(France 1998 22min)
Director Sylvain Chomet; Background Artist Nicolas de Crecy; Music Jean Corti; Writers Sylvain Chomet, David Freedman, Alan Gilbey
by Stephen Russell-Gebbett
No sooner have we arrived in Sylvain Chomet’s Paris, than we are taken on a tour of the City of Romance’s grimier underbelly, an ink-smudged picture postcard bearing the fingerprints, grown dirty with age, of Marcel Marceau and Jacques Tati.
La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons was Chomet’s first animated film and the influence of mime, the confluence of pathos and farce and the fastidious observation that characterised those two titans Marceau and Tati, is unmissable. It would become clearer still in Chomet’s contribution to portmanteau film Paris, Je t’Aime (a section following a mime artist who appears unable to leave his work at the office) and this year’s The Illusionist, adapted from a Tati script and starring a tall and gauchely dignified man who looks suspiciously like that charming Monsieur Hulot.
In terms of the animation itself La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons does not have the chic slickness of his famous works The Illusionist (which I have been unable to see, unfortunately) or Les Triplettes de Belleville / Belleville Rendezvous. It doesn’t want or try to look obviously beautiful, of course. In fact, this tale of a lonely, starving gendarme pretending to be a pigeon in order to partake of the feasts a lonely old woman cooks for the grey flocks, is anything but beautiful. Romance certainly isn’t on the cards, either. And there’s no happy ending.
There is a hint of mockery or even vindictiveness in the way this poor undernourished man is observed picking away at his dinner – a tiny and bony fish – or how he will go to any lengths to be fed. The fact that he grows incredibly large, having worn a fake pigeon head (!) to gorge himself at the woman’s dinner table, somehow intensifies the distressing nature of the story. It cheapens the crippling hunger that he once felt.
When he realises he isn’t being treated with kindness but rather being fattened up for a giant cat (or perhaps a person dressed as a cat!?) he removes his shoes to show the scissor-brandishing woman that he is a man and not a bird (above). Try as he might he cannot remove his fake pigeon head because his own has grown too fat. Maybe this is the moral – whatever your hardships, do not lose your humanity.
Sacre Bleu! There is no moral. Chomet kicks these people while they are down. In the end the gendarme has no option but to throw himself from the window. Even here there is no glorious escape in painless cartoon death, where mini-pigeons may squeak about his dizzied head. Instead he totters off battered and bruised to be spotted one last time on an American tourist’s video camera, cooing and flapping his arms like a pigeon. The animator has driven him mad, painted him into a corner. This is desperation and loneliness on a freakshow stage. Something to horrify us and make us laugh where we may use our fingers both to point and to cover our eyes. Everyone is a mime artist, everyone a sad clown with piteous dots for eyes and fear mangled within.
Is the old woman aware that he is a man? Is he aware that he does not need to eat any more? They are both blind to normality and reality, clinging to what intimacy they have with nails dug in flesh. They live off instinct, both less human and a bloated exaggeration of humanity. The characters’ wordlessness (the only people that speak are the American family of tourists who open the film. They don’t come across too well either) exaggerates their dehumanisation. In a final confrontation it is only in his frantic fear that we see the man again. What a scurvy and contemptuous trick!
And yet there still feels like there could be a moral somewhere about greed or moderation or exploiting the kindness of strangers. There isn’t. La Vieille Dame et Les Pigeons puts on the makeup of a moral and then sticks on top the giant foam head of unhinged nightmare. It’s something you can’t take your eyes off and something you may never want to see again…
“Sacre Bleu! There is no moral. Chomet kicks these people while they are down. In the end the gendarme has no option but to throw himself from the window. Even here there is no glorious escape in painless cartoon death, where mini-pigeons may squeak about his dizzied head. Instead he totters off battered and bruised to be spotted one last time on an American tourist’s video camera, cooing and flapping his arms like a pigeon. The animator has driven him mad, painted him into a corner. This is desperation and loneliness on a freakshow stage. Something to horrify us and make us laugh where we may use our fingers both to point and to cover our eyes. Everyone is a mime artist, everyone a sad clown with piteous dots for eyes and fear mangled within.”
Utterly fascinating Stephen! I have not seen this film yet (hope to remedy this very soon!) but I do know and respect the work of Sylvain Chomet from LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE. I actually loved this story of dysfunction, much like a French cinematic answer to Lemony Snicket’s A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. I have heard much about THE ILLUSIONIST, and await it’s opening stateside. Looks like this 22 minute short is something you greatly admire but from a disatnce. Fair enough.
Thanks, Sam.
That’s an interesting comparison to LEMONY SNICKET.
I’m really looking forward to seeing THE ILLUSIONIST but I don’t know when and how. It’s not got a wide release by any means so the French DVD (next February) will be my best bet.
“Looks like this 22 minute short is something you greatly admire but from a disatnce. Fair enough.”
I wouldn’t say from a distance exactly. I actually like the mean-spirited side to it. It’s different and exciting.
Chomet reminds me in tone and dark mise en scene to French-Canadian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Jeunet and Caro’s first feature film, Delicatessen (1991) is a black comedy set in a famine-plagued post-apocalyptic world, in which a block of flats above a delicatessen is ruled by a butcher who kills people in order to feed his tenants.
The City of Lost Children is a fantasy film about a mad scientist who kidnaps children to steal their dreams.
That’s an interesting comparison Frank. I’ve seen both films and there is a little overlap there.
There is a Jacques Tati-style pathos running through the work of Chomet. While the selection of music is outstanding, this work would have excelled in the silent period.
Very fine review and an interesting choice.
“…this work would have excelled in the silent period”
Yes, absolutely. Though the silent period has passed there is no reason why its techniques and tones cannot still be used. I think there is a wealth there rarely tapped into.
“Very fine review and an interesting choice.”
Thank you.
Is this available anywhere to watch? I’m a huge Triplets fan and I can’t wait for The Illusionist.
Dave,
I think it’s only on a French DVD (no subtitles) but it’s definitely on YouTube (that’s how I saw it).
I’ve just realised that of course there’s nothing in French so you don’t need subtitles(!)
Intriguing that the first Chomet film makes the countdown rather than the two that made them famous. But I’m all for that kind of scrutiny.
Marvellous, marvellous, marvellous….bravo!
I read the first sentence or two and I stopped immediately. Watched the film and then read the review. Acute and incisive observations.
For sheer entertainment, it reminded of the best of the Wallace and Gromit shorts, ‘The Wrong Trousers’, I think, with the pigeon robbery. But this one is like a snowball gathering momentum to a deliciously surreal level. And the comments about the gluttony of the American tourists at the end in their home movie commentary, just spikes the satirical bent of the film.
This isn’t a small masterpiece, it’s a major masterpiece in the short form. This should on the schedules of every Public Service broadcaster on Christmas Day. Thank you.
it’s here for you guys to watch….(isn’t you tube just wonderful)
Thanks very much, Bobby.
YouTube, used wisely, is indeed a great resource. It’s great to spread the word of quality art that would otherwise be very hard to get hold of or slip through the net.
Thanks for the link and I’m really happy I could recommend something that you enjoyed so much.