29/08/2003 - Tonino Guerra’s imagination and the elegance of Marc Chagall are Europe’s answer to Hollywood cartoons

“We must improve on perfection.” Tonino Guerra subscribes to the famous motto of a Chinese monk and the writer summarized his point of view in Il Cane e il suo generale, a pan-European animated feature that includes France and Italy. The film is a hymn to imperfection and is Guerra’s call to arms against the onslaught of perfect computer-generated cartoons. “This is my personal battle to restore something that the Americans have taken away, imagination.”

Il Cane e il suo generale is a delicate story that’s full of passion and whose colours are reminiscent of the work of Marc Chagall. It is the story of a retired Russian general from St Petersburg, who spends his days fighting off bird attacks. A very enemy for a man who fought and beat Napoleon by ingeniously sacrificing a huge number of birds. In the end, a stray dog befriends the elderly general and helps him to come to terms with the world. The cartoon was given a special screening at the Mostra.
Based on a novella by Guerra, who wrote some of Fellini and Antonioni’s most famous screenplays, Il cane e il suo generale was designed by Sergei Barkhin, a set designer at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre whose expertise recreated Chagall’s delicate pastels to perfection. The film was directed by Francis Nielsen, his first-ever cartoon. The veteran filmmaker found the experience incredibly exhilarating: “Tonino’s dreams are so wonderful that you want to step inside and experience them first hand.”

(Translated from Italian)