ISLE OF DOGS Exhibition in London

The three quarter view we never get in an Anderson film.

If you happen to be in London, try to squeeze in a visit to The Store, 180 The Strand to see and feel the sets of Wes Anderson's glorious new stop motion feature ISLE OF DOGS from a different perspective. The exhibition is free, so even if you don't have enough time to really dive into it, have a look at it.

During the ten minutes I had in there, I tried to take a few pictures that open up an alternative view on the familiarly flat Wes Anderson signature shots: three quarter views and a stereoscopic image to see what the scientists' set looks like in 3D (which obviously goes very much against the grain of Anderson's style but is great fun).

See it in 3D! Propably best viewed on a cellphone.

And that's how the lighting effects in the tunnel were achieved.

That's an advertising campaign I like!

Fantoche Impressions

This year I spent two sunny days at the 14th Fantoche International Animation Festival in Baden. Even though I have only seen a fraction of the films it was a wholly satisfying visit. Since I am not able to process too many short films back-to-back, I also went to see three features and a documentary about Michael Dudok de Wit and the making of LA TORTUE ROUGE. Unfortunately, I missed out on everyone's favorite MA VIE DE COURGETTE (MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI) yet again, but finally made it to THE BOY AND THE BEAST and KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS. 

So here, in no particular order, is a non-representative list of films that stuck in my mind because of their color work or simply because I liked them:

Shorts

A whole new way of creating stop motion water for AU REVOIR BALTHAZAR

 First of all, I was really pleased that some of the films I really liked came out as winners on Sunday night. In fact, in the Swiss competition I have seen and liked all of the six winners. Raphael Sommerhalder's gently animated and almost tactile stop motion short AU REVOIR BALTHAZAR ("Special Mention") was one of those films that felt like 5 minutes but in reality last for 9 minutes. I remember it as more or less one long lateral multiplane traveling, two- and three-dimensional at the same time, with beautiful lighting and stylistically consistent special effects as you can see in the trailer below. Be sure to check out this making-of as well!




Anete Melece's ANALYSIS PARALYSIS ("Swiss High Risk" award) tells the story of a man whose head is about to explode from dealing with the many everyday decisions one has to make. At the same time he is not really able to connect with other people. What sounds like a depressing story is in fact a thoughtfully funny and refreshingly child-like colored cut-out film.

ANALYSIS PARALYSIS

I also really liked Fela Bellotto and Etienne Kompis' HYPERTRAIN ("Swiss Youth Award") which I had a chance to see twice. Driven by an energetic soundtrack, the very short film relies on a whole array of original visual ideas revolving around the dimensionality of drawings.

CODA by Alan Holly, 2014

Within a "Cartoon d'Or" best-of screening I discovered the lavish colors of the beautifully lit 2D film CODA (Alan Holly, 2014) that reminded me of 1950s cartoons like MELODY (1953).
Just see for yourself:

OBEN by Frederic Siegel

Frederic Siegel's music video for "OBEN" by the band Panda Lux combined a mesmerizing bird's eye view of freight yard with hand drawn animation in his trademark flat colors without outlines. The lack of resolution of the live-action footage was more than made up for by the dizzying effect the psychedelic climax had on the vast screen.

THE BOY AND THE BEAST

There is so much to behold that even such a detailed long shot can be glimpsed for only a few seconds.

Most of Hosoda Mamoru's films are based on premises that initially put me off. In addition, I have to admit that I do not really like his character designs. But, and that is a huge "but", he always delivers as a visual storyteller and I always get far more than I bargained for. And although I think THE BOY AND THE BEAST is not his best film, there are so many ideas and sweeping scenes that I would revisit it any time. In the city scenes, THE BOY AND THE BEAST is a masterpiece of mood and atmosphere. Especially in the last twenty minutes which first feel like an epilogue that quickly segues into what is the true and emotionally rewarding final act of the story. And like in so many great animes, Hosoda leaves enough unexplained to keep our imagination going.

