Aladdin and the Magic Lamp: does anyone here need a recapitulation of the basic story, or are we good? So far as I'm concerned, we are, so on to George Pal.
Of the three great workers in stop-motion model animation -- Ray Harryhausen, Willis O'Brien and George Pal -- Pal was the one with the most cartoon-like sensibilities. While Harryhausen and O'Brien strove to make their creatures seem like they could exist in the real world, Pal strove to make his creations silly figures of fun, composed of geometrical shapes and moving about in a fashion that would have made sense to someone who grew up on Looney Tunes and pre-Code Fleischer fare, like me. No matter how elaborately decorated the set in which his characters moved, you'd look at it and say it was very silly.
This cartoon was made during the half decade in which he created movies for Phillips, the Dutch electronics firm. In this one, he is pushing Phillips light bulbs. It's astonishingly audacious and quite funny. Enjoy.
Of the three great workers in stop-motion model animation -- Ray Harryhausen, Willis O'Brien and George Pal -- Pal was the one with the most cartoon-like sensibilities. While Harryhausen and O'Brien strove to make their creatures seem like they could exist in the real world, Pal strove to make his creations silly figures of fun, composed of geometrical shapes and moving about in a fashion that would have made sense to someone who grew up on Looney Tunes and pre-Code Fleischer fare, like me. No matter how elaborately decorated the set in which his characters moved, you'd look at it and say it was very silly.
This cartoon was made during the half decade in which he created movies for Phillips, the Dutch electronics firm. In this one, he is pushing Phillips light bulbs. It's astonishingly audacious and quite funny. Enjoy.
