René Laloux 1929-2004. © Dreamland éditeur, 1996.

With his little salt‘n’pepper moustache, spectacles and paunchy physique, René Laloux looked like the archetypal Frenchman. Yet this debonair appearance, who passed away March 14, 2004, belied one of French animation’s most highly original personalities, one who at times was anti-authoritarian, and often displayed a tendency to contrariness. In retrospect, Laloux was in fact a pioneer, who on several occasions got it right -- but was too far ahead of his time.

Born in 1929, Laloux wanted to become a painter. Biographers note that in the mid-’50s he took on several different jobs to get by; he was subsequently employed by the Cour-Cheverny psychiatric clinic, run by the doctor Jean Oury, where he put on puppet shows with his patients. In 1960, his first short film, Les dents du singe, written and drawn by the clinic’s patients, drew attention to this thirty-something with progressive ideas and unusual therapeutic methods. This rather striking piece of work immediately made a mark, winning the Prix Emile Cohl.

In 1964, he started directing professionally, making another short with Roland Topor, Les temps morts, followed in 1965 by his most well known short film, Les escargots. It was quite natural for Laloux the puppeteer to turn to paper cutouts for these three films; a choice dictated as much by taste as by necessity (puppets and cutouts being directly animated under the camera). Les temps morts is an anti-militarist film, shot through with Topor’s black humor. Its crosshatched graphic style, which looks rather like etching, became Laloux’ trademark signature up until La planète sauvage.

Les escargots presents us with an everyday fantasy world: a gardener, growing lettuces, unwittingly sets off a series of catastrophes. The film won numerous international prizes, including the Grand Prix at the Mamaïa Festival (Romania) and the Special Jury Prize at the Cracow Festival. Whereas Laloux was still an unkown, Topor had already made something of a name for himself: an engraver, illustrator, screenwriter, he also wrote novels and short stories. By the late ‘60s his artistic work had achieved an international reputation, and his work was exhibited in London, New York and Chicago. Laloux himself continued to paint, but without ever really making his name in this field.

His collaboration with Topor led to the making of the animated feature, La planète sauvage. Laloux, a science fiction fan, persuaded Topor to work on an adaptation of the work of Stefan Wul, one of the best French writers in the genre. A dental surgeon, Wul had written a dozen sci-fi novels in his spare time, published in the highly popular Anticipation series in the mid ‘50s by Fleuve Noir, which also specialized in detective and espionage thrillers. The covers, designed by the illustrator Brantonne, were not dissimilar to American publications such as Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories of the preceding generation. But content-wise, they could not have been more different.

Unlike most Anglo-American sci-fi, Wul’s were informed by a poetic vision; he imagined worlds and civilizations with none of the usual technological, space and mechanical paraphernalia that was then the norm in classic sci-fi. It must have been this near-naif, surrealist aspect of his work that intrigued Laloux and Topor. La planète sauvage is based on Wul’s novel Oms en série (1957) The story unfolds on a planet where very tall blue androids enjoy a highly civilised life, but treat other, much smaller beings with a condescending gentleness, as if they were pets. Some of the latter live in the wild and are hunted by the former. Once caught and tamed, the story’s protagonist is caught between his origins and his status as a domesticated ‘pet,’ which inevitably leads to conflict with his masters.

Somewhat Swiftian, the story has some affinities with Planet of the Apes, the French novel by Pierre Boule which was adapted for the cinema around about the same time. However, the fact that it was an animated film with a lyrical strain made it sufficiently different and its originality lay in the fact that instead of describing brute coercion it creates an ambiance of gentle slavery; in all, a highly premonitory satire.