La Table tournante (1988)

La Table tournante is a French animated film first released in 1988, directed by Jacques Demy and Paul Grimault.  The film stars Paul Grimault, Anouk Aimée, Lionel Charpy, Gary Chekchak and Alain Costa.  It has also been released under the title: Turning Table.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


The animator Paul Grimault returns to his workshop where he is greeted by a small cartoon clown who is curious to know everything about life and cartoons. Grimault uses the opportunity to dig out and show some of his cartoon classics which he made in a career spanning over forty years, starting with the tale of the spinning table...

This film is both a well-deserved tribute to Paul Grimault, one of France’s greatest cartoon animators, and also a captivating retrospective look at his work. Grimault himself was reluctant to make the film but was persuaded when his friend Jacques Demy suggested using cartoon characters, like the small clown, to interact with Grimault and coerce him into talking about his work.  The film not only allows a new generation to appreciate Grimault’s work, which is staggering in its originality and quality, but also to see something of the man himself.

After a film-making career spanning nearly half a century, Grimault won international acclaim in the late 1970s for his full length cartoon Le Roi et l’Oiseau, which has been described as the best animated film of all time. La Table tournante returns to Grimault’s earlier, less ambitious films, all short cartoons of around five minutes in duration.  These include the whimsical L’Epouvantail , in which a devious cat disguises himself as Josephine Baker to lure a bird-loving scarecrow to his doom, and the hauntingly surreal Le Chien Mélomane, which paints a grim apocalyptic view of the future.  The film ends with one of Grimault’s best-loved and most poignant works, Le Petit soldat, which the director made with his life-long friend, Jacques Prévert, who collaborated on many of Grimault’s other films.

Grimault’s cartoons show a remarkable variation in style and theme.  Some are clearly targeted at children, others are quite challenging and would tax an intelligent adult viewer.  However all of his cartoons – at least the ones shown in this film – are exceptionally well made, showing an extraordinary capacity to tell a moving and captivating story.

The animation shorts which are included in La Table tournante are:

Le Marchand de Notes (1942)
Les passagers de la Grande Ourse (1941)
L’Epouvantail (1943)
Le Voleur de Paratonnerres (1944)
Le Fou du Roi (1988)
Le Diamant (1970)
Le Chien Mélomane (1973)
Le Petit Soldat (1947)

© James Travers 2001

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