The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

It begins with cosmonaut Rudolf Jellinek landing on the moon. He follows footprints which lead him to the gentlemen of Jules Verne's expedition. They introduce him to their seniors on the site: Cyrano de Bergerac and the Baron Munchausen. Munchausen takes the Moon Man (for so he must be) on a trip to the Earth in what appears to be the 18th century. There they rescue the fair princess Jana Brejchová from the Sultan of Turkey and go on a series of imaginative adventures.

It must have been a dangerous movie to produce in Czechoslovakia in 1962. It celebrates imagination. It's not even imagination in the service of anything except itself. It's the imagination of a boy, just looking up from his loved library of Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas and noticing girls for the first time. The set designs reinforce this. They look like Dore steel engravings, and the stock is toned, occasionally for what seems to be early two-strip Technicolor, with flashes of bright colors. Munchausen fights ten thousand bashi-bazouks; he flies about on cannonballs and dwells in a whale for months. He does whatever he pleases, as the fancy strikes him, and Jellinek follows along. Will he ever develop an imagination of his own?

It's clear to me that Terry Gilliam mined this movie extensive for his own MUNCHAUSEN; there are too many settings and incidents for it to be otherwise. He would have been 24 when it premiered in the US at Pacificon. I have no doubt that he saw it there and it left an impression in his mind at least as great as in my own.

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.

In effect, the other commentary of this movie says everything that could be say for this excellent movie. I want to say that this movie and "On the comet (Na komete) are two of the best animation movies that I ever saw. I saw this movie in 35 mm at "Cinemateca Uruguayan" because there was playing a Karel Zeman's homage, but I think that it's necessary to review this classics films and to get it on VHS or DVD. Zeman is a genius director with the mix of animated stop-motion frames and people, filming in studios or in natural locations and also drawing over the negative, painting it, all the technics are used with masterly.

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.

One of the most imaginative, faithful, haunting versions of Munchausen ever. Zeman was a genius that no one seems to remember. A masterpiece of live action and stop motion using Doré's etchings as a springboard.

The fact that this movie hasn't ben resurrected and distributed (on video at least), is a true tragedy. I haven't seen it for years, but I'll never forget it. Just stunning.