'The Best Ones Came from Prague'

Three puppet films by mid-century Czech masters.

From left to right: A Drop Too Much, The Little Train and Two Little Frosts

Welcome back! This issue of Animation Obsessive is about puppet animation from mid-century Czechoslovakia.

Czech puppet animation is its own beast. It’s hard to compare it to stop-motion art from elsewhere — it descends from a local tradition of puppet theater. In many ways, the Czechs perfected the puppet film. By the ‘50s, no other country had a community of stop-motion animators so advanced.

There’s an anecdote about it all from The New York Times. The paper cited the case of William L. Snyder, an American producer who dubbed puppet films and brought them overseas. According to the Times:

Mr. Snyder, who was among the first Americans to do business in postwar Eastern Europe, had founded Rembrandt Films in 1949 to import European works like The Red Balloon to the United States. He especially liked puppet animation films, and was told the best ones came from Prague.

Today, we’re looking at three of these Czech classics from the 1950s — made by three Czech masters. Enjoy!