Achilles is an 11-minute “very adult retelling of the Iliad” in stop-motion animation by celebrated British puppet animator and theater director Barry Purves. This NSFW film focuses on the homoerotic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus and its influence on their experience of the Trojan War. Achilles was produced by UK television Channel Four and features the voice talents of Derek Jacobi as the narrator. It was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Animation in 1996 and won several other awards at many international film festivals.
On the explicit sexuality in the film, Purves notes in an interview: “With Achilles the question was whether it was possible to bring eroticism into stop-motion, or would technique get in the way. I think it worked. There’s been little serious eroticism in animation. A lot of films poke fun at sex and flesh, but it seems to me that animation is an interesting medium for exploring our primal urges.”
This one-hour PBS production is based on illustrator and author David Macaulay’s 1974 book, City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction, in which he depicts the construction of Verbonia, a fictitious but typical ancient Roman city situated in Gaul (modern-day France). Macaulay also appears as the host of this program (one of a series that was based on his books), which cuts back and forth between two parts: a documentary that guides viewers through the archaeological remains of Roman cities, highlighting both engineering feats and architectural features; and an animated story of the construction of Verbonia by the architect Marcus Fabricius during the reign of Caesar Augustus. In this story, Marcus attempts to create a well-designed city but faces the challenges of both political corruption and local insurrection. Notably, the animated characters are voiced by famed actors such as Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, and Brian Blessed. Roman City won the 1994 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program.
This television series sets the mythological tale of Odysseus or Ulysses in the 31st century. The show was originally created for a French audience by a Japanese studio (TMS/Telecom Animation Film in conjunction with DiC Audiovisuel) and comprised 26 half-hour episodes. In this Star Wars inspired version of the story, Ulysses is commander of a spaceship called the Odyssey and he has angered the gods by killing the Cyclops in an effort to save his son Telemachus from enslavement and sacrifice. As punishment, Zeus places Ulysses’ crew in suspended animation and forces him to travel the universe, where he has adventures that parallel those in the original Odyssey, though he also encounters other famous figures from mythology. In order to bring his crew back to life and return to Earth, he must find the Kingdom of Hades.
1978’s Metamorphoses (it was called Hoshi no Orufeusu or “Orpheus of the Stars” in Japan) was a feature-length film directed by Takashi Masunaga that was released in the United States by Sanrio Communications. The surreal film was a five-part animated anthology of stories from Ovid, including those of Perseus, Actaeon, Aglaurus and Herse (“The House of Envy”), Orpheus and Eurydice, and Phaeton. Each vignette featured a recurring boy character named Wondermaker as the hero of the story. Metamorphoses was intended as a Fantasia for the rock era, with no speaking characters and music by Joan Baez and Mick Jagger. However, the film was not well-received and so it underwent a metamorphosis of its own, being re-released in 1979 as Winds of Change, with a disco score by Alex Costandinos and narration by famed actor Peter Ustinov. The film features a veritable smorgasbord of influences from the late 1970s: a clear echo of Disney is present in the illustration and its opening sequence is an exact copy of Star Wars. Though considered a box-office failure, Metamorphoses looks forward to the distinctive and often random ways that Japanese anime of the 80s and 90s will go on to engage with the Classical past.
This eight-minute educational film was produced by American publishing giant CRM/McGraw Hill Films in 1974 and tells the story of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in a psychedelic style. It features actor Orson Welles as its narrator and was animated by illustrator Dick Oden. There is little additional information available about the circumstances of this film’s production; however, its philosophical subject matter — authority, obedience, perception and the nature of reality — were themes that were being explored in a number of experimental films and cartoons of the 1970s (see also “The Return to Olympus” and “Metamorphoses”). An intriguing description of the film suggests that it was made in order to educate workers and those in positions of leadership about “the strategies that managers use to train and supervise their employees.”
In its sit-com sensibilities and with its extremely catchy theme song, this Hanna-Barbera series closely followed the model of its famed 1960s predecessors, “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons,” though it lasted only one season (13 half-hour episodes). It depicted a regular family circa 63 CE — dad Augustus “Gus” Holiday, his wife Laurie, their daughter Precocia, their teen-aged son Happius (nicknamed “Hap”), and their pet lion Brutus — as they deal with distinctly modern problems, in particular with their landlord Mr. Evictus of the Venus de Milo Arms (who was voiced by Dom DeLuise).
