The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

Karel Zeman was a genius if visual artistry. His playful use of 19th century engravings in a live-action movie is so original and it works so well. Everybody who praises the Gilliam's Munchhausen should hold the judgement until he sees this Munchhausen. If anybody from the video industry watches this database, please make this movie available at least on VHS. And once you are at it, I would add two more Zeman's films that are made with the same charm, technical wizardry, nostalgia and artistic vision: Vynalez zkazy (1958) ("The invention of Destruction" in English) and Blaznova kronika (1963) ("The Fools' Chronicles"). In the chronological order, I consider the three films a loose trilogy that uses the esthetics of the 19th, 18th, and 17th century, respectively, to study the timeless human situation.

Live action with stop-motion and puppet animation. A modern astronaut meets Baron Munchausen on the Moon after landing his spacecraft there. The entire film has a quaint, charming 19th-Century look, mood and feel, thanks to the Baron himself narrating the picture, and some of the most imaginative production design, special visual effects and movie sets ever put on celluloid. Like his previous film, The FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE (AN INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION), Zeman uses 19th-Century woodcut engravings modeled after those of Gustav Dore as his guides for most of the intricately-fashioned backdrops in this marvelous movie. Highly imaginative in every way possible, this film is like a turn-of-the-century Georges Melies nickelodeon reel in appearance, but has a mysterious, mystical, dreamlike quality which makes this look like a lurid, delightful dream. Often hilarious, it is full of humor, wit and charm. Zeman is clearly a master in control of his medium. One of his best films ever. Another film I would love to have on Video that is still inexplicably unavailable in America.

Zeman's magnum opus is every bit as compelling and otherworldly as the legends indicate. In fact, as I also have FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE & ON THE COMET on tape, take my word for it: PRASIL/MUNCHAUSEN is the Zeman to see if your only seeing one. Given those hallucinatory Gustav Dore-meets- Arthur Rackham visuals, the wildly disjointed narrative and from-hunger post-synched soundtrack actually ADD to the out-of-body experience that is this film. It's like stumbling into somebody else's fever dream. While Zeman's other films generally succumb to a deadly torpor around halfway through, this one is just so jampacked with surreal oddities and unforgettable bizarro setpieces that you're in flabbergasted joy right through to the end. Terry Gilliam (a major Zeman fan) attempted a lavish remake that missed the whole point of this film's one-of-a-kind quality: the sense throughout that this is a handcrafted film, an artisan's project free of studio meddling, brand name stars or big budget elephantiasis. PRASIL's amateurism is its crowning glory. Essential viewing...at least once.

"Baron Munchausen" ("Baron Prasil" in Czech) is one of the most charming and poetic movies among those thousands which I saw ...

It is that very rare kind of movie I love to see for dozen and dozen of times, in virtually any mood and time ...

Old illustrations by Gustave Dore brought to life by an unforgettable visual imagination of Karel Zeman ...

Everything dressed in a soft melancholy of an enchanting music by great Zdenek Liska, so simple and sophisticated at the same time...

Though Zeman is mostly painting his magic world by his unique visual creativity, those able to understand the Czech dialogues get another lovely dimension, inhabited by fine jokes and never-tiring games with words...

And of course, Milos Kopecky as the Baron is the very symbol and soul of Munchausen ...

An essential classic movie for every true film fan (not recommended for nervous consumers and victims of Hollywood moneymakers, however).

How much those modern versions of Munchausen (and whatever are their modifications and names) miss the point of this magic Zeman's version: its fundamental visual craftsmanship, soft melancholy of a fable, an inspired music, and everything in a perfect union ...

How poor and tedious is 99.99% of that Hollywood stuff in comparison with this Zeman's masterpiece ...

No, they cannot do such a movie any more with all those naturalistic computer tricks, but a total lack of Karel Zeman's insight and visual poetry...

By now, nearly everyone should be familiar with the Munchausen story or, at least, some portion of it even if shi didn't grown up on these German drinking boasts which got way out of hand.

This is not the first or last treatment of the braggart Baron, but this version has a charm that many others lack.

The film is shot, predominantly in sepia tone with occasional bits in exaggerated color for artistic emphasis. Those who recall the pink coat in Schindler's List will have some idea of what is happening. But, in this case, the effect is not so much an attempt to indicate a major event that was necessarily slighted in the film. Rather, it helps to emphasize the aspects of the fantastic and the fairy tale romanticism that the director is emphasizing.

The live actors are shot against an animated background and are often blithely unaware of the fantastic things that are sweeping around them while they concern themselves with the essentially silly issues of their lives. This is Czech animation which seems rather exotic to those of us raised on Disney-esque 'realism'. Still, it's stylism adds a charm to the film that helps to reinforce the multiple layers that the director has built into this piece.

You should not attempt to become involved in the film so much as to sit back and marvel at the world that is passing unobserved by those passing through it.

When it has finished,you will want to watch it again and again to catch how all the different visual layers interact in your mind if not on the screen.

If I had to compare this effect to any other film, I suppose I would choose the way that Altman weaves the foreground and background into the midground in "M*A*S*H", though the two films are very different and have completely different statements about the world.

This is a fantasy and it is truly fantastic, but only on an adult level. Children will have many questions that all come down to 'why is it happening that way?' For children, fantasy is a chance to dream dreams and play games. This is a film for adults that has found an adult way to present the wit and contradiction of the original stories while acting out the ingenuousness of the characters' actions.

See this one. It deserves your attention.