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Neighbours (1952 film)
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Wikipedia article
'Neighbours' (French title: 'Voisins') is a 1952 anti-war film by Scottish Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren. Produced at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, 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 and Grant Munro (representing French Canada and English Canada respectively), live peacefully in adjacent cardboard houses. When a single, small flower (possibly a psychoactive flower) blooms between their houses, they fight each other to the death over ownership of that flower.
The moral of the film is, simply, 'Love your neighbour'. The moral is also shown in other languages, including (in order of appearance):
*Japanese: ('Dh ni shinsetsu nare')
*Chinese: ('Qnshn lnj')
*Hindi: ('Aapke parosii ke prem porvak vyavahaar kiijie')
*Urdu: ('Aapne hamsaae dostaani bartaao karo')
*Arabic: ('Ahib qaribak')
*Hebrew: ('V'ahavta l'reacha')
*Russian: ; 'Lyubite blizhnego svoyego'
*Esperanto: 'Amu vian najbaron'
*Norwegian: 'Elsk din nabo'
*Spanish: 'Ama a tu prjimo'
*German: 'Liebe deinen Nchsten'
*Italian: 'Amate il prossimo'
*French: 'Aimez votre prochain'
Cast
* Jean-Paul Ladouceur as himself
* Grant Munro as himself
Controversy
'Neighbours' has been described as "one of the most controversial films the NFB ever made". 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'
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.
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.Curtis, David. Norman McLaren. Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council Catalogue, 1977.
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."
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.
Awards and honours
'Neighbours' is the winner of both a Canadian Film Award and an Oscar. For the latter, it was nominated twice in the 25th Academy Awards, for Short Subject (One-reel) and for Best Documentary (Short Subject). It was in the Documentary category that this short, stylized drama (with some comedic elements) won its Oscar. 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".
This film 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.[http://avtrust.ca/masterworks/2000/en_film.htm AV Trust | Preserving Canada's Visual and Audio Treasures]
In 2009, 'Neighbours' was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, listing the most significant documentary heritage collections in the world.
See also
*History of Canadian animation
*List of stop-motion films
*Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject)
*List of Canadian films
*List of Quebec films
*Rest in Peace (song), the music video from Extreme that was inspired from the film
References
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