Watch The Thought, the First Animated Movie to Cope with Large, Philosophical Concepts (1932)

A obscure sense of dis­qui­et set­tled over Europe within the peri­od between World Struggle I and World Struggle II. Because the gradual burn of mil­i­tant extremely­na­tion­al­ism min­gled with jin­go­ist pop­ulism, creator­i­tar­i­an lead­ers and fas­cist fac­tions discovered mount­ing sup­port amongst a cit­i­zen­ry hun­gry for cer­tain­ty. Europe’s develop­ing trep­i­da­tion fos­tered a few of the 20^th century’s most strik­ing painter­ly, lit­er­ary, and cin­e­mat­ic depic­tions of the entire­i­tar­i­an­ism that might quickly fol­low. It was nearly inevitable that this peri­od would see the start of the primary deeply philo­soph­i­cal ani­mat­ed movie, referred to as The Thought.

The Thought first emerged as a phrase­much less nov­el in 1920, drawn by Frans Masereel. Masereel, a detailed good friend of Dadaist and New Objec­tivist artist George Grosz, had cre­at­ed a stark, black-and-white sto­ry in regards to the indomitable nature of concepts. Make use of­ing thick, aggres­sive traces obtained via wooden­lower print­ing, Masereel depict­ed a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal order’s combat in opposition to the start of a brand new thought, which even­tu­al­ly flour­ished regardless of the institution’s relent­much less makes an attempt to sup­press it.

Set­ting to work in 1930, a Czech movie­mak­er named Berthold Bar­tosch spent two years ani­mat­ing The Thought. Bartosch’s visu­al fashion remained true to Masereel’s harsh, vivid traces. His ver­sion of the sto­ry, how­ev­er, took a decid­ed­ly bleak­er flip—one which was extra rem­i­nis­cent of the writ­ings of his com­pa­tri­ot, Franz Kaf­ka. The place­as Masereel believed that the puri­ty of fine concepts would over­whelm their oppo­si­tion, Bar­tosch, work­ing a decade clos­er to the Nazis’ ascen­dan­cy, was cautious of such ide­al­ism.

Above, you may watch what movie his­to­ri­an William Moritz has known as “the primary ani­mat­ed movie cre­at­ed as an artwork­work with seri­ous, even trag­ic, social and philo­soph­i­cal themes.” Paired with a hang-out­ing rating com­posed by Arthur Honeg­ger, the 25-minute ani­ma­tion is a pow­er­ful­ly mov­ing med­i­ta­tion on artwork, strug­gle, puri­ty of thought, and pop­ulist sav­agery that is still untar­nished after eight a long time.

Yow will discover oth­er nice ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Motion pictures On-line: Nice Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­males­taries & Extra.

Word: This submit orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our web site in Novem­ber, 2013. It was writ­ten by Ilia Blin­d­er­man. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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