Incredibly atmospheric: THE BOY AND THE BEAST

There is a series of recurring shots of the "beast's" house including the surroundings. The camera angles are always the same but the background paintings which are based on one or more likely two slightly different layouts are completely new everytime the characters pass by as can be seen in these comparison pictures:

Six different backgrounds based on the same camera angle/layout.

The quality of these screenshots is not too good. Maybe I will look into this film once I get hold of a decent blu-ray.

I also enjoyed the comparatively small Norwegian children's film SOLAN OG LUDVIG: HERFRA TIL FLAKLYPA which, like THE BOY AND THE BEAST, will probably never be released to Swiss cinema screens. It is one of those lovingly made stop motion features where you thankfully still can see the animators' hands on flickering garments and organically crafted sets. And besides, one of the protagonists is a timid but lovable pessimist and there are cranky old men who tell embarrassingly lame jokes which is at least funnier than all the hyperactive sidekicks in most contemporary animated blockbusters.

2014 Year End List

Did anyone say Attica? - Al Pacino in DOG DAY AFTERNOON.

In 2014 I obviously have not had a lot of time left for blogging and I have managed to see even less films than in the year before. Nonetheless, here is my personal film year in review. For those only interested in newly released films, just scroll down to the list in the lower half of the post.

New York Stories
Early 2014 was clearly dominated by a whole batch of New York City movies from the late 1970s as well as the films that inspired them. Initially I had planned a series of special screenings of NEW YORK, NEW YORK (Martin Scorsese, 1977), MANHATTAN (Woody Allen, 1979) and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (Sergio Leone, 1984).

But then Sergio Leone's opus magnum became unavailable because of the Bologna restoration that was to be premiered at the New York Film Festival later the same year. Besides, the only DCP available after that was the 260 min version with the re-inserted cutting-room-floor-footage that in my opinion was only interesting to people who are familiar with the original version and rather took away from experiencing an already perfectly paced film.

Finally, I decided to substitute the great Scorsese musical with his more consistent masculinity study RAGING BULL (1980) and dropped Leone in favor of one of Sidney Lumet's Pacino verhicles. Since SERPICO (1973) would be a better companion to TAXI DRIVER (1976), I settled on the unbeatable DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) which we were even able to screen from a 1976 35mm release print.

Al Pacino as real life cop Frank Serpico - his growing isolation represented by facial hair.

So my introductory lectures focused on how the three directors captured their respective milieus within the city. Since I have already studied Scorsese's Little Italy quite closely before, I dug deeper into Woody Allen's very narrow Jewish middle class society and especially his personal philosophy and beliefs that are satirically revealed in all the films from TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (1969) up to MANHATTAN a decade later.

It also provided me with an excuse to see some Sidney Lumet pictures I had never seen like the strong but forgotten FAIL-SAFE (1964) or NETWORK (1976). Even though released after DOG DAY AFTERNOON the latter was a good example for Lumet's staging of group dynamics.


Japanese Autumn
Although I would have preferred to push European cinema in the second half of the year, two opportunities for lectures on Japanese films dominated autumn 2014. The very instant there finally was a Swiss release date for Miyazaki's farewell feature THE WIND RISES (KAZE TACHINU, 2013) I knew there had to be a special screening to lure people into seeing an animated film exclusively for grown-ups (the existence of which is still unknown to most art-house patrons).

Red, green and white dominate Ozu's lavish color film FLOATING WEEDS.

In November a local film club that usually invites film makers to their screenings showed the new DCP of Ozu's TOKYO MONOGATARI (1953). Since the director has died half a century ago they asked me for an introduction which I happily agreed to. Although I focussed on the Noriko-trilogy LATE SPRING (1949), EARLY SUMMER (1951) and TOKYO MONOGATARI and some of the earlier black and white films, thanks to the blessings of "Masters of Cinema" and BFI Blu-rays I found myself mesmerized by the masters late color films such as FLOATING WEEDS (1959).

