Norway is a small country, with only four million
inhabitants. It is more famous for its cold climate and beautiful, mountainous
fjords scenery than for its film industry. If you are lucky, an animation
fan abroad may have heard about Ivo Caprino and seen a couple of Norwegian
shorts at international animation festivals, but that's it. Very few, even
in Norway, know that this little country has a long animation film history
going back to the early 1900s.
As is the case today, when it came to animation, Norwegian cinema screens
were dominated by American animation before WWII. The first animation stars
in Norway were in the Colonel Heeza Liar (Norwegian name Mentulant),
and Kapten Grogg series, made by the Swedish pioneer, Viktor Bergdahl.
In the 20s, Felix the Cat was the leading star, and from the late 20s up
until today, Mickey Mouse and the other Disney stars have ruled the ground.
Eventually, the American cartoons influenced Norwegian artists to make
animated films themselves. As far as we know, the first animations made
in Norway were done by Sverre Halvorsen in 1913, in Kristiania (Oslo),
using a chalk on a blackboard technique. As with his fellow animation pioneers,
Ola Cornelius and Thoralf Klouman, he was a cartoonist in the
press, and his films such as Roald Amundsen on the South Pole were
based on the same subjects, and characterized in the same way as his newspaper
drawings. These artists did also drawings for postcards and advertisements
in the press, and most gave up animation because funding was difficult
to find at the time.
A New Venue: Cinema Commercials
From the middle of the 1920s to the late 30s, more than 100 animated cinema
commercials were made for Norwegian companies. One-third of them were made
for the Norwegian tobacco company, Tiedemann. Among the directors that
made them are leading international names as Viktor Bergdahl, Hans Fischerkoesen
and Oskar Fischinger.
The start of animated commercials for the cinema goes back to Germany and
Julius Pinschewer in 1912. In Norway, advertising films appeared in the
cinemas at least from the early 1920s, and there was a boom in this
format in the latter half of the decade. The 1920s were a golden time for
the advertising industry in Norway. From soap to cigarettes, customers
were attracted to products with animated commercials. Static advertising
slides had been screened in the cinemas for years, but in 1922, the leading
cinema advertising agency, Sverdrup Dahl, organized screenings of advertising
films. Now suddenly there was money for production of animated films in
Norway, but those first animated commercials were still made abroad. The
Danish cartoonist and animation pioneer Storm P. made a few margarine commercials
in the early 20s. The domestic boom didn't happen until 1927, when nearly
100 different cinema commercials were
screened in Norwegian cinemas, at least 13 of which were animated. This
high production volume continued into 1928 and into 1929.
Most of the early Norwegian animated commercial films were made with a
combination cut-out and drawing technique, similar to the style of 1920s
advertising films by Danish animators Viktor Bergdahl and Storm P. These
two pioneers were likely the inspiration for many Norwegian animators from
the late 1920s. The use of cels was still very limited at the time, but
sometimes the animation was more advanced, with animation drawn directly
on multiple printed cards with static backgrounds, a technique Bergdahl
used in his Kapten Grogg films. Some films were done as object animation
in combination with live action, by artists such as the Méliès-inspired
filmmaker Ottar Gladtvet, but most of his films were animated cartoons
with extensive use of additional cut-out technique.
The quality of the early Norwegian animation varied quite a lot. Some of
the films are surprisingly good, like the 1927 Fiinbeck er rømt
produced by Gladtvet. But most of the films suffered from being made in
small studios, on simple equipment, and by animators who were still in
the beginning of their learning processes. These films did impress the
Norwegian cinema audience in 1927, but after Mickey Mouse entered the Norwegian
screens at the end of the 1920s, Norwegian advertisers preferred live-action
commercials over the "second-class," Norwegian produced animation.
This is probably the main reason why the boom in Norwegian animation suddenly
came to an end in 1929.
In the mid 1930s, however, animated cinema had a resurgence in commercials.
The films were extremely professionally made, but most were made outside
of Norway, mainly in Germany and in Czechoslovakia. But these were at least
films made for Norwegian goods and companies. Some of the films were just
dubbed Norwegian versions of foreign films, but most of them included longer
segments specially made for the Norwegian version, and some of the films
were directly made for the Norwegian market.
