Les astronautes

Astronauts, The (1959)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Science-fiction animation has a man building a spaceship inside his garage. When it's complete he flies it around the city just to get a reaction but then he takes it up to space to see what it's like out there. This is a visually pleasing short to watch but there's very little soul to it. I guess you'd say there's more style here than substance, which is somewhat of a shame as this film should have and I think could have been a lot better. The visuals in the film are very nice as I've come to expect from Borowczyk. His visual flair is certainly shining very bright here as his vision of outer space is totally original and features some well thought out images. The opening scenes on the streets aren't as good because there's not any humor to them. I'm not exactly sure what the director's were going for in these early scenes but they left me rather cold.

The Astronauts (1959) is a short, collaborative animation project between eccentric filmmakers Walerian Borowczyk and Chris Marker. Borowczyk would later move into live-action film-making, turning his attention to a cinema of perverse eroticism with projects like Goto, The Island of Love (1969), The Immoral Tales (1974), Beast (1975) and Emmanuelle 5 (1987). Likewise, Marker would produce the short masterpiece La Jetée (1962), the celebrated proto-documentary Sans Soleil (1983) and his critical study of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, A.K. (1985). The film, at twelve-minutes in length, is a testament to the creative energy and ideas of these two filmmakers, not only standing as an interesting short film in its own right, but as a window into the creative world of these two, highly skilled, highly original filmmakers. It remains an amazing piece of work for this very reason, more so perhaps than any other; even if it is admittedly impossible to distinguish between which filmmaker was responsible for each individual part of the creative process, leaving us to assume that it was a pure collaboration in every sense of the word.

In terms of actual style, The Astronauts can be seen as an obvious precursor to Terry Gilliam's work on the "Monty Python" (1969) television series, with surreal, copy and paste photographic images hand-printed and cropped to work in a bizarre, almost stop-motion approach, stressing the use of collage and caricature. Clearly, it is no surprise that Gilliam cited Borowczyk's film Les Jeux des Anges (1964) amongst his ten best animated films of all time (alongside work by Jan Švankmajer, the brothers Quay and the Pixar animation studio), with both the visual look, sense of wonder and sly satirical humour of this particular approach all showing an influence, not only on his work with the Monty Python team, but on classic films like Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Like those particular projects, The Astronauts is certainly worth experiencing; if only for the window that it offers into a completely unique creative mindset, wherein Borowczyk and Marker succeed in putting together some astounding little sequences and ideas to create this warm and enjoyable sketch.

It seems odd that these wildly different filmmakers could get together and produce a work of utter, creative symbiosis, and yet here, with The Astronauts, they deliver a fantastic work of short-form animation filled with clever visual references, an expressive and experimental approach to the manipulation of sound, and an extraordinary amount of visual and thematic imagination conveyed by both the story and the actual presentation. Clearly, it is the kind of film that will be of more interest to fans of these particular filmmakers and of avant-garde animation in general, but I think it is definitely a film that is worth experiencing at least once; if not for the obvious thrill of the creative act itself (and in the ideas presented on screen), then for the delightful little story that is really quite witty and brilliantly delivered over the course of its comparatively short, twelve-minute duration.

Somewhat reminiscent of the work of Terry Gilliam, Borowczyk and Marker's masterful stop motion collaboration, Les Astronautes, is a film about traversing alternate realities via the realm of the imagination and battling the demons of the mind.

In it, an inventor fashions a magical space craft out of old newspapers and some regular household knick knacks. Armed only with his pipe, a notebook, an umbrella, first aid kit (containing the elixir of immortality, which allows him to survive in space), clock, barrel of tomatoes, a few books, a suitcase, chest of clothes, and, of course (it wouldn't be a true Marker film without), his trusty owl sidekick.

He views the surrounding happenings through a periscope, which he first uses to voyeur a beautiful young woman; before he goes on to mess with a pandering politician (followed by a triumphant exit through the Arc de Triumphe portal); and a trip to the moon- during which he investigates it's "dark side"...leading him to face off against his internal demon.

Despite all this exploration of space- and his newfound discoveries- he simply cannot get the young woman out of his mind. It's just not the same up there without her. So he plans to return to Earth...but not before he saves a small red rocket- called SPA- from certain destruction, during a dogfight among the stars.

His decision to return to reality inevitably does destroy SPA, so he uses his umbrella to parachute back to the roof of his house.

Did he really travel through space and time? Or was it all just a dream?...his head among the clouds...

7 out of 10.

Given the reputation of Borowczyk's animated shorts - which perhaps even swamps that of his features - I was rather let down by my first experience with them (via this award-winning collaboration with renowned short film-maker Marker). Ostensibly, it deals with a scientist's flight into outer space where, among other things, he spies on a young woman (Ligia Borowczyk) on his way up and later even saves a small spaceship from attack by a larger one - only for it to destroy his own vessel, which plummets back to Earth! The unusual animation combines the standard cartoon style with jazzy paper cut-outs and intermittent use of live-action, an approach which reached mass appeal a decade later with the arrival of "Monty Python's Flying Circus".

After viewing the very good animated Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre (1967-also reviewed) I decided to check the booklet for notes on the Arrow collection of shorts by auteur Walerian Borowczyk. Excited to find that along with Kabal there were a dozen animated shorts,I got set to meet the astronaut's.

View on the film:

The earliest credit to feature in the entire box set, Walerian Borowczyk impressively already displays a eye for a distinctive style, in this collaboration with fellow film maker Chris Marker.

Taking a early snap at Sci-Fi with still photos of a astronaut heading to outer space, which "Boro" alters with stylishly surreal flourishes of avant-garde cut-out animation layering torn photos and freeze-frame photo manipulation across the screen,as the astronaut takes a pause from heading to space,in order to get a glance of Walerian's wife,and future La Jetee (1962) star Ligia Borowcyk