ON ANIMATION

Film Caricature: On Caricature and Caricatured Film Image in Animated and Feature Films

The author explains the relationship between different visual and audiovisual media on the example of caricature which can be related not only to animated film, but also to the feature film such as Trafic (1970), by Jacques Tati. Numerous distinguished animated film authors were at the same time successful caricaturists, in the Zagreb School of Animated Film (Dragić, Vukotić, Grgić, Dovniković, Marušić) as well as abroad (John Weldon, Adolf Born, Miroslaw Kijowicz, Priit Pärn, Bruno Bozzeto, Bill Plympton, Te Wei). Caricature and film image are related by means of expression, visual gag and humour, that is, satire or parody. The author of this study understands editing as a means to integrate different contents in the same frame, so it is considered as one of the key means of expression in different art communication media that uses caricature’s style and principles.

The author explains the historical context of gag and caricature from the beginnings of feature and animated films, explains the phenomenon of the caricatural stylization (the caricaturist always seeks for the essence of a phenomenon or a person and, disclosing deformations, adapts a graphic expression and a general visualisation to it), then he explains the understanding of the caricature as a visual pact between the author and the spectators, particularly emphasizing the complexity and the inexplicability of this communication. Considering these analyses, the film caricature in this paper is understood as a momentary visual gag and, more frequently, as a cumulative visual gag (developed in time and space with special relevance of timing). There are numerous examples of film caricature and the author devotes special attention to the films Chromophobia by Raoul Servaise (1966), Možda Diogen by Nedjeljko Dragić (1966) and Time Out by Priit Pärn (1984).

Midhat Ajanović