The Thief and the Cobbler

A tale as old as time; studio execs slaughtering precious works, bastardizing art for the sake of $$$.

I couldn't remember it by name but as soon as I saw a few screenshots (dancing roses and Zigzag's tongued feet) the floodgates unlatched, and I knew I'd seen it before. Not just seen it before but re-watched and replayed on a VHS day after day as a child--which in distressing and upsetting news, I recently learned was tossed out along with the rest of our VHSs by my mother in a mass purge to clear out the downstairs when I moved away for *snot inhale* college. Thanks a lot MOM!

While I watched it this time around, I'd remember scenes as they were unfolding. I could remember the cadence of the next line spoken, so even if I couldn't remember the exact line of dialogue, I could sing-song my way along with them. I went home and asked my brother if he remembered it, which almost instantly he recalled One-Eye's throne made of busty slave women. It's a lot to take in as a nine year old boy, I'm sure.

I remembered making MS Paint drawings inspired by the art of this film (optical illusions and checkerboard patterns) and as a four? five? year old confidently thinking "yeah this is just as good." I remembered having a crush on Tac and thinking the heart shaped jewelry that adorns Princess Yum Yum's ears and forehead were the most spectacular and beautiful ornaments a woman could wear, but they also looked like lollipops and I wanted to bite them. I could remember all the moments where the Thief made kid-me BUST MY GUTS (the thick, sloshy, unending fabric of his tunic squeezing his way into the pipes, his spaghetti fingers poking out of the drain, or even the way his sharp nose delicately pops bubbles from a bath) and just thinking, what would four year old Morgan think if she knew she'd watch this in her favorite theatre in all of her hometown twenty years later?

 The wet nurse with the meaty, hairy arms. Classic. 

 

Here are some things I've learned about it!

• Every frame was hand drawn! 
• The first animated film created in widescreen Cinemascope in over thirty years, at that point.
• Williams hired veteran animators Ken Harris (Merrie Melodies & Wile E. Coyote), Grim Natwick (Betty Boop) and Art Babbitt (Dumbo) but largely used UNKNOWNS so as to keep his vision on his terms without too much influence from other recognizable animations.
• It was an independently funded, 28+ year project...
• that at the eleventh hour, with fifteen minutes left of animation to complete, Warner Bros. seizes and sends to a completion bond company  
• The child that Williams nurtured, fostered, and fathered, pouring millions of his own money into was lost, then raped and pillaged in an attempt to make as marketable as Disney's upcoming RIP-OFF...Aladdin. My heart breaks..
• Vincent Price, Kenneth Williams, AND Sir Anthony Quayle all DIED after it's release, making it their final films. Cursed. 
• It's styled after real Persian miniatures i.e. detailed patterns and warped perspectives with bright and striking pigmentation. 

1546 AD, a Persian miniature from the poem Guy-o Chawgân ("the Ball and the Polo-mallet") during the Safavid dynasty.

You could talk for hours about how gorgeous this movie is to look at but the pops of color from the flowers in the field are some of my favorites. 

This is a forgotten yet formative piece of media for me but the film doesn't exist as it was meant to be seen. I'd grown up on the Miramax theatrical version. This time around, I got to watch the Recobbled cut, a scrappy restoration spliced with pencil sketches and fan drawings and as close a copy we'll get to the original until maybe Williams dies? and his working cut is released. My fingers are crossed. I was reliving childhood memories for this piece of art I'd never really seen. I can't say for sure! but I think this is a movie that planted seeds and informed a lot of my interest in the media that I choose.

Anyways this was the weirdest film viewing experience I've probably ever had. I'll end with our silent clown. The Wile E. Coyote, the Buster Keaton. The Thief is always effortlessly finding himself out of harm's way by sheer dumb luck. Rube Goldberg perfection. Williams says if you study your history, it's easy to make a movie. The tightrope scene is exactly Chaplin's The Circus, and let me tell ya, they both just leave you glimmering.

**Seen in Theatre 2 at NWFF, After Hours