Neighbours (1952 film)

Neighbours
Theatrical release poster
FrenchVoisins
Directed byNorman McLaren
Written byNorman McLaren
Produced byNorman McLaren
Starring
CinematographyWolf Koenig (photography)
Music byNorman McLaren
Distributed byNational Film Board of Canada
Release date
  • January 1, 1952 (1952-01-01)
Running time
8 minutes
CountryCanada

Neighbours (French: Voisins) is a 1952 Canadian anti-war film by Scottish-Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren for the National Film Board of Canada.[1] In 1953, it won the Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject.

Production

The film uses pixilation, an animation technique using live actors as stop motion objects. McLaren created the soundtrack of the film by scratching the edge of the film, creating various blobs, lines, and triangles which the projector read as sound.

Plot

Two men, Jean-Paul Ladouceur (French Canadian) and Grant Munro (English Canadian) live peacefully in adjacent cardboard houses. When a single, small flower blooms between their houses, they fight each other to the death over the ownership of that flower.

The film ends with a moral, shown in multiple languages:

  • Japanese: 同胞に親切なれ (Dōhō ni shinsetsu nare)
  • Chinese: 親善鄰居 (Qīnshàn línjū)
  • Hindi: आपके पड़ोसी से प्रेम पूर्वक व्यवहार कीजिए (Aapke parosii ke prem porvak vyavahaar kiijie)
  • Urdu: اپنے ہمساءے دوستانی برتاؤ کرؤ (Aapne hamsaae dostaani bartaao karo)
  • Arabic: اَحِب قَرِيبَك (Ahib qaribak)
  • Hebrew: וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ (V'ahavta l'reacha)
  • Russian: Любите ближнего своего (Lyubite blizhnego svoyego)
  • Esperanto: Amu vian najbaron
  • Norwegian: Elsk din nabo
  • Spanish: Ama a tu prójimo
  • German: Liebe deinen Nächsten
  • Italian: Amate il prossimo
  • French: Aimez votre prochain
  • English: Love your neighbour

Cast

Controversy

Neighbours has been described as "one of the most controversial films the NFB ever made".[2] The eight-minute film was politically motivated:

"I was inspired to make Neighbours by a stay of almost a year in the People's Republic of China. Although I only saw the beginnings of Mao's revolution, my faith in human nature was reinvigorated by it. Then I came back to Quebec and the Korean War began. (...) I decided to make a really strong film about anti-militarism and against war." — Norman McLaren [3][4]

The version of Neighbours that ultimately won an Oscar was not the version McLaren had originally created. In order to make the film palatable for American and European audiences, McLaren was required to remove a scene in which the two men, fighting over the flower, murdered the other's wife and children.[5]

During the Vietnam War, public opinion changed, and McLaren was asked to reinstate the sequence. The original negative of that scene had been destroyed, so the scene was salvaged from a positive print of lower quality.[6]

NFB founder John Grierson, who had invited McLaren to the NFB to form its first animation unit, would ultimately disparage Neighbours and McLaren's attempt at political cinema:

"I wouldn't trust Norman around the corner as a political thinker. I wouldn't trust Norman around the corner as a philosophic thinker. That's not what Norman is for. Norman is for Hen Hop. Hen Hop. That's wonderful. And so many other things. That's his basic gift. He's got joy in his movement. He's got loveliness in his movement. He's got fancy in his changes. That's enough."[7]

Pixilation

The term 'pixilation' was created by Grant Munro to describe stop-motion animation of humans in his work with McLaren on Two Bagatelles, a pair of short pixilation films made prior to Neighbours. During one brief sequence, the two actors appear to levitate, an effect achieved by having the actors repeatedly jump upward and photographing them at the top of their trajectories.

McLaren followed Neighbours with two other films using a similar combination of pixilation, live action, variable speed photography and string puppets. The first, A Chairy Tale (1957) was a collaboration with Claude Jutra and Ravi Shankar. The second, Opening Speech by Norman McLaren (1960) was made for the International Film Festival of Montreal, and starred McLaren himself.

Wolf Koenig served as cameraman on the film.[8]

Awards

Year Award Category Result
1953 25th Academy Awards Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subject[a] Won
1953 Academy Award for Best Live Action, Short Subject Nominated
1953 Boston Film Festival Award of Merit, Adult Education Won
1953 5th Canadian Film Awards Honourable Mention Won
1953 Salerno Film Festival Gulf of Salerno Grand Trophy Won
1954 Yorkton Film Festival Third Award, Sociology Won
1955 International Review of Specialized Cinematography Certificate of Honour Won
1957 Diploma of Honour Won
1967 Golden Gate International Film Festival Redwood Award for Special Merit, Film as Communication Won
1968 Calvin Workshop Awards Notable Film Award Won

Honours

Neighbours was designated as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation of Canada's audio-visual heritage.[10]

In 2009, Neighbours was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, listing the most significant documentary heritage collections in the world.[11]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ A 2005 press release issued by AMPAS states that Neighbours is "among a group of films that not only competed, but won Academy Awards in what were clearly inappropriate categories".[9]

References

  1. ^ "Neighbours". onf-nfb.gc.ca. National Film Board of Canada. October 11, 2012. Retrieved February 27, 2023.
  2. ^ McLaughlin, Dan (2001). "A rather incomplete but still fascinating history of animation". Archived from the original on August 12, 2006. Retrieved August 30, 2006.
  3. ^ "Norman McLaren". National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  4. ^ Nordine, Michael (February 19, 2017). "This Oscar-Winning 1952 Stop-Motion Short Is Looking Awfully Relevant Right Now". IndieWire. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved December 6, 2022.
  5. ^ Cartagena, Rene (2003). "Neighbours". Archived from the original on August 27, 2006. Retrieved August 30, 2006.
  6. ^ Curtis, David. Norman McLaren. Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council Catalogue, 1977.
  7. ^ Kristmanson, Mark (2002). Plateaus of Freedom: Nationality, Culture, and State Security in Canada, 1920–1960. Oxford University Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-19-541803-3.
  8. ^ Martin, Sandra (August 24, 2014). "For Wolf Koenig, it was about framing that decisive moment". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved August 27, 2014.
  9. ^ "Oscar's Docs Resumes with Nature Documentaries". WebWire. October 31, 2005. Retrieved August 27, 2014.
  10. ^ AV Trust | Preserving Canada's Visual and Audio Treasures Archived 2011-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ "Neighbours, animated, directed and produced by Norman McLaren in 1952". Memory of the World. UNESCO. Archived from the original on August 5, 2009. Retrieved October 16, 2010.
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