funeral was a large public event.

Animation techniques

Throughout his career he experimented with different Trnka animation techniques, from traditional cartoons in his first shorts to animation with shadow puppets. However, his preferred method, and that which gave him worldwide fame, was stop-motion puppet work. His carved puppet characters were animated in complex sets with an expressive use of lighting. In this manner he was able to realize the dream of Czech baroque sculptors to set their sculptures in motion. Of puppet films Trnka said:
Puppet films are truly unlimited in their possibilities: they can express themselves with the greatest force precisely when the realistic :expression of the cinematographic image often faces insurmountable obstacles.


Really Trnka was not involved so much with the animation itself, but primarily on the development of scripts and puppet making. His studio had a trained team of animators, among which especially Bretislav Pojar was credited as responsible for the animation of many of Trnka's films. Other prominent animators from Trnka's studios were Stanislav Latal Trnka, Jan Karpas, Sramek Bohuslav, Frantisek Zdenek Hrabar and Braun.

Although animated films with puppets had already been made before Trnka, he corresponds to the main thrust of this technique, later used in many parts of the world. Unlike what had been done before, Trnka chose not to alter the appearance of the dolls with artificial elements to denote their emotions but to keep it unchanged, getting his expression through changes in framing and lighting. According Pojar:
He always gave his eyes a look indefinable. With the simple turn of their heads, or with a change of lighting, rose smiling expressions, or :unhappy, or dreamers. This gave one the impression that the puppet hid more than it showed, and its heart of wood stored even more.


The scripts of the films were also Trnka's own work, who often used works of Czech authors (many of them related to popular folklore), as well as classics of world literature, such as Chekhov, Boccaccio, and Shakespeare.

In Trnka animated films the music also had an important role. In all his films and several of his short films, the composer of the music was Vaclav Trojan
Václav Trojan
Václav Trojan was a Czech composer of classical music best known for his film scores. Trojan studied composition at the Prague Conservatory under Jaroslav Křička and Otakar Ostrčil from 1923 to 1927. He continued his studies in the composition masterclasses of Alois Hába, Josef Suk and Vítězslav...

 (1905-1983).

Short films

  • Dedek Zasadil repu ("My grandfather planted a beet", 1945). Cartoons.
  • Zvírátka to petrovstí ("Animals and bandits", 1946). Cartoons.
  • Perak SS ("The jumper and the men of the SS", 1946). Cartoons.
  • Darek ("The Gift", 1946). Cartoons.
  • Román s basou ("Story of a bass," 1949).
  • Certuv mlýn ("The Devil's Mill", 1949).
  • Arie prerie ("Song of the Prairie", 1949).
  • O zlaté rybce ("The Golden Fish", 1951). Cartoons.
  • Cirkus Veselý ("The gay circus", 1951).
  • Dva mrazíci (1954)
  • Hurvínek Circus ("Circus Hurvínek", 1955).
  • Proc UNESCO? ("Why is the UNESCO", 1958). Cartoons
  • Vasen ("The Passion", 1962).
  • Kybernetická Babicka ("The Cybernetic Grandma", 1962).
  • Gabriel Archandel Pani Husa ("The Archangel Gabriel and Mrs. Goose", 1964).
  • Maxplatte, Maxplatten (1965)
  • Ruka ("The Hand", 1965).

Feature films

  • Špalíček ("The Czech Year
    The Czech Year
    The Czech Year , also called A Treasury of Fairy-Tales, is a 1947 stop-motion-animated feature film from Czechoslovakia...

    ", 1947)
  • Cisaruv Slavik ("The Emperor's Nightingale
    The Emperor's Nightingale
    The Emperor's Nightingale is a 1949 Czechoslovak animated film directed by Jiří Trnka and Miloš Makovec. The film is based on the fairy tale The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen. Boris Karloff provides the voice of the narrator in an American dubbed version.-Cast:* Helena Patočková as the...

    ", 1949)
  • Bajaja ("Prince Bayaya
    Prince Bayaya
    Prince Bayaya is a 1950 Czechoslovak animated film directed by Jiří Trnka....

    ", 1950)
  • Staré Ceske povesti ("Old Czech Legends
    Old Czech Legends
    Old Czech Legends is a 1953 Czechoslovak stop motion puppet animation film directed by Jiří Trnka. It was based on the 1894 book Ancient Bohemian Legends by Alois Jirásek....

    ", 1953)
  • Vojak Dobrý Svejk ("The Good Soldier Svejk", 1955)
  • Sen noci svatojanske ("A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959 film)
    A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1959 Czechoslovak animated puppet film directed by Jiří Trnka. It is based on the Shakespeare play of the same name. It was entered into the 1959 Cannes Film Festival...

    ", 1959)

External links

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