Wladyslaw Starewicz’s The Mascot
Posted by Ross Rosenberg
This short film, by Polish stop-motion animator Wladyslaw Starewicz, tells the story of Duffy (known as Fétiche in France). A stuffed animal, Duffy is on a quest to bring his young mistress, sick with scurvy, an orange. It is a quest that will take him through Hell and back. Starewicz was a master of his craft, sometimes employing the use of insect carcasses — their limbs reattached with wax — as puppets. Duffy proved to be one of his most popular creations, and Starewicz featured him in three more films. If you’re a fan of stop-motion animation The Mascot is a must see.
Update: Switched to a YouYube playlist as the original player, located here, kept auto-playing.
The Mascot [YouTube] : MONSTER BRAINS : Fantastic Animation
Categories: Animals, Animation, Insects, Puppets, Puppies, The Devil
Posted at 12:30 pm on August 7, 2008
7 Comments -
This is very impressive. Bewhiskered, almost tentacled gendarmes defeat the skeletal forces of evil in an epic street battle.
How could anyone not like that.
Comment by Agent Irons — August 7, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
We need to make this not autoplay.
Comment by Eliza Gauger — August 7, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
I really enjoyed the sense of central Europe in the early 30′s.
I know that wasn’t the point of the exercise, but I sure did like that part.
Comment by Elmo — August 7, 2008 @ 8:05 pm
Amazing film. A complete, DVD-quality mpeg is available for download at the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/The_Mascot_Complete
Comment by Mark — August 10, 2008 @ 7:41 am
Wow. Thanks for introducing me to this; I never heard of it before. Great glimpses of pre-war Warsaw (I presume). And a real Medieval fantasy.
Comment by Mogothe Mugger — August 10, 2008 @ 9:59 pm
Glad you enjoyed my restoration of this great film. The complete version at archive.org is also mine and is more complete and accurate than the one I posted at youtube. Enjoy!
Mark
P.S. The street scenes were shot in Paris, not Warsaw.
Comment by Mark — May 16, 2009 @ 12:59 am
I first encountered this film a few years ago – it was plastered onto the end of Vampyr (1932), which I had taken out from my university library. One particular scene that struck me is when the devil metamorphizes out of spilt wine. The combination of real-world video and stop-animation (such as the scenes when the characters are packed up to be moved) are amazing, as well.
I saw the movie very shortly after having first read Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, so the devil’s ball scenes had a particularly jarring (perhaps not quite jarring) effect.
Great film, nonetheless. (The Mascot and Vampyr alike.)
Comment by Dan — November 15, 2009 @ 3:15 pm