The Tale of the Fox

In the animal kingdom, Master Fox is expert at fooling everyone. As the complaints pile up, the Lion king orders him arrested and brought in. Every animal sent to catch him falls into a new trap. This story, out of the medieval French Renart cycle, is staged here in puppet animation. The production is an event in itself. Ladislas and Irène Starevich completed the animation in Paris between 1929 and 1930, over roughly eighteen months. Then the problems of adding sound began, and the film could not be released for years. UFA funded a German soundtrack and it screened in Berlin in April 1937. The French version was not prepared until 1941. So a film whose animation finished in 1930 entered history as the second feature made in stop-motion puppet animation. The faces and fur textures of the puppets remain startling today. Who it's for: Anyone interested in the history of animation, stop-motion puppetry, and classical animal fables. Who it's not for: The rhythm is slow next to modern animation and the episodes are loosely linked. Some scenes may be too harsh for small children.