The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

An astronaut lands on the moon and finds footprints. He follows them and meets a group of people: Cyrano, Baron Munchausen and others are already there. The Baron takes the astronaut for a moon dweller and decides to bring him to Earth. They set off. They land in the Ottoman court, carry off a princess, join a sea battle, end up inside the belly of a fish, and each time the Baron explains that he did all of it himself. Karel Zeman directs. It is a Czechoslovak production. The visual method is one Zeman developed himself; the actors are real while the backgrounds and objects are drawn like nineteenth century engravings, and the two are combined in the same frame. The visual source is stated openly; the linear manner of the book illustrations is applied across the whole film. The matter it works at is the appeal of lying; the astronaut stands for science and the Baron for the story. The use of colour changes by scene; some sections are tinted in a single colour. The film is among the most cited examples of the Czechoslovak tradition of animation and effects and influenced later directors. The narrative builds no plot; the sections follow one another and no logic is looked for. Who it is for: viewers who like visual experiment and classic fantastical cinema. Who it is not for: the narrative is loose, the characters thin, and the pace old.