The Fly (1980)

So much average

hyped garbage

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The winner of Best Animated Short Film at the 53rd Academy Awards depicts a fly flitting about, all told from the insect's point of view. I understand that Ferenc Rofusz wasn't allowed to leave Hungary to attend the Academy Awards, but someone accepted the Oscar for him. Anyway, "A Légy" ("The Fly" in English) is a clever cartoon. Rofusz probably didn't have a lot of resources, but he had the talent, and that's what you really need to turn out a good piece of work. The Eastern Bloc turned out a lot of good cartoons. I also recommend the old