(Re-)Discoveries
From all the older movies I have looked at in addition to the ones mentioned above, the next few made the strongest impact:

• LA GRANDE ILLUSION (Renoir, 1937): Still one of the most memorable anti-war films. Woody Allen's favorite movie and probably the reason for Tracy presents him with a harmonica in MANHATTAN.
• A STAR IS BORN (Cukor, 1954): George Cukor's opus magnum in many ways and a blueprint for Scorsese's NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Judy Garland and James Mason at the top of their games.
• IVAN'S CHILDHOOD* (IVANOVO DETSTVO, Tarkovsky, 1962): Tarkovsky's bleakly expressive debut finally convinced me to look at his later films with fresh eyes.
• CERNY PETR* (Forman, 1964): Meandering portrait of youth in 1960s Czechoslovakia. Incredibly charming and funny (especially Petr's unforgettably pompous father).
  
• PERSONA* (Bergman, 1966): European art cinema landmark. Iconic black and white images, J.S. Bach, split personality, no wonder Woody Allen borrowed more than just its cinematographer Sven Nykvist from it.
• KES (Loach, 1969): Our life experience determines our experience of a movie to a much higher degree than is usually admitted. I have seen a claustrophobically tense drama when I saw KES as a teenager. Now the same tragedy seemed to contain a great deal of humour and light touches.
• PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK* (Schatzberg, 1971): One of two unfairly forgotten Schatzberg-Pacino classics that showcase the later GODFATHER star's versatility as a troubled young man.
• PORCO ROSSO (Miyazaki, 1992): Among Myazaki's personal films this is still a favorite and it has never looked as good as on the new BD release.

* films I have seen for the first time.

My Favorite Dozen of 2014

Wes Anderson and his team have outdone themselves in arranging the most delicious candy colors in THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL.

Among the current releases there was no single "film of the year" for me this time (if I had to choose my favorite cinema experience it would probably be the DOG DAY AFTERNOON screening with a small but very receptive audience). The following is a list of those films that left a deep and lasting impression in 2014 (in alphabetical order):

• BOYHOOD (Linklater, 2014): Another successful long term project by Richard Linklater. Watch a boy (and a girl played by Linklater's very talented daughter Lorelei) grow up in real time and a middle-of-the-road American biography suddenly feels like a real life.
• CLASS ENEMY (RAZREDNI SOVRAZNIK, Bicek, 2013): A Slowenic drama about the dynamics within a high school class and a group of teachers that unravels after the suicide of a shy student with a soft spot for Chopin.
• ELECTROBOY (Gisler, 2014): A surprising documentary about a dysfunctional family with more unexpected twists and turns than many a thriller. To speak of its universal appeal may be quite depressing but true.
• GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (Anderson, 2014): Wes Anderson's crowning achievement and one of Alexandre Desplat's best scores. It has got balalaikas, Tilda Swinton, Soarse Ronan, three aspect ratios, Mendl's pastry and cardboard sets - what more does one need?
• IDA (Pawlikowski, 2013): It is not often that small gestures and unbelievably beautiful images and sounds reveal such emotional depths. One of two wonderful films about young nuns, the other being MARIE HEURTIN (Améris, 2014).
• LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON (Kore-eda, 2013): No matter how simple his stories, Kore-eda Hirokazu always reveals his characters' humanity on a universal level.
• NEBRASKA (Payne, 2013): Not as flashy as ELECTION (1999) and less melodramatic than THE DESCENDANTS (2011), this laconic father-son tale about sturdy old Woody Grant on a quest to claim a million dollar Sweepstakes prize ends with an emotional punch worthy of an Eastwood movie.
• NEULAND (Thommen, 2013): A documentary that changed my perspective on integrational school in Switzerland.
• THE WIND RISES (Miyazaki, 2013): The slightly controversial story of an air plane designer that includes events from the life of writer Tatsuo Hori, extracts from his novels as well as Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg)" into the biography of real life designer Jiro Horikoshi. Joe Hisaishi has outdone himself in Miyazaki's swan song.
• TOM À LA FERME / MOMMY (Dolan, 2014): Canadian wonder boy Xavier Dolan has been compared with Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With two stylistically different but almost equally intense films about mother-son-relationships he completed five great movies in five years.
• UNDER THE SKIN (Glazer, 2013): "The girl who fell to earth" with Scarlett Johansson reprising the Bowie role. Although water is a central audiovisual motif in this film as well, this time the alien is after our human essence. The most sensual sound experience of the year thanks to Mika Levi, Peter Raeburn and Johnnie Burn.
• VI ÄR BÄST (Moodysson, 2013): Moodyssons films do not look like period films, they feel as if they were made during the time they portray. Probably the most sensitive portrayal of how life feels being a 12-13 year old punk within a safe middle class environment. Certainly not Moodyssons best film but the one that made me look at his first three hits all over again.