These films differed in techniques and style. The animated cartoon still
dominated, but the standard has made the transition from paper to cels.
Many of the films were made with puppets and other objects. Twenty of them
were made in color, and at least three were abstract films in the style
of Oskar Fischinger. The Norwegian advertising industry was professionalized
in the 1930's. At the Stockholm exhibition in 1930, the Scandinavian advertisers
were introduced to the German Bauhaus movement, and this influenced the
industry in Norway both to professionalism and a new visual and artistic
approach. This can be seen in many of the animated cinema commercials made
in the late 30s.
Competition Breeds Inventiveness
J.L.Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik is still the leading company in the Norwegian
tobacco industry, as it was in the early 1920s. But its position were seriously
threatened by American and British companies who, through the tobacco trust,
BATCO Ltd., tried to conquer the Norwegian market. BATCO filled Norwegian
newspapers and magazines with advertisements for their products. With Tiedemann
in the lead, the Norwegian tobacco producers had to answer. While the competition
in the press was tough, it seems that Tiedemann & Co ruled the ground
quite alone in the cinemas.
Heading the advertising department at Tiedemann was Halvor Andresen. Back
from marketing studies in the U.S., he introduced modern marketing to Tiedemann.
With Andresen at the helm, the advertising costs at Tiedemann increased
every year through the 1920s. In 1930, the BATCO war ended with the founding
of a new company with both Tiedemann and BATCO as owners. This is another
reason for the lack of animated Tiedemann commercials in the early 1930s,
but it doesn't explain the total stop in the making of animated cinema
commercials in 1930.
The Medina Campaign
In the late 1930s, Tiedemanns advertising costs reached a new peak, and
so they became more inventive in their advertising approach than ever.
The introduction of a new cigarette brand (named Medina) made them try
new ways of marketing. In the radio you could hear Medina classical concerts,
and in the cigarette packets you would find collecting cards with haute
couture from Paris. Tiedemann even invested in an autogirocopter, a plane
that was used only to promote the Medina cigarettes. Meanwhile, in the
cinemas, they used animation to sell the Medina brand.
The Medina films are quite different from the tobacco commercials of the
20s, both in style and content. While the Teddy films from the late 20s
were humorous and quite rough in their approach, the Medina films are delicate,
elegant and even abstract. As a parallel to the American Lucky Strike campaign,
Medina was Tiedemanns attempt to make women become smokers in the name
of sophistication, elegance and equality. It worked.
It is strange today, when people don't even smoke on television any more,
and when all advertising for tobacco and alcohol are strictly banned in
Norway, to see how these films tried to convince the audience of the advantages
of cigarette smoking. The inventiveness, quality and variation in animated
audiovisuals of these spots are quite impressive, and the commercials are
among the best advertising films ever shown in Norway. Maybe it is because
a product like tobacco, which is difficult to sell with plain objective
arguments, ultimately stimulates the advertisers to use their fantasy and
imagination.
A teddy bear and the mascot of the cigarette brand, named Teddy, was a
character in several animated commercials for Tiedemann. A typical Teddy
film is the 1927 Teddy's biltur (Teddy's Car Ride ) animated
by Niels Sinding-Hansen for Walter Fyrst, one of the leading filmmakers
in Norway before WWII. In this spot, Teddy is out driving, and he gets
hungry, so he stops at a restaurant. While he's inside eating, a man flattens
all four tires on Teddy's car. Out from the restaurant, Teddy discovers
what has happened, stops to think, and lights a cigarette. Inventively,
he blows four smoke rings that fit nicely around the flat wheels of his
car. He smiles and drives happily away on his wheels of smoke. Sinding-Hansen
made at least five more films for Tiedemann in this style in 1927-28.
Ottar Glatvet
The leading advertising filmmaker in Norway before WWII was Ottar Gladtvet.
