Directed by: Jan Lenica
It’s hard to believe but, once upon a time, Polish experimental animation was a relatively common phenomenon. Many of its finest examples were broadcast late at night on Polish state television well into the 1980s. This was also the decade in which Zbigniew Rybczyński’s animation Tango (1980) won an Oscar that brought some international recognition for a Polish cinematic tradition that had been flourishing since the late 1950s.
The success of animated film in Poland had its roots partially in the graphic tradition of the Polish School of poster art. This scene included artists such as Jan Lenica and his collaborator Walerian ‘Boro’ Borowczyk, who later went a different way after settling in Paris.
Labirynt (Labyrinth) was Lenica’s first major effort without Boro and is widely regarded as one of the greatest animated features of all time. This cutout animation for adults recounts the strange journey of a fin-de-siècle Icarus, equipped with a bowler hat and mechanical wings, who lands in an apparently deserted city. After failing to rescue his bourgeois princess from a reptile, with whom she is in love, the Chaplinesque character is kidnapped and brainwashed with steam-punk devices wielded by a low-key Big Brother.
Lenica’s tale is imbued with a pessimism that would not have been tolerated in a Western animated feature. Labyrinth is one of the most striking metaphors for totalitarianism in the history of animated film and a revelation for anyone of the Toy Story generation.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on September 22 2011