TWO CLASSICS OF TÔEI ANIMATION ARE BACK… ON DVD
For some viewers Swan Lake (1981) and The lamp of Aladdin
(1982) can say little or nothing. Especially if those same viewers have reached an age where it is embarrassing to see children's animated feature films on TV.
For some others, however, at least one of those films represents a symbolic connection with one's childhood (we are talking about twenty / twenty-five years ago), when the small screen offered very little compared to today's proposals. There was no DVD, Internet and satellite TV. Precisely for this reason we became very fond of the cartoons that Rai or Fininvest or the smaller networks offered to very young viewers. If you were lucky you could see "a preview" Nausicaä of the valley of the wind by a certain Hayao Miyazaki or enjoy the adventures of Lupine III - The Castle of Cagliostro. And sometimes - very lucky! - you happened to watch movies with the most famous robots of the time but also to follow authentic goodies like the animated classics of Tôei Animation.
After a long time, and despite some fleeting television appearances, Yamato Video brings two of those classics to life, The Swan Lake and The Aladdin's Lamp, by proposing the two DVD films to be released in October and November. An opportunity to return to children and recapture the melancholy atmospheres of lost childhood but also an opportunity to make these animated fairy tales known to today's young audience, now addicted to the respectable digital cartoon technologies such as Shrek, Toy Story and The Ice Age .
Tôei Animation has always been the leading company in the production of cartoons for cinema and television. Its catalog is immense and overflowing and can boast a production that began in the early 50s of the last century. Something very similar to the Walt Disney Production, for which he has often harbored mixed feelings of admiration and envy. After all, certain Tôei productions of the 60s were born with the hope of resembling the American school.
Within it, talents of Japanese animation were born and raised: Yasuo Ôtsuka, inextricably linked to the name of Lupine III; Isao Takahata, the director of Heidi and Anna with red hair; Yôichi Kotabe (Super Mario Bros) and the one who will become one of the heroes of this cinema: Hayao Miyazaki, Oscar winner for The Enchanted City.
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Swan Lake (1981, original title: Sekai Meisaku Dowa: Hakuchô no Mizûmi) tells the story of Prince Siegfried who quite accidentally meets a swan with a crowned head and discovers that in reality it is a beautiful girl, the Princess Odette, transformed following a powerful spell by the wizard Rothbart who holds her prisoner in a castle and allows her to fly away and swim in the nearby pond during the day. The magician desires Odette only for himself and the only remedy to undo the spell is… true love.
Released in 1981 as an attempt to relaunch the classic cinema that made Tôei's name unique in the world after the production storm of the early 70s (which had driven away most of the most talented artists working for him), the film is linked to the trend of fairy tales traditionally considered by producers to be the only real big "commercial" subject for young spectators.
It is directed by a veteran, Kôrô Yabuki (born in 1934), who went through half a century of Tôei productions, becoming a simulacrum of it together with Taiji Yabushita (author of the first color cartoon) and Yugo Serikawa, the monarch of Japanese cartoons of the time.
The even more compelling aspect of the film remains the soundtrack which relies on Peter Tschaikowsky (1840-1893) and his timeless Swan Lake, op. 20, for ballet, created between 1875 and 1876 probably following a trip by the composer to Germany. The ballet was first performed in Bolscioi in 1877.
Essential filmography by Kôrô Yabuki: Wanpaku Oji no Orochi Taiji (1963), Kaze no Fujimaru (1965), Tiger Mask (1968), Ikkyu-san (1969). He collaborated in the realization of the animated film Puss in Boots (1969) by designing the storyboard and coordinating the processing with Yasuji Mori, another great creative master of Tôei.
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Aladdin's Lamp (1982, original title: Sekai Meisaku Dowa: Aladin to maho no lamp) is a small animated film that tells the story of a poor boy addicted to theft (at the beginning of the film we see him grabbing some watermelons in company of friends). As much as he hates it, Aladdin is forced to steal in order to help his mother in distress. One day he meets a strange guy who pays him to follow him into the desert and enter a cave to carry out a mysterious and dangerous task. After having pronounced a magic formula that opens the cave of the cave, the man invites the boy to enter to retrieve an ancient lamp, and only this in the immense treasure that will appear before him. Having recovered the object, Aladdin once out of the cave refuses to give the lamp to the man ...
Almost as if to remedy the film Alibabà ei forty thieves (1972) made with little means and little inventiveness by Tôei, ten years later this version of about sixty minutes is made, much more sumptuous and perfected in the animations. The idea of this Aladdin's lamp is to continue on the fairytale terrain of the series "Sekai Meisaku Dowa" which was inaugurated in 1977 with the film Hakucho no Oji (The wild swans, in Italy it has instead become Heidi becomes princess for the vague resemblance of the two protagonists) and continued with Oyayubi Hime (Pollicina, 1978), Swan Lake (1981) and Mori wa ikiteiru (The living forest, 1980). Small classics for the audience of kids thanks to which to test themselves on the big screen, a sector that Tôei seemed to have gradually neglected.
Directed by veteran Yoshinori Kasai (director in Candy Candy), while the screenplay is written by Akira Miyazaki (no relationship with the more famous Hayao) who is also one of the most prolific authors for cartoons. The graceful character design of the characters and the animations of the film were entrusted to Shinya Takahashi, animator in Perfect Blue (1997), The Firebird 2772 (1980), Cyborg 009 (1980), Kirara (2000).