He made mostly live action films, but as an experimental cameraman, he
used clever object animation and different stop-motion effects in many
of his films. He also produced animated cartoons and cut-outs, but I'm
quite sure he didn't make the drawings himself. Some of the Gladtvet films
are perhaps animated by the pioneer Sverre Halvorsen, with whom Gladtvet
collaborated on some animated shorts in the early 1920s. Some of the other
films were made in collaboration with Ths.W.Schwartz, a filmmaker influenced
by Viktor Bergdahl.
Gladtvet also collaborated with major animators outside of Norway. He made
three films for Persil washing powder, in collaboration with Julius Pinschewer,
and in 1927 he produced Fiinbeck har rømt (Jiggs Has Escaped.)
The film, based on the characters from George McManus' comic strip Bringing
up Father shows how the character's wife manages to bring Jiggs back
home and keep him indoors by offering him the finest Tiedemann tobacco
for his pipe. This film is very professionally done, and I'm quite sure
that Viktor Bergdahl, who made advertising films in Stockholm at this time,
is the animator behind it. I also believe that this film influenced other
Norwegian animators in their work, since many of the following films were
made in the same technique, but less professionally. It is possible that
a Norwegian animator, like perhaps Schwartz, worked in Stockholm as an
assistant to Bergdahl and brought this knowledge to Norway afterwards.
Kalifens hemmelighet (The Kalif's Secret ) was made in 1936
by Desider Gross in Prague, according to the censorship cards. It's a two
and a half minute, classic black and white cartoon with excellent animation.
Like The Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia, it is based
on Goethe's ballad "Der Zauberlehrling." Kalifens hemmelighet
is a beautiful example of music and animation fulfilling each other. In
the spot, the kalif is controlling the movements of cigarettes by playing
his flute. After dancing for him, the cigarettes offer themselves to the
kalif, who lights them and enjoys his smoke. The kalif's apprentice tries
the flute while the kalif is away, and he looses control over the cigarettes.
When the kalif gets his flute back and retains control, he realizes that
he shouldn't keep the cigarettes just selfishly for himself, but share
the joy with others.
Gasparcolor
The theme in the 1938 puppet film Et orientalsk kunststykke (An
Oriental Piece of Art ) made by Gasparcolor in Berlin, has several
similarities with Kalifens hemmelighet. The way the Medina cigarettes
are presented in the end of the two films, looks similar. Uniquely, Et
orientalsk is a well-made puppet film where an oriental sorcerer is
about to entertain a sultan. After several failures, he finally succeeds
when he magically offers the sultan a Medina cigarette.
En sigarett - en Drøm (A Cigarette - A Dream, ) produced
in 1938, is also produced by Gasparcolor, but in black and white. Itis
a very elegant film with long, smooth camera movements over gracious ballet
dancers in an oriental castle. Harp and piano are providing the music and
the whole scene is wrapped in elegant live action cigarette smoke! The
moral in the end of the spot says that if you smoke Medina cigarettes,
you will have wonderful dreams, as shown in the film. To me, at least parts
of this film look like they were made on a pinscreen, but the film is not
registered as an Alexeieff commercial. En sigarett - en Dream also
has close similarities to a 1933 German cigarette commercial called Schall
und Rauch, which is credited to Hans Fischerkoesen. En sigarett
- en Drøm is probably made by Fischerkoesen. Could then, Alexeieff
have been involved?
The Fischerkoesen studio probably also made the 1938 commercial film, Sjakk
Matt (Chess Mate, ) a fourth film credited to Gasparcolor. This
is a funny cartoon in which the white players have lost a game of chess
to the red, but the white king obtains new powers when he gets a taste
of a Sorte Mand Cigar. Accompanied by a jolly song in Norwegian and helped
by seducing cigar smoke, the white players take their sweet revenge.
Not credited to Gasparcolor but definitely made with the Gasparcolor process
is the abstract 1936 film, En fargesymfoni i blätt (Color
Symphony in Blue ). This is really a shortened version of Oskar Fischinger's
Komposition in Blau from 1935. Some scenes from the original are
missing, and the end has been re-done using the logo of the Medina cigarette
in the animation. According to an article in a Norwegian trade journal,
such abstract color commercials were quite common in Norwegian cinemas,
but in 1938, such color experiments were "replaced by more easily
understandable visuals with proper content."