Encore
And as kind of a "coda" to my 1970s New York based-on-reality series I cannot resist mentioning this purely entertaining motion picture:

• AMERICAN HUSTLE (Russell, 2013): Easily the most hilarious and least ambitious of countless New York period pieces that were inspired by real life events and released during the 2013/14 awards season. "Some of this actually happened" - my favorite disclaimer in a long time. An actors' movie par excellence. Christian Bale was never better than in this unashamed Scorsese-DeNiro homage mode (complete with weight-gain and all) and Jennifer Lawrence simply steals every scene she's in. As funny as the Quaaludes-Ferrari-scene in WOLF OF WALL STREET (Scorsese, 2013).

Red and Blue
As I have predicted, the standard mainstream teal vs orange (or rather beige/skintone) color clichee (more on that in a later post) seems to be vanishing in favor of the more interesting red vs blue color scheme that once looked so rich in Technicolor. Most convincingly so in PADDINGTON (2014) which despite an annoying explanatory prologue in darkest Peru and the resulting Mission-Impossible-style backstory-wound-subplot was a rather pleasant experience with interior and costume design to revel in. Even the much shunned CGI bear - who would want to see a photorealistic bear when he could have one that looks like Paddington? - worked quite well.

Isn't Sally Hawkins the perfect match for Paddingtons's blue coat and red hat?

It reminded me of Technicolor films like FANTASIA (1940) which I am currently analyzing and where...

...strong colors are kept alive even during night scenes...

...that nowadays often look like this (fake hue changes by myself).

The first film I have seen in 2015 was very promising as well: Ulrich Seidl's relentless filmic essay IM KELLER (2014) about what the more bizarre Austrians store and do in their basements might be a tad too voyeuristic. Nevertheless it is one of the most radically esthetic films I have seen in a long time.

IM KELLER - one of the few non-symmetrical shots in this voyeuristic documentary essay.

The Sound of the Samurai

Donald Richie calls YOJIMBO (1961) "the best-filmed of any of Kurosawa's pictures". But the sound track is worth studying as well. I have compiled two videos that demonstrate the interaction of sounds and music.

Even though Japanese sound tracks at the time often suffered from fidelity issues, Kurosawa was very conscious of the power of sound design (a term that was yet to be invented). In YOJIMBO there are several percussive sounds that fulfill important narrative functions:

In the beginning, when Sanjuro meets the angry farmer and his son in a tele-photo close-up, the only indication that there is some sign of civilisation around are the steadily repetitive sounds of a hand loom. Kazuo Miyagawa's camera then follows the farmer to the nearby house where his wife is weaving equanimously. This rhythmic sound is accompanying the whole scene (which I have shortened) and gets across the subtext that this is a monotonous life.

Later, the inn-keeper Gon tells Sanjuro about all the people in the village. Some of them are introduced by sounds: We only meet the coffin maker by the sound of his hammer which annoys Gon considerably. The sake brewer who rarely leaves his home is characterized by the drumming of his prayers.

Finally, the town crier Hansuke announces the time by beating two xylophone-like sticks. You can hear all four of these sounds in the clip below:

Masaru Satô picks up many of these sounds in his jaunty and rumbling score. Reportedly, Kurosawa did not want a chambara score in any conventional sense and asked for music in a voodoo idiom.

