Bob Godfrey - Animated Shorts [VHS-Rip]

One way and another, Bob Godfrey's films have attracted a good deal of attention, not all of it invariably favourable. "Great" won him an Oscar; but feminists have condemned much of his work for misogyny—a charge to which he himself is now inclined to plead guilty—and several Godfrey cartoons have had "X" certificates slapped on them by alarmed censorship boards.

"I am completely communication-oriented. . . . If the art gets in the way—stamp it out, I say. I'm a plagiarist, I will desecrate, I will mutilate, I'll do anything in order to get the message across."

In recent years Godfrey has made determined efforts to escape narrow typecasting as the maker of "male anxiety films." ("I think Maggie [Thatcher] used up all my misogyny," he commented in a 1993 television programme. "I haven't got any left, I used up so much on her.") But not even the award of an OBE—which arrived, much to Godfrey's glee, while a hanged effigy of Mrs Thatcher was on public display outside his studio—has conferred respectability. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award at Zagreb Animation Festival in 1992.



The collection includes:

Alf, Bill and Fred (1964)
Running time: 6 mins

Alf, Bill and Fred are three friends alone in a world of misery in this short film about a man, a dog and a duck who enjoy bouncing together. A charming cartoon, the animation style brings to mind the old Pink Panther cartoons, but is far more surreal.

Bill - the man - suddenly inherits a lot of money and starts spending it with reckless abandon (on, amongst other things, a tin of peaches). He abandons his old friends and becomes increasingly hedonistic. Meanwhile, the dog and the duck continue bouncing…

The moral of the story is stated to be: "It is easier to sell happiness than to buy it because most people are stupider than you are!" Minutes of pure silliness.

The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit (1961)
Running time: 6 min

Godfrey first achieved wide recognition with "The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit", a spirited and irreverent send-up of animated-film conventions which Ralph Stephenson described as "one of the funniest cartoons ever made." The film signalled what Michel Roudévitch called, in tangy French, Godfrey's "penchants pour l'hétéroclite, le saugrenu, le coq-à-l'âne" (taste for the offbeat, preposterous and parodic), as well as locating him squarely in a British comic-surrealist tradition descending from Lewis Carroll via the Goons, and leading on to Monty Python.

BAFTA Awards
1962 Nominated BAFTA Film Award - Best Animated Film

Cannes Film Festival
1961 Nominated Golden Palm - Best Short Film

Dream Doll (1979)
directed by Bob Godfrey and Zlatko Grgic
Running time: 12 min
Country: UK | Yugoslavia

A lonely old man finds his true love - in a sex shop, only to lose her. But for lovers there are sometimes happy endings.

Academy Awards, USA
1980 Nominated Oscar Best Short Film, Animated

BAFTA Awards
1980 Nominated BAFTA Film Award - Best Short Film

Great (Isambard Kingdom Brunel) (1975)
Running time: 30 min

One of Godfrey's most ambitious works to date is the Oscar-winning "Great", a 30-minute musical treatment of the life of the Victorian inventor engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Visually and verbally exuberant, it packs in all the notable events of Brunel's stupendous career, along with a wealth of songs, jokes, and miscellaneous objects—including Union Jacks, exploding hats, and multiple appearances by Queen Victoria, who makes her entrance rising majestically out of a lavatory bowl. This gives fair notice of the overall level of humour, but it would take a jaundiced viewer to object, given the film's abundant energy, high spirits, and evident affection for its subject. Even so, according to Godfrey, the Brunel Society did object: "They said it was full of historical inaccuracies and lewd innuendoes. And why not, I say."

"Great" is, quite simply, great! It's a masterwork.

Academy Awards, USA
1976 Won Oscar Best Short Film, Animated

BAFTA Awards
1976 Won BAFTA Film Award - Best Animated Film

Happy Birthday Switzerland (1990)
Running time: 3 min

A celebration of all the things the Swiss have given the world! A typical Godfrey tribute to the land of the Alps, cuckoo clocks, mountain goats and chocolate…

Henry 9 'til 5 (1970)
Running time: 6 min

This is a hilarious short from the fevered imagination of Bob Godfrey. A diminutive dullard of an office worker escapes the tedium of his unrewarding job by thinking about sex all day long. The combination of the pop-art animation, deadpan narration and a killer punchline make it a very amusing cartoon for adults. It's not for all tastes, but would it be a Godfrey cartoon if it was?

BAFTA Awards
1971 Won BAFTA Film Award - Best Animated Film

Kama Sutra Rides Again (1972)
Running time: 9 min

In "Kama Sutra Rides Again" Godfrey's having fun, pointing out British inhibitions about sex and relationships, but - oh, vicar! - what a naughty boy he is as an old, retired couple while away their time working through the sexual positions in the Kama Sutra in the most phlegmatic of manners.

Kama Sutra Rides Again was the first cartoon to receive an "R" (adults only) rating in Australia, which did it no harm at all at the box office. It also gained a special award from Yugoslav film buffs as "The Film Most Likely to be Understood All Over the World," much to Godfrey's delight.

Academy Awards, USA
1973 Nominated Oscar Best Short Subject, Animated Films

Revolution - La Belle France (1989)
Running time: 4 min

Many of Bob Godfrey’s films contain visual elements of surprise, unexpected stylistic combination and non sequitur, all qualities attributed to surrealism, which was described by Antonin Artaud as, above all, a state of mind. Surrealist imagery aims to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous or irrational juxtaposition of subject matter. In "Revolution -La Belle France" the surrealist gesture dominates. with dancing Eiffel towers or Margaret Thatcher as a French belle dame collaged in the traditions of Polish animator Jan Lenica and of his admirer Terry Gilliam (who, as a young animator, Godfrey didn’t hire because he was “too good”!).

Sit back and enjoy!



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