Who Made These Films?
A lot of questions around the production history of these commercial films
still have to be answered. According to the Norwegian censorship cards,
Desider Gross and Gasparcolor were the two main producers of animated commercials
for Norwegian companies in the late 1930s. I know of 18 films credited
to Desider Gross, and 11 that are produced by Gasparcolor. But in Prague,
they don't know of this Desider Gross company. And Gasparcolor was a color
film patent, not a production company. Why, then, are these films credited
as being produced by Gross and Gasparcolor?
Fischinger made Komposition in Blau in 1935, and after he left Germany,
it was made into commercials for at least 17 different cigarette brands
all over Europe by Tolirag, Fischinger's collaborators. Several of the
films credited to Gasparcolor are definitely made by Fischerkoesen, while
others like the 1938 Radiorør-revolusjonen were made for
Phillips by George Pal in the Netherlands. Why then, this mis-crediting?
In Czechoslovakia, several of the pioneers of Czech animation like Karel
and Irena Dodal, George Pal and Hermina Tyrlova made excellent commercials
in the 30s for the production company Propaga-Film. BATA, the leading Czech
shoe producer and industry giant, made its own film company to produce
commercials, and Czech avant-garde filmmakers worked for them. Several
of the Desider Gross films I have registered are for shoes. Are these films
originally made by BATA? Maybe Desider Gross and Gasparcolor served as
agents for advertising films aimed for the Scandinavian market.
A lot of research is still to be done in this area. In any case, these
films represent a most interesting collaboration between filmmakers and
advertisers in different European countries. Several of the leading animators
before the war were involved in the production of the films, and different
versions of the same films have been made for the different countries.
The films themselves are wonderful examples of high quality art which still
make an impression among advertising films today.
With the beginning of World War II, both shortage of goods and the new
political situation made an effective stop in the production of these advertising
films. After the war, it was impossible to re-establish this fruitful collaboration
between Norwegian companies and animated filmmakers in Germany and Czechoslovakia.
What was probably the most fascinating period in the history of Norwegian
animation was over.
References
Agde, Günter. Witz und Werbung: Der Trickfilmpionier Hans Fischerkoesen.
Paper presented at the 38th Internationale Kurzfilmtage. Oberhausen, 1992.
Goergen, Jeanpaul: Julius Pinschewer, Künstler und kaufmann, Pionier
des Werbefilms. Article in epd Film 3/92, Berlin 1992.
Jungstedt, Torsten. Kapten Grogg och hans vanner. Sveriges Radios
Forlag/SFI Stockholm.
Mastrasova, Vera. Tchechischer Werbefilm (1928-1937). Article in
festival program for 38th Internationale Kurzfilmtage. Oberhausen, 1992.
Loiperdinger, Martin & Harald Pulch: Geschichte des Werbefilms in
Deutchland. Article in festival program for 38th Internationale Kurzfilmtage.
Oberhausen, 1992.
Moritz, William: Resistance and Subversion in Animated Films of the
Nazi Era: The Case of Hans Fischerkoesen. Animation Journal 1.1, 1992.
Sejersted, Francis & Arnljot Strømme Svendsen (ed). Blader
av tobakkens historie. J.L.Tiedemanns tobaksfabrik 1778-1978. Oslo,
1978.
Skretting, Kathrine. Reklamefilmens kommunikasjon: Norske reklamefilmer
1922 - 1988. University of Trondheim, 1988.
Strøm, Gunnar. "Fanden i nøtten" til "
Fargesymfoni i blättAnimasjonsfilm i Norge, 1913 - 1939. Volda
College, 1993.
Westbrock, Ingrid. Der Werbefilms. Hildesheim, Zürich , New
York. 1983.
Gunnar Strøm (Gunnar.Strom@hivolda.no [1]) is Associate Professor
at Volda College in Norway, where he is head of the animation department.
He has published a number of books on animation and music videos. He is
president of ASIFA Norway, and a board member and former secretary general
of ASIFA International.
Links:
[1] mailto:Gunnar.Strom@hivolda.no