(aka, Two Year Vacation)
Honorable Mention
Of all the wacky and inventive comedies made by Czech master animator, Karel Zeman, I think The Stolen Airship may have been his wackiest and most inventive.
And that is saying a lot.
Zeman is perhaps best remembered for his film The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, where he deliberately copied the look of the old steel etchings in the original French editions of Verne, right down to the white lines on the actors’ costumes; or for Journey to the Beginning of Time, with its impressive reconstructions of prehistoric beasts, using puppets, stop motion, and even full-sized creature props.
However, while he liked to have a common aesthetic tying his movies together (as in the steel engravings of The Fabulous World of Jules Verne or the vintage postcards he used in Off on a Comet). In The Stolen Airship, however, Zeman decided instead to use a wide variety of different styles and looks, all borrowed from the Victorian era. Perhaps, considering that the hero is a newspaper reporter (complete with an oversized old fashioned camera of the type which uses individual glass plates), Zeman was trying to copy the styles you might have seen in a newspaper at the time, although it seems too varied for that.
As a result the film is at times in black and white; color tinted; or given a very delicate look with a gentle blush of color added as in one of those hand-painted photographs from the Victorian era.
When it comes to the techniques on display, they are equally eclectic, from traditional cel animation, to actors on eccentric sets to stop motion to what looks like some sort of cut-out animation. There are even a few moments of actual color footage, mostly of sea birds.
But all this is in service of a very goofy sort of story, the sort of absurd story you can only find in the Czech comedies of the Sixties and Seventies, movies like Who Wants to Kill Jesse, or You are a Widow, Sir, or Four Murders are Enough, Darling.
The basic notion here is simple enough: a group of children at a local carnival are offered a free ride on an Impresario’s steerable balloon (although it might be more accurate to call it a blimp) only to end up drifting away in it.
They soon find themselves pursued by the army, fight their way through a terrible storm, and are forced to cut loose the balloon’s basket. At this point they get stranded on a deserted island, which they soon learn is home to one of Verne’s most famous characters.
The wild steampunk ambience gives Zeman room to indulge in his fondness for all sorts of crazy inventions which feel like they would be right at home in a Jules Verne story (my favorite is the main salon of a submarine which has an absurd number of machines carrying out all sorts of unimportant tasks).
One of the things I love most about Zeman’s work is the deliberate stylistic unreality of his films. We have human characters living in deeply unreal worlds based on old illustrations and photographs, either in deliberately retro sets or in animated worlds. This time around we have a dazzling array of vintage balloons, with flying armies, small balloons you row like a skiff or pedal like a bicycle, as well as such curiosities as a “horseless” carriage with a horse built right into it.
It’s loosely based on Verne’s Two Year Vacation (with perhaps a dash of Five Weeks in a Balloon) with just a few little bits taken from another familiar Verne novel (which I won’t name for fear of spoilers). Not that the final narrative has much to do with Verne.
What is also rather unusual is that he put so much story into this one. Not only do we have a lot of odd little stories which have nothing whatsoever to do with the main story, like the formula for the balloon’s inflammable gas, a mutiny, a strange trial, a mysterious spy with an assortment of gadgets (reminiscent of a similar character in Adéla ještě nevečeřela) and a hidden fortress, but they even end up complicating even the relatively simple story at the heart of the film.
While Zeman frequently made his films rather comic, this time around he has chosen to make a comedy rather than an adventure film, full of absurd humor and wild and witty visuals. It’s a wonderful piece of film, far more entertaining than most of the Jules Verne films out there — even if it has less to do with Verne than almost any film based on his works which I have ever seen.
If you really want to see just how good the film is, you might try comparing it to Those Fantastic Flying Fools/Blast Off, which tried very hard to be an absurd Verne comedy just like this film, but couldn’t pull it off, not even with Terry Thomas, Lionel Jeffries and Dennis Price on board.
It’s a shame, though, that Zeman’s films never got the exposure they deserved here in the United States. They would have given films like The Great Race or Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines a run for their money.
After all, they were funny, absurd and stylish — and looked like nothing you’d ever seen on the screen before.
But, fortunately, they are far more accessible than they ever were before: the Criterion Collection just put out a DVD set featuring 3 newly restored versions of his films, and many of his others are readily available online.
So by all means check them out. They are worth the effort…
(For English subtitles see Here)
rivets on the poster 
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