This 1967 Franco-Belgian animated feature film is based on the first volume of the celebrated comic strip series Asterix the Gaul by René Goscinny (stories) and Albert Uderzo (illustrations). (Before being published as its own volume in 1961, the story appeared as a serial in the children’s magazine Pilote in 1959-60.) This was the first of ten animated Asterix features (see below for a complete list), including Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion, which will be released in Decmeber of 2018. Asterix the Gaul was produced by Dargaud, publisher of the Asterix comics, largely without the input of Uderzo and Goscinny, who were unsatisfied with the final product. This spurred them to become involved with later Asterix film adaptations, which are generally agreed to have improved production values and which also received better reviews.
The story told in Asterix the Gaul is essentially one of French resistance to Roman occupation of Gaul circa 50 BCE. The Gauls of the village of Armorica use a magic potion made by the Druid Getafix to become invincible . The Romans, led by Julius Caesar, want to obtain the potion for themselves and finally subdue this corner of Gaul, but they are thwarted by the courage and guile of the hero Asterix and his sidekick Obelix. In later films, the heroes travel to different lands and time periods, where they undertake a variety of adventures that are loosely based on historical settings, figures or events.
Much like The Roman Holidays, the portrayal of the ancient world in the Asterix comics and films might be termed “historicizing” since it depicts “realistic” Gauls and Romans (as opposed to mythological creatures and characters), going about their daily lives. However, what these cartoons actually depict is a hybridized fiction, a vision of the ancient world as seen through modern eyes. These kinds of “historicizing” depictions became much more common in animation in the late 1960s, which was a period of dramatic social change and of experimentation in the arts.
In the case of Asterix, the motif of resistance to Rome recalls the resistance to the Nazi occupation of France in WWII, though it may also reflect the African resistance to French colonial rule during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Through its engagement with the ancient past, Asterix the Gaul may have engendered a sentiment of restored national pride and/or served to assuage French guilt over the effects of colonization, even as the seeds of the uprisings of May 1968, which questioned traditional French values and protested American style consumerism and imperialism, were being planted.
This Canadian/American series consists of 128 five-minute episodes that were produced by Adventure Joe Oriolo (co-creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost) and Cartoons for Television, Inc. The Mighty Hercules aired for three years, from 1963-66, usually in a block with other cartoons or back-to-back in a thirty minute block. The show is very loosely based on the mythology surrounding Hercules but with some very odd features, such as his Centaur sidekick Newton who constantly repeats himself, and Daedalus, who is portrayed as an evil and crafty wizard. Hercules helps out mortals in danger, often in the kingdom of Calydon, with the help of his magic ring, from which he derives his superpowers. Both the 1940s cartoon series, Superman, and the live-action sword-and-sandal films from this period starring Steve Reeves (and others) as Hercules, are clear influences on this simple yet enduring series (which features a very catchy theme song).
Fantasia was Disney’s third animated feature. It was made up of eight animated vignettes which were set to classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. This project emerged from the production of the “Silly Symphonies” shorts in the 1930s which similarly paired story with music, but Fantasia went beyond these humorous stories to create an immersive experience.
The fifth segment of the film is the 22 minute “Pastoral Symphony” by Beethoven, which depicts a mythical Greco-Roman world of colorful centaurs and “centaurettes” engaged in heteronormative romantic displays (see also Winsor McCay’s 1921 film, The Centaurs). These tender and erotic depictions of male and female Centaurs in love is unusual. Not only are female Centaurs a rarity in ancient sources, the ancient male Centaurs are usually portrayed as uncivilized and sexually aggressive (see the Centauromachy). There are also cupids, fauns and pegasi frolicing in a natural setting and a festival in honor of the wine god Bacchus in the second half, which is interrupted by Zeus, who creates a storm and throws lightning bolts at the participants before growing tired and going to sleep.
Interestingly, the scene was originally set to Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied by Gabriel Pierné, but the music was replaced with sections of Beethoven’s sixth symphony — a change that the conductor Stokowski disagreed with.
The pagan-inspired vignette also received its fair share of controversy: the female centaurs were originally drawn bare-breasted, but because of the Motion Picture Production Code, they had to be redrawn with garlands around their necks. Additionally, there were black female centaurs depicted in the original cut with “braided ‘pickaninny’ hair” who served as attendants of the white female centaurs. These racially insensitive figures were edited out in the 1960s.
One of Disney’s several early engagements with ancient material in the musical shorts series produced from 1929-39. “The Golden Touch” tells the story of King Midas, though in a medieval setting. Other myth-based Silly Symphonies shorts include “Playful Pan” (1930), “King Neptune” (1932) and “The Goddess of Spring” (1934). Most famous, however, are those based on Aesop’s fables, including “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (1934) and “The Tortoise and the Hare” (1935) which won an Academy Award.
Animated Antiquity 