The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Czech: Baron Prášil) is a 1962 Czechoslovak romantic adventure film directed by Karel Zeman, based on the tales about Baron Munchausen. The film combines live-action with various forms of animation and is highly stylized, often evoking the engravings of Gustave Doré.[2]

For the 1940 film, see Baron Prášil (film).

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
Japanese DVD cover
Directed byKarel Zeman
Written by
Starring
CinematographyJiří Tarantík
Edited byVěra Kutilová
Music byZdeněk Liška
Release date
  • 21 September 1962 (1962-09-21)
Running time
85 minutes
CountryCzechoslovakia
LanguageCzech
Box office

A digital restoration of the film premiered on 5 September 2016 at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States.[3]

Plot

The film begins with footsteps leading to a pond. The camera continually moves upwards to show the flight of butterflies, birds, and a progression of historical aircraft ending with a rocket ship travelling through space and landing on the Moon.

The astronaut/cosmonaut leaves his spacecraft and sights other footsteps on the Moon leading him to an old phonograph, then a crashed rocket with a plaque reading Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Taken to a dinner table, the surprised space traveller meets the characters from Verne's book, as well as two other figures associated with fictional Moon voyages: Cyrano de Bergerac and Baron Munchausen. Inviting him to their table, the characters believe that the cosmonaut is a man actually from the Moon, and kindly treat him as a small child.

The Baron decides to take him to Earth in a fanciful airship held up by a herd of winged horses. The Baron dresses the spaceman, called "Tony" in the English dubbed version and "Tonik" in the original Czech, in 18th-century costume where they land in the 18th-century Ottoman Empire, in Constantinople. Speaking in an unintelligible voice that he calls the "language of diplomacy", the Baron presents Tonik to the Sultan. However, Tonik's lack of knowledge of diplomatic protocol and his falling in love with Princess Bianca, a damsel in distress held prisoner by the Sultan, leads to a series of romantic and fanciful adventures that transform the modern scientific space traveller into a hero rivalling the Baron.

Among the exciting and satiric adventures are sword and sea battles with the Turks, being swallowed by a giant fish, and ending the conflict between two warring kingdoms.

Cast
Costumes of Miloš Kopecký and Jana Brejchová

Reception

The film was released internationally throughout the 1960s, including a 1964 American dub under The Fabulous Baron Munchausen.[4]

Howard Thompson of The New York Times described it as "a delectable oddity with a perky, intriguing music track,"[5] and writer Harlan Ellison termed it a "charming and sweethearted 1961 Czech fantasy filled with loopy special effects."[6]

César Santos Fontenla of Triunfo called the film "a masterpiece" and added: "the film is undoubtedly the most exciting experiment so far in animation and in combining different techniques ... The Méliès influence is present throughout the film, which reaches the same level of poetry as the works of that old master."[2] Le Monde's film blog called Zeman's technique "perfectly fitted" (parfaitement adaptée) to the Baron Munchausen stories, and described the result as "endowed with a splendid sense of humor and very inventive" (doté d’un bel humour et très inventif).[7] The film historian Peter Hames described Baron Prášil as "perhaps [Zeman's] finest film."[8]

When the film was screened at the British Film Institute in the 1980s, it served as an influence for Terry Gilliam, who was then making his own version of the Munchausen stories, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.[9] According to Gilliam:

I remember when I was doing Baron Munchausen seeing a picture in a [British Film Institute] catalogue from Karel Zeman's Baron Munchausen and saying, "Wow, what is this?" and eventually seeing the film, and saying, "Wow, that's great," because he did what I'm still trying to do, which is to try and combine live action with animation. His Doré-esque backgrounds were wonderful. The film captured the real spirit of the character.[10]

British magazine Home Cinema Choice voted The Fabulous Baron Munchausen the best digitally restored film of 2017, defeating such films as The Thing, The Wages of Fear and Mulholland Drive.[11][12]

The restored version of the film is about six minutes shorter and omits 27 scenes compared to the original footage.[13]

References
  1. "Nejnavštěvovanější české filmy historie". KINOMANIAK (in Czech). Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  2. Santos Fontenla, César. "De Cyrano a Gagarin". Triunfo. Europeana. Archived from the original on 13 February 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2012.
  3. "The Fabulous Baron Munchausen at Telluride", filmcenter.cz, Czech Film Center, 6 September 2016, retrieved 21 September 2016
  4. "The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) - IMDb". IMDb.
  5. Thompson, Howard (23 December 1984). "Critics' Choice: Cable TV". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 May 2012.
  6. Ellison, Harlan (2014). Harlan Ellison's Watching (e-book). Open Road Integrated Media. p. 394. ISBN 9781497604117.
  7. "Le Baron de Crac (1962) de Karel Zeman", L'Oeil sur l'Ecran, LeMonde.fr, 20 April 2015, archived from the original on 2 June 2019, retrieved 31 May 2017
  8. Hames, Peter (2009), Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 197
  9. Zipes, Jack (2011). The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films. New York: Routledge. p. 43. ISBN 9780203927496.
  10. Gilliam, Terry (2004). Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Mississippi: Jackson University Press. pp. 132–133. ISBN 9781578066247.
  11. "Blu-ray : Blu-ray The Fabulous Baron Munchausen - Muzeum Karla Zemana". www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz. Archived from the original on 29 August 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  12. "Baron Prášil – nejlepší restaurovaný film roku ve Velké Británii! - Muzeum Karla Zemana". www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz (in Czech). Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  13. "Baron Prášil [Fabulous Baron Munchausen, The] ◾︎ Karel Zeman ◾︎ 1961".
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