This is a stupid thing to say (get ready!), but sometimes it’s hard
for my brain to remember that technology existed before, like, 1991.
Clearly when I was born, my parents alerted the villagers via pony
express and the doctor (shaman?) chiseled my birth certificate on a
tablet of stone and then my dad went back to his job at the quarry
where they mixed cement in the beak of a dinosaur pelican. Right? What?
A monkey went into space? A computer knows how to play chess? They had
cameras in the 1910s? I’m being ridiculous? Yeah, yeah, I
know.
What I’m getting at here is that a tiny masterpiece like 1930’s
Le Roman de Renard (The Tale of the Fox), by Polish
stop-motion animation genius Wadysaw Starewicz, is basically as amazing
to me as that time Leonardo da Vinci invented the helicopter.
Seriously, Wady, when I die, you and I are going to have the highest
high-five in the history of heaven.
Created over a painstaking 10 years and starring hordes of gorgeous,
creepy, dancing puppets, Le Roman de Renard—”the oldest
and most beautiful story known to us animals”—tells the tale of
one rascally fox. Reynard, like all foxes, is a complete asshole. He
spends his days and nights hoodwinking his fellow animals into (a)
giving him all of their snacks, (b) getting the shit beat out of them
by neighborhood humans, or (c) dying. The animals take their grievances
to the king (bon soir, Monsieur Lion!), who vows to administer
justice to the slippery fox, beginning with this decree: “So that peace
may reign, our subjects are forbidden to eat each other. Only
vegetables, dairy produce, and fruit are permissible. Peace must
reign in the land. All others will be hanged.”
Well, Reynard does not change his ways, and the animals
(ever-nervous “choir bunnies,” “Sir Cock and his worthy wife, Lady
Hen,” “Mister Badger, best barrister at the beastly bar”) never learn.
Listen, animals. Y’all are stupid! Trickiness is that fox’s very
nature! Why would you climb down that well because Reynard told you
that heaven is at the bottom (“Festoons of sausage, matchless
delicacies! Here, death is not sad!”)? HE IS A KNOWN LIAR! Do not stick
your nose in that hole! Do not stick your tail in the frozen lake! Do
not walk into those same booby traps over and over again for half an
hour!
The extremely rare print was flown in “from France” for the Seattle
Polish Film Festival last weekend (Scarecrow does NOT have it, we were
told emphatically). According to Wikipedia, after seeing one of
Starewicz’s earlier films—a fairy tale about bugs—”one
British reviewer was tricked into thinking the stars were live trained
insects.” So you see? I’m not the only one who can’t tell the
difference between technology and magic. Starewicz made magic. 
