Mike Barrier’s interview with Hugh Harman was published in ASIFA-Hollywood’s Graffiti Volume 5 number 1, Spring 1984. Hugh’s comments about Peace on Earth were, “They tried to stop me from making that.” Barrier: “What was their argument?” Harman: “That it was too serious. It made more money than any picture we ever made. Fred Quimby, who was sort of a business manager at MGM tried to stop it. Then when it was finished, I think he wanted to take all the awards for it himself. Peace On Earth was a tough one to animate and to write. We shouldn’t actually have made that as a one-reeler, we should have made it in about three to five reels. We cut it and cut it and cut it; we didn’t cut footage that was animated. Nobody in his right mind does that, unless it’s bad. But [by] cutting the storyboard and switching [it] around [we shortened it].

“It has some flaws. I just got tired of it near the end. That’s always been a weakness with me. That I get so fed up on it at the end of a picture that I would just as soon turn it over to the Girl Scouts to make. Unless it was a feature that would warrant going on with costs forever. I’ve observed that as a weakness in myself, that I often end up with a weak, unsubstantial ending for a picture.”

While Peace on Earth must have resulted from a concern over the growing war in Europe, fear of atomic weapons and the cold war resulted in an equally memorable film, Peter Foldes’ Short Vision (1955, Great Britain). It has a relatively simple narration that tells us how an unnamed flying thing (possibly a bird or a plane, we don’t know what it is) flew over the world. The animals looked up, but it was too late. It flew over our cities and some people saw it, but it was too late. It destroyed all who saw it and all who didn’t. Finally, all that was left of our planet was a small glowing light and it now looked like there was a moth dancing around a flame. And then the flame went out.

Foldes accompanied his somber message with strong, but simple visuals. It wasn’t highly polished cel animation like Harman’s film. Instead he used cutouts, gauche and pastels for his painterly work. We see people looking up and then the image dissolves to a skeleton looking up. Lory Ringuette, who runs Loonic Video, introduced me to the film. He feels Short Vision is the film that comes closest to giving him a real feeling of horror. The film used to be available for rent in 16mm from a non-theatrical distributor. Unfortunately the distributor is no longer in business. Hopefully somebody will distribute it on tape or DVD someday.

A beautiful flower leads to all-out war in Norman McLaren’s Neighbours/Voisins © 1952 National Film Board of Canada.

Ishu Patel from India has made several films at the National Film Board of Canada that are social/political message films. His Bead Game, (1971, N.F.B., Oscar nomination) traces the evolution of life on Earth from one-cell organisms to modern man. At each step of the way, he shows the stronger form of life devouring the weaker. When his film refers to the middle of the last century, he suggests the power of the atom and leaves the next step on the evolutionary chain for the film’s viewers to contemplate. It is a fascinating and sophisticated work and hopefully the next step in the evolution of life on Earth will be a positive one.

Bead Game’s technique is unique. It is a stop-motion work made out of thousands of tiny beads. It starts with one or two beads and slowly the images become more complex. The organisms grow in size and complexity as the camera pulls back. At first the beads are quite close to the camera lens, so the small, simple forms of life can be seen clearly on the screen. By the end of the film, the camera is a lot further away from the beads and individual beads can barely be made out.

Another approach to structuring a film about peace that drives home the horror of war is seen in Haka (Grave of the Fireflies) directed by Isao Takahata, Japan, 1988. The film begins with the death of a homeless teenager, the victim of the American firebombing of Japan during WWII. His soul becomes a mass of red lights and through flashbacks, we are told his story and the story of his younger sister. Some anime fans consider this work to be one of Japan’s greatest films.

An impressive cataclysmic disaster film with a complex structure and several levels of meaning is The Iron Giant (1999, directed by Brad Bird for Warner Bros.). While kids can view it as an exciting boy’s adventure, it is also a complex cautionary tale warning us not to provoke great powers of destruction and not to trust the military to search for peaceful resolutions to potentially devastating situations. While the ending offers a suggestion of hope, most adults probably realize there are not too many kids in the world like Hogarth, the giant’s co-star. There are a lot more people who would rather shoot first and ask questions later.

The story uses simple means to demonstrate the giant is a robot capable of being taught the values of good and bad, and that he can learn to distinguish between friends and enemies. We also see him experience grief when a hunter kills a deer. Hogarth gets him to override his natural instincts to defend himself from violence with his built-in devastating weapon systems. The giant is ultimately faced with a complex situation that requires him to act quickly to avoid seeing the town and his friends destroyed. If you haven’t seen Iron Giant, it is available on DVD and tape.