A Little Phantasy on a 19th Century Painting

Norman McLaren – 1946 – Canada

 

This short film by Norman McLaren is like a mysterious black-and-white outtake from Disney’s epic animated anthology Fantasia (1940).  Just a year earlier, producer Val Lewton had crafted an entire horror feature around the same painting; “Isle of the Dead” by Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin.  Apparently, it was hugely popular in Europe in the 1800s, and its ubiquity obviously had a lasting impact into the next century.  It depicts a rocky islet where Cypress trees and windows carved into the rock face convey a funerary aura, with a cloaked boatman arriving with a coffin in the bow of his boat.  McLaren’s film brings the painting to life with animation, first subtly by having the wind move trees, and then plunging right into the scene and altering perspectives.  As in the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence from Fantasia, ghostly apparitions seem to drift from the doors and windows of the building.  It’s a somber and spooky film that effectively builds upon the emotions of the painting.  McLaren made dozens of such experimental films – often under the aegis of the National Film Board of Canada – as well as many documentaries and industrial shorts.