Satô, a composer who liked to incorporate western popular music and jazz in his film scores, wanted to pay homage to Henry Mancini. Miles away from the lightness of "Moon River" or "Meglio sta sera", his succession of short cues was most likely inspired by Mancini's score for Orson Welles' film noir TOUCH OF EVIL (1958). Given that YOJIMBO is partially based on film noir characters, this assumption is not so farfetched.

In the following clip I have juxtaposed excerpts from both soundtracks:
1. "White Horse Lodge" (YOJIMBO): Here the percussive sounds are easily recognizable within the music
2. "Main Title" (TOUCH OF EVIL): There are similar percussion patterns and low brass and woodwinds.
3. "Ronin Arrives" (YOJIMBO): This is a good example of another characteristic trait that might have been influenced by TOUCH OF EVIL - melodic lines arranged in a very low register throughout.

Laputa - Castle in the Sky: Animating Weight

Ever since GERTIE THE DINOSAUR (Winsor McCay, 1914) tried to pick up a rock and drank so much water that the lakeshore gave in under her feet (as seen on the left) animators have tried to express weight with drawings. While the work of American giants like Vladimir Tytla or Milt Kahl has been analyzed over and over, the work of Japanese feature animators still seems to be ignored or dismissed as less impressive - at least in the West.

However, Studio Ghibli animators - and they are in no way the only ones - master disparate challenges such as weight, size relations and metamorphosis within a style of realistic movements so effortlessly that we tend to overlook their amazing skills and take them for granted.

Since flying, floating and thus overcoming gravitation is such an integral part of Miyazaki's films, indicating the weight of characters is of paramount importance to the success of those fantasy worlds. In yet another scene from LAPUTA - CASTLE IN THE SKY I am looking at the transition from weightlessness to gravity:

The balancing of weight starts with Pazu almost toppling over on the "spring board". While Sheeta is floating down on 1s, Pazu's violent action is animated on 2s and 3s. The following set of screenshots contains every drawing of Pazu's balancing action. The timing can be seen in the clip above.

Although such violent action on 2s and 3s appears jerky to today's CG-spoiled audiences, the shifting of Pazu's weight is clearly visible in every pose. It seems the film makers rather saved the extra inbetweens in favor of real character animation. After all, he could have simply come to a halt without the little balancing action.

The selected screenshots below are taken from my favorite part of the scene. They illustrate the subtlety of Studio Ghibli's character animation (it's essential to click on the images to see them more clearly).

Pazu is so stunned that it only occurs to him at the last minute that he should put down the kettle first. And when he does he briefly looks at it and then while putting it down he already looks at Sheeta again:

As you can see in the following GIF, Pazu is moving upwards (white lines indicate space between waistlines) about as slowly as Sheeta is floating down.

But when they finally touch there is a cut to a medium close up so that we are able to see that Sheeta is still floating and not leaning on Pazu's arms with her weight:

But as soon as the power of her crystal is vanishing (indicated by a dramatic change in lighting), her heaviness seems to increase...

...to the point of shifting her weight completely on Pazu's arms at which moment we get a cut on action back to a wider shot that reminds us (and Pazu) of the tenuous situation.

In the next GIF, I have omitted many inbetweens to uncover the hierarchy of movements of different body parts that indicate Pazu's struggle with Sheeta's full weight (is she even heavier because the crystal is dragging her down?).
Overlap while going down: (1) arms first, then head (2) in a rather fast move down, as the lagging cap indicates (3-4).
Lifting weight: Head goes first (6-7), lifting movement alternates between force in shoulders and head (8-11) with legs pushing slightly inward and down. Once the weight is carried by the muscles of Pazu's straight back (12), he is able to stretch his legs (13).

We feel Sheeta's unnatural heaviness because Pazu is not even able to lift his feet. He merely shuffles them along the planks:

The slight rebound (gray line) of these spring board like planks adds to the feeling of weight:

And although Sheeta appears to be as heavy and lifeless as a bag of cement, Pazu is putting her down very slowly and gently:

After such an exhaustive task, he doesn't even seem to have the strength to stand up again. So after looking at Sheeta, he remains in a ducked position to regain his breath.

