The birds will help

Yesterday evening I went to the Detroit Film Theater to see the movie The King and the Mockingbird. It is an animated film from France first released in the 1950s in a highly butchered version – the producers said animator Paul Grimault was taking too long. Grimault restored the cuts and released the updated version in 1979. This version is cited as an influence on Studio Ghibli of Japan, the origin of to Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle.

Enough of the pedigree. On to the story. The king of the title is a pompous fool who disdains his people who are quite happy to disdain him right back. He likes to shoot little birds (though he never actually hits them), which makes him the enemy of the bird's papa, the mockingbird of the title. We are taken to the king's private apartment on the 296th floor of the palace. The room has lots of artwork, most of it of the king. A young shepherdess on one wall comes alive and falls in love with the chimney sweeper on the adjacent wall. But a portrait of the king falls in love with the shepherdess. The portrait king sends the real king through a trap door (lots of these in the story) and the portrait takes off after the young lovers, who work to escape the palace. Along the way the sweeper rescues the little bird, so the papa bird says if the lad ever gets in trouble, he only need call and the birds will help him out. At one point the lovers are put in a lion's den. That's when we find out that the mockingbird speaks several languages, including lion. After lots of delights, visual and story, the movie ends mostly as one would expect.

I was a bit surprised that a section of this French film looked a lot like Venice – not just lots of canals, but several landmarks too.