Jiří Trnka

Career as animator

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 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 the animation studio Bratři v triku. He began his activity in the study of animation by making some 2D animated short films: Zasadil dědek řepu (Grandfather Planted a Beet, 1945); Zvířátka a Petrovští (Animals and Bandits, 1946), which was awarded at the 1st Cannes Film Festival, just one year after he had begun working in films, Pérák a SS (Springman and the SS, 1946), an anti-Nazi film, and Dárek (The Gift, 1946), a satire on the values of the middle class in a style echoing surrealism. 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 Břetislav Pojar.

Early films (1947–1950)

The result was his first feature puppet film in a cycle Špalíček (The Czech Year, 1947), based on a book illustrated by Mikoláš Aleš. The cycle 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 svatém Prokopu), the procession (Pouť), party in the village (Posvícení) and Bethlehem (Betlém). The film attracted international attention to Czech animation and gained awards at many festivals, including the Venice Film Festival.

From 1948, the studios of Trnka began to receive subsidies from the government. The next film they produced was Císařův slavík (The Emperor's Nightingale, 1949), based on the 1843 fairy tale "The Nightingale" by Hans Christian Andersen. Unlike the previous, it is a real feature film with one single storyline. The movie also includes real actors (two children, 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 of an idealized imperial China. Císařův slavík also won numerous awards at international festivals across Europe and the United States.

During 1949, Trnka also made three short films with animated puppets: Román s basou (Story of a Bass, or Novel with Bass), adapted from a story by Anton Chekhov; Čertův mlýn (The Devil's Mill), based on a Czech fairy-tale, and Arie prérie (Song of the Prairie), a western parody loosely based on Stagecoach (known in Trnka's country as The Diligence) by John Ford.

The following year he produced his third feature animation with puppets, Bajaja (The Prince Bayaya, 1950), based on two stories by writer Božena Němcová. Set in a fantastical medieval time, it is the story of a farmer who succeeds in becoming a knight, defeats a dragon, and wins the love of a princess.

1950s

During the first half of the next decade, Trnka experimented with new techniques in his short animations. He returned to the cartoon O zlaté rybce (The Golden Fish, 1951), and animated shadow puppets in Dva mrazíci (1953). In Veselý Circus (The Merry 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 Czechoslovak authorities. In 1953 he premiered Staré pověsti české (Old Czech Legends, 1953), his quarter-length movie. As with Špalíček, his first feature, Staré pověsti české is structured in seven episodes that tell the legendary history of the Czech people. The film is adapted from a work by Alois Jirásek (1851-1930), then a popular author among the Czech youth, and has an obvious patriotic tone.

In the same vein of exploring the classics of Czech literature, Trnka in 1955 faced the challenge of adapting to the screen a work immensely popular, the anti-war satire Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války of Jaroslav Hašek (The Good Soldier Švejk). At that time there already existed film adaptations of this work made using 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 Hašek. This humorous film is divided into three episodes, which tell the grotesque adventures of Švejk during World War I. It received several awards at international festivals.

In 1959 he made his last feature film: Sen noci svatojánské (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1959), adapted from one of the most famous works of William Shakespeare. Trnka had previously illustrated this book so he knew it well. In his adaptation he gave focus not only to the images, but also to the music of Václav Trojan, and strove to give the film an air of ballet, for which he hired a renowned dancer as an adviser. The puppets used in the film were not constructed of wood, but of a specially-made plastic, which allowed for a more detailed modeling of faces. Although it did not escape some criticism, Sen noci svatojánské was a resounding international success and is recognized as one of Trnka's masterpieces.

1960s

Over the next decade, the filmmaker made only a few short films, which were progressively in a pessimistic tone. The first was Vášeň (The Passion, 1962), the story of a young man passionate about his motorcycle. He followed that same year with Kybernetická babička (Cyber Grandma), a satire on the increasing importance of technology in everyday life. Archanděl Gabriel a paní Husa (The Archangel Gabriel and Ms Goose, 1964), set in medieval Venice, adapts one of the stories of the Decameron by Boccaccio.

He considered 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. Although the film initially had no problems with censorship, after his death copies were confiscated and banned from public display in Czechoslovakia for two decades.

Death

Jiří Trnka died of complications from a heart condition in 1969, when he was only 57 years old, in Prague. His funeral, held in Plzeň, was a large public event.