Clearly, at first glance, all of this looks very realistic, "normal" even. And since there is very little in the vein of exaggerated squash and stretch, we are inclined to overlook the true mastery behind it. In fact, it works so well that we do not admire the animator's feat but simply look at a struggling character. With all those subtle action like putting down the bucket it feels so natural and well observed. Nevertheless, this scene showcases all the tools an animator can rely on to express weight and gravity without sacrificing realism.

As a contrasting illustration of a (deliberately) weightless landing, here is a scene from HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE which (accidentally?) depicts the flying wizard with a blue crystal around his neck:

Japanese Haiji vs. German Heidi

The visual difference between a faded 16mm print used for TV broadcasting and a remastered Blu-ray is obviously striking. But when a show is released with two different soundtracks by two different composers, faded colors become irrelevant. Even if you don't understand a word of Japanese or German, these clips will speak for themselves.

Arupusu no shôjo Haiji (1974 aka Heidi, girl of the alps) is probably the most well-known Japanese TV series in Europe. It has been a real breakthrough not only for Nippon Animation's "World Masterpiece Series" but also for director Isao Takahata and "scene designer" Hayao Miyazaki - who drew every layout of all 52 episodes himself.

After so many film and TV adaptations (American, German and Swiss) it is safe to count Takahata's version among the most faithful - if not THE most faithful - retelling of Swiss author Johanna Spyri's 1880 "Heidi" novels about the surfacing town-country conflict of industrialized societies. Of course, alterations had to be made and incidents had to be added in order to keep 52 21-minute episodes (not counting credits and episode previews) interesting.

But this enormous running time leaves room for a leisurely pace that allows the audience to experience the many faces of nature. Needless to say that even in such a tightly budgeted show the founders of Studio Ghibli squeezed in many shots of animated weather (especially wind and changing seasons).

So if you are able to look beyond the very limited animation and stereotyped character design you will discover a well researched and touching tale of a girl who learns to love nature only to be sent away to a German city that has "no wind and no trees".

The sound of music
Of course, the melancholy atmosphere is greatly influenced by the soundtrack - Takeo Watanabe's music in particular. Although there are only five or six themes used in the first 18 episodes that take place on the mountain pastures above Maienfeld (Graubünden, Switzerland) the cues fit the action perfectly. These tunes range from jaunty (for Josef, the dog) to elegiac, but the underlying emotion is always one of longing. At times, Heidi's music seems to come straight out of an Italian film of the era.

But - and this is an enormous but - you only hear these tunes in the original Japanese language version (and the feature-length version released to US theaters in 1975). In German speaking countries most people associate Heidi with tunes by Gert Wilden.

Since I couldn't bear watching anime series as a child (they always looked like a series of badly drawn and dubbed still images to me and had nothing in common with my conception of animation) I have never seen more than a few minutes of Heidi. Although now I have learned to accept this Astroboy-as-a-little-girl design approach (thanks to a "fan sub project"), I doubt that I would have been as taken with this series had I been forced to watch it in German.

Before the days of high definition
Before talking about the soundtrack let me remind you that Heidi was conceived and broadcast as a TV series. It is therefore not surprising that the German DVD box set uses a print that seems to be too high on brightness and contrast and displays some color cast.

TV screens used to be quite different and very small in the 1970s, black was a middle grey at best and around Europe some people still had black and white monitors. For all we know, the picture we get on the German DVD may represent the original viewing conditions much closer than the meticulously remastered transfer of the Japanese Blu-ray.

left: German DVD - right: Japanese BD

Pushing the brightness in dark scenes so that TV spectators could at least see what was going on was not uncommon...

...the greenish cast and the bleaching outlines, however, are hardly there in the original negative.

Contrast is much higher on the left, but actually Heidi's clothes look more natural. The interior around the old woman is definitely colder (closer to blue) in the left and warmer (closer to brown) in the right image.

Heidi's colors are warmer and more harmonious on the left (A-F) but the color contrast between her shirt (C) and her skin tone (D) is stronger on the right. While overall contrast is lower, the greenish sleeve (C) seems to stand out a little too much.

In a different mood
While the Swiss are quite used to hearing Swiss characters on TV not talking in their native Swiss German but the standard version of the language as spoken in Northern Germany, it is fairly unusual however that when a German producer decides to rebuild the whole soundtrack from scratch including the music he does not substitute the Japanese score with a Swiss score. Instead Moravian-born German composer Gert Wilden who was at the time best known for his music for erotic films was hired to rescore the entire series.

My comparison starts after the credits sequence because the catchy title songs can be easily found on youtube. So let's listen to the very beginning of episode 1:

Note: all examples Japanese first, German second.

The Japanese opening is full of tension and foreboding. The lonely girl Heidi is introduced with a lyrical accordion. After that we only hear the silence of a village at dawn and a girl waiting in anticipation. Wilden's music (starting at 1:43) seems like a rhythmical stock track that just fades in. It is already jaunty and sounds more like the background in a commercial for a Bavarian resort than a score to a deserted early morning scene. Moreover, the music does not change when Heidi is introduced and goes on even during the rooster scene until the first line of dialogue. No matter what style of music one prefers it is obvious that the different approach to scoring changes the scene far more than the differences in color.

It sounds as if the German producers went to great lengths to undermine Takahata's basic mood of slow pacing (long silent moments) and longing (melancholy themes without a constant drumbeat). And to be honest, it seems strange that Heidi's voice sounds so much older in German.

As the next clip demonstrates, the notion of a female narrator that clearly reflected the novel's female author has been replaced by a standard male narrator as well (the same had been done to Cinderella when it was partially re-dubbed around the same time, as you can hear here):

In addition to the narrator, again the elegiac tune with the small sentimental changes is replaced with an alpine oompah oompah tune (0:38) that doesn't even sound Swiss to me. During the narration the music at least seems to be explicitly scored to the film.

The next example consists of two sets of clips that show how both the dramatic/scary and the sentimental scenes are toned down by Wilden's score:

The Morricone-like tension of the argument is de-emphasized and the sad good-bye sounds a lot more down-to-earth in the dub.

Occasionally, the Japanese version includes a genuine Swiss song like "jetz wei mer eis jödele":

In the German version however any reference to Swiss German is carefully omitted (even the word "Dörfli" which means "little village" is treated as if it was the name of the village) and replaced by narration.

Just to show that this is common throughout the series, here's another moment where story takes a backseat to mood:

It seems that Western television always had this urge to move the story forward. Somehow, Japanese children seem to have been considered more patient. It's interesting, by the way, that the music (behind the narration) of these later episodes resembles the Japanese score more closely.

Early on, Heidi has a dream which is a good example of the differences in relying on music, silence and soundeffects in an eerie and touching scene:

Again the power of silence and "time standing still" is minimized by the German score. And again a song (this time Japanese) is replaced by narration.

In following example the Japanese version is scored during the pan down from sled to the children (0:10) while the German soundtrack contains music during the pan down along the fir trees (0:55) and vice versa!

There is a strong indication that the sound effects have been rebuilt as well:

Is it just me or did they simply paste one single "moo" about four times on the German soundtrack?

The reason of this comparison is not to deride Wilden as a lesser composer than Watanabe - for all we know, he was only following the producers' directions. The reason of this post is to demonstrate how much music can change the way we experience a film even if the pictures are identical.

The German soundtrack may have been put together with utmost care and really good intentions - maybe they didn't want to upset or bore German children with storytelling that was deemed too Japanese, and certainly sentimentality wasn't very popular in those days. After all, Wilden's music is crucial to the way generations of German speaking children have experienced and loved Heidi.

Ultimately it is a matter of taste which scoring approach one prefers but only one of them is true to Takahata's vision.

Note: Up to date, there is no DVD available that includes both language versions simultaneously. There's not even an official release that features English or German subtitles yet.