Josef Kluge - The Helpers (1968)

Czechoslovakia’s animation industry dates back to the 1920s but really flourished in the post-WW2 era when it was taken over by the state. Figures like the genius puppet maker-manipulator Jiří Trnka and Hermina Tyrlova created a series of innovative entertainments largely aimed at children, while Karel Zeman blended live action and animation in films based on the work of Jules Verne and the fictionalized but historically real figure Baron Munchhausen. Later, the eldritch stop-motion creations of Jan Švankmajer won international acclaim.

Josef Kluge is a lesser-known figure in the annals of Czech animation but “The Helpers” (1968) is a gem. In this grimly satirical and slyly subversive update of the Sisyphus myth, a man pushing a rock up a hill is impeded and further burdened by an officious swarm of bureaucratic busy-bodies wielding triplicate forms and red tape. As with so many Eastern European animations of the Sixties and Seventies, the music – in this case by Jiří Bažant and Jiří Malásek – and the sound effects are gloriously peculiar, an eerie  entertainment in their own right.

                                                                       


An early effort

Quite different kind of music here from Jiří Malásek + Jiří Bažant