100 Greatest Animated Shorts / The Street / Caroline Leaf
Canada / 1976
In 1976 Caroline Leaf made the film that made her international reputation, ‘The Street’. Mixing watercolor washes with paint and glycerine, the film has the moving painting feel of the best paint on glass animation (see Alexander Petrov’s The Old Man and the Sea 1999). This impressionistic looseness, like a hazy childhood memory, nicely expresses the feel of the semi autobiographical story by Canadian writer Mordecai Richler. Set in 1930’s in St. Urbain Street, Montreal, an area populated at the time by Jewish Eastern European immigrants, the story follows life in a small apartment as the family politely, and not so politely, wait for their grandmother to die in the back bedroom.
In Caroline Leaf ‘s earlier films at Harvard University she developed her own personal style of animation, exploring these translucent qualities of paint or sand on glass. After Harvard she was invited to work with the National Film Board of Canada where she made an adaptation of a traditional Canadian Native Indian Inuit tale, the beautiful ‘The Owl Who Married a Goose’ (1974), using a soundtrack of Inuit voices.
Like ‘The Owl Who Married a Goose’, ‘The Street’ is another bittersweet family tale; the naturalistic ‘stream of consciousness’ voices further the warm organic nature of the film, giving it something of the feel of John and Faith Hubley’s ‘Moonbird’ (1959). The rich story and characters develop languidly as the ‘camera’ drifts freely through the hot summer air, exploring the freedom that animation gives for this kind of visual poetry, circling the family group and the crowded dwellings that make the young man yearn for his grandmothers room.
Leaf’s film was an instant success at screenings around the world, received much praise. ‘The Street’ was nominated for an Oscar and in a 1984 critics poll was voted the second best animated film of all time. The next year she made ‘The Metamorphasis of Mr Samsa’ based on Kafka’s story, but then moved away from animation in favor of live-action documentary. Nearly a decade later she returned with ‘Entre Deux Soeurs’ (Two Sisters, 1990), another family tale which won first prize at the Annecy Animation Festival in 1991. Similar to another experimental animation legend Len Lye, Leaf is also known for her wind driven kite-like kinetic art.
Note: The 100 greatest animated shorts is an list of opinions and not an order of value from best to worst. All suggestions, comments and outrage are welcome but please don’t shoot us, it’s only a list!