The Flying Man

This film begins with a man stopping, taking off some of his clothes and floating above the ground. It's called "Flying Man" but he appears more to be swimming in mid-air. Then another guy and his dog come along and,...well,....who cares.

THE FLYING MAN won the Grand Prize award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, so I must assume by this that 1962 was an absolutely horrible year for animation or there was only one entry in the competition! That's because I just think of any reason to like this film. The animation quality is poor, the artwork is terrible, the story not particularly deep or compelling and it wasn't at all entertaining (unless you like seeing the dog getting kicked at the end). I just don't get it at all why this film received such positive accolades, though judging from it's low overall score on IMDb apparently I am not in the minority for disliking the film.

The animated figures here are highly original. They are undefined splotches that fade in and out. The story is quite strange. We are introduced to a man who takes his clothes off and begins to swim in the sky. He doesn't seem to go anywhere. Soon a man and his dog come by and watch him. The dog begins to tear at the flying man's clothes. Other than being quite strange and a bit enticing, there's not a lot here. But it won an award. No accounting for taste.

There is so little to say about this one...First off, a lot of people on IMDb seem to have a less than favorable view of this film, which is fine. I really think it's all a matter of taste and how one might approach the strange stylistic animation used in this 2 minute fantasy of minimalist heights. There is a certain humor and charm to the whole scenario the film revolves around, as well as in the animation style which I found to be uniquely beautiful. Amusingly weird and so brief it hardly feels like it can count even as a short film...recommended.

The man behind "Yellow Submarine" (which will have to be watched when I get to 1968) put out this intriguing little short six years earlier, in my big halcyon year of '62. "The Flying Man" is a movie whose structure and plot elude me, except to say that its lack of structure may be the point. The animation is visually stimulating in its childlike fluidity, even more so when left to stand on its own after the jaunty, perhaps encouraging score is abruptly dropped for most of the runtime. If you'd like a plot description, you've come to the wrong film. A man sheds his clothes and begins swimming in mid-air. A dog comes along and attacks his clothes, and the dog's owner attempts to fly but fails, and kicks the dog for his troubles. I don't know if it's a result of the print, but there are several places where the animation becomes so faint it's hard to follow, but there's an intriguing complexity in these seemingly infantile colorings, a spare implication of body leading to a wonderful economy of movement. At 2 1/2 minutes, there's not much to it, but it's a nifty little piece and a nice little bang for the buck.

{Grade: 8/10 (B)}