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Frédéric Back, Filmmaker
By Charles Solomon
Charles Solomon is an internationally respected
critic and historian of animation.
"You don't count money or time or anything
else when you make a film," says Frédéric
Back. "Animation is a folie amoureuse, something
that comes from your heart."
Back's belief in that "folie" has translated
into a purity of vision, a grace of motion and a
gentle but unflinching honesty that have made him
one of the artists most admired by other animators.
"Back's films are a tonic against the smarmy
cynicism that has taken over many of today's animated
films," comments Monsters, Inc. director Pete
Docter. "His work demonstrates how emotionally
powerful animation can be. Back reminds us of the
essential but often forgotten need for a simple
connection with the natural world and the people
around us."
Pres Romanillos, whose work includes Shan Yu in
Disney's Mulan, adds, "Frédéric's
work is masterful, beautiful and, more importantly,
inspires others to do better. That inspiration is
a challenge we cannot afford to ignore." Hungarian
animator Marcell Jankovics summed up the consensus
within the animation community when he called Back,
"one of the few poets our medium has produced."
Back's interest in animation was sparked by a screening
of Walt Disney's Fantasia shortly after World War
II. "The 'Rite of Spring' sequence gave me
the impetus to discover what animation can do,"
he recalls. "That was the least Disneyesque
section of the film-it wasn't so cute and caricature-y.
The drama of the music was so well expressed that
it made me want to get into animation.'' In 1963-64
he received a Canada Council grant to study film
and animation in Europe, and in 1968 Hubert Tison
invited Back to join the newly created film animation
studio at the CBC/Radio-Canada.
Back's early films, which combine cels, cut-outs
and drawings on paper, reveal his initial explorations
of ideas and visual styles he would develop more
fully in his mature works. Abracadabra (1970), made in collaboration with Graeme Ross,
tells the story of an evil wizard who steals the
sun but is defeated by a group of children. He would
express his belief in the honesty and perception
of children more fully in Illusion? and Taratata!
Back drew on Native American legends for his first
solo efforts. En effet, Inon
or The Conquest of Fire (Inon ou La Conquête
du feu, 1971) depicts the Algonquin tale
of how Hawk and Beaver stole fire from the Thunder
God, Inon, to alleviate mankind's suffering. In The
Creation of Birds (La Création des oiseaux,
1973), the Mi'kmaq god Glooscap fashions
birds from fallen autumn leaves: a miracle that
recurs each spring when the birds return to the
branches of the trees where they were fledged. Both
films showcase Back's graceful drawing style and
celebrate the beauties of nature. The elegant deer
in Creation are the graphic ancestors of the forest
creatures in All
Nothing (Tout-rien) and Crac!.
In Illusion? (1975) and Taratata! (1977), Back began to explore the theme of the false
seductions and unsatisfying overabundance of modern
industrialized society. In both films, children
reject an artificial urban environment for the unsullied
world of nature. Illusion? was the first film composer Norman Roger scored
for Back: Their collaboration would continue through
nearly two decades and six films.
Back found his artistic voice in animation when
he began drawing in coloured pencil on frosted cels,
a technique that enabled him to transfer the grace
and elegance of his personal drawing style to the
screen. This simple yet demanding technique produced
a shimmering world of delicate pastels, rather than
the hard outlines and areas of flat color of traditional
2-D animation. All
Nothing (Tout-rien, 1980), a moving plea
for ecological sanity done on frosted cels, earned
Back his first Oscar® nomination. Bill Scott,
a veteran of the Warner Bros., UPA and Jay Ward
studios, called All
Nothing "the one animated film everyone
should be required to see."
"All Frédéric's animation is
done on frosted cels, and the drawings are very,
very small, but the detail's in them; they're not
minimalist," adds award-winning director Bob
Kurtz. "When they appear on the screen, everything's
there. Each individual drawing is beautiful, yet
they animate. Obviously he's a magical artist, but
you just can't believe one man can do all this.
There are so few one-man filmmakers, and he's at
the top."
Crac!
(1981) was inspired by an essay his daughter
wrote about an old rocking chair. In the film, a
farmer carves the rocker as a gift for his fiancée
at the beginning of the 20th century. They sit in
the chair at their wedding, and rock their newborn
children in it. As the children grow, the chair
becomes an indoor playground, and a resting place
for the farmer as he ages. It provides a place for
the farmer and the audience to watch the changes
the century brings to life in rural Quebec-not all
of them for the better. Crac! won the Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film
in 1982, along with two dozen festival prizes.
For his next film, Back returned to an idea he had
been nurturing for nearly 15 years. When he became
active in ecological causes during the late '60s,
he was moved by The
Man Who Planted Trees (L'Homme qui plantait des
arbres), Jean Giono's account of Elzéard
Bouffier, a shepherd who transformed a barren region
of Provence into a fertile countryside by planting
hundreds of thousands of oak trees over the course
of decades.
"I felt The
Man Who Planted Trees was a story everyone
should know," Back explains. "It's not
just about trees, but about a way of understanding
our role in life and in nature. We are born into
beauty and riches. We should preserve or replace
that legacy so that the generations to come will
receive something at least as beautiful, if not
more beautiful, than what we found. The film is
about the power each of us has to improve or to
destroy."
Back drew the first storyboards for the film in
1979, and continued to develop them while he made All
Nothingv and Crac! Working with a single assistant, he began the film
in 1982, and describes its creation as "a five-year
rush." In contrast to the frantic pace of recent
animated films, The
Man Who Planted Trees (1987) unfolds at
a measured pace, supported by Roger's subtle score.
"I deliberately went against the usual pace
of animation to emphasize the mood, rather than
the movement," Back explains. "It's very
difficult to sustain, as the tempo seems almost
like slow motion. But the speed is actually very
close to the rate of real movement."
Widely acclaimed as Back's masterpiece, The
Man Who Planted Trees won an Academy Award®
and forty prizes from film festivals. Screenings
of the film have inspired tree-planting campaigns
around the world. John Lasseter, the Oscar®-winning
director of the Toy Story films, says, "The
Man Who Planted Trees is one of greatest
motion pictures ever made, regardless of technique
or length. I've showed it so many times to people,
and every time, the audience cries. And I look forward
to seeing it every single time. When the movie industry
has ended, that film will stand as one of finest
motion pictures ever made at any time and in any
technique."
Back's last film, The
Mighty River (Le Fleuve aux grandes eaux, 1992),
traces the interaction of humans with the St. Lawrence
River over the course of the centuries. By the time
it was completed, the CBC/Radio-Canada animation
studio had closed, a victim of budget cutbacks. The
Mighty River brought Back his fourth Oscar®
nomination and a score of festival prizes.
Since retiring from Radio-Canada after completing The
Mighty River, Back has remained active,
illustrating books, planting trees and working for
ecological causes.
Reflecting on his animation career, Back comments
with characteristic modesty, "It was a privilege
to be able to address such important themes with
the help of fabulous technology, the cooperation
of the talented musician Norman
Roger, and the support and advice of Hubert
Tison. I only regret not having more talent,
not being a Picasso or a Braque, not for myself,
but to show more people the potential beauty of
the art of animation and its power as a teaching
tool. I hope that my success offers encouragement
to others. The world needs their creations."
As Back suggests, animation may be a "folie
amoureuse," but his love for the animated film
is something he shares with the hearts of artists
and audiences all over the world. Ultimately, it
is his love that elevates an often denigrated form
of filmmaking to the level of art, in the truest
sense of the term. |
