Pataphysical Assemblages: Fascist Spectacle in Paul Grimault's Le roi et l'oiseau

A stately Pallace of squared bricke,Which cunningly was without mortar laid,Whose wals were high, but nothing strong nor thick,And golden foile all ouer them displaid,That purest skye with brightnesse they dismaid.

(Spenser, Faerie Queene 1.4.4)

PÈRE UBU–Cornegidouille! n'aurons point tout démoli si nousne démolissons même les ruines! Or je n'y vois d'autre moyenque d'en équilibrer de beaux édifices bien ordonnés.

(Jarry, Tout Ubu 269)

The feature length French animation Le roi et l'oiseau (1947–1952, 1967–1980), later appearing in English as The King and the Mockingbird (2014), was a labor of love and the thirty-year collaboration between the animator Paul Grimault and the poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants du Paradis [1945]). Based on Hans Christian Andersen's fable, La bergère et le ramoneur (The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep), Le roi has produced mixed responses (Pagliano, Le roi 47–51). Many considered it one of the finest feature length works of French animation, a work that has influenced subsequent French animators such as René Laloux (La planète sauvage [1973; The Fantastic Planet]) and Jean-François Laguionie (Le Tableau [2011]), and more explicitly the anime of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli. We might also mention Brad Bird's 1999 The Iron Giant.¹

The thirty-year history of the film reflects Grimault's obsession with his creative vision. In 1936 he founded Le Gémeaux, a small animation production company that sought to compete with Hollywood imports. He began collaborating with Prévert on an adaptation of Andersen's "Le Petit Soldat." Grimault and Prévert had been friends since their days in the leftwing agitprop theater company Le Group Octobre, indicative of shared political leanings. A tour by Le Group to the Soviet Union exposed them to the possibilities of Russian Constructivism (Gasiglia-Laster 34–35; Blakeway 48–78; see also Reberioux). Running about eleven minutes, Le Petit Soldat appeared in 1947, and garnered the international prize at the 1948 Venice Biennial (Neupert 100–05, Grimault 143, Gasiglia-Laster 75, 79). After this success, they turned to La bergère et le ramoneur in 1948, working until 1952 when Le Gémeaux went out of business. An abridged version, running about sixty-three minutes, was rushed into the marketplace against Grimault's wishes by his business partner. An English language version of this appeared as The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird (1952), dubbed with the voice of Peter Ustinov as Mr. Bird. Grimault obtained the original negative in 1967, resuming his collaboration with Prévert until the latter's death in 1977 (see Gasiglia-Laster 108). Le roi et l'oiseau finally premiered in 1980, winning the prestigious Prize Delluc (Bendazzi 156). Running eighty-three minutes, it is fuller in detail, has a different ending, and possesses a darker tone. It has been released to the English-speaking world in 2014 under the title The King and the Mockingbird. For a full account see Grimault's Traits de mémorie (143–209).

Le roi seems to embody contradictions. By turns childlike and sophisticated, appealing to both fantasy and realism, embracing guarded hope as well as post-apocalyptic sorrow, Le roi is ostensibly a confection for children, but hints at serious political allegory. Begun in the wake of European fascism and the occupation of France, Le roi references totalitarian spatial design and the iconic images of the dictator. By underlining their construction, the film satirizes and subverts the authority claimed by the spectacle of fascist grandeur. Its open-ended ambivalence also hints at more troubling questions about the unity of Western identity. The result, writes Giannalberto Bendazzi is a "drier, more mature work," a work of "poetic realism" he compares to Marcel Carné, Jean Renoir, and Julien Duvivier (156).

Others are more reserved in their praise. Richard Neupert summarizes the view of many in describing it as "a personal film caught between the two very different eras of its production" (105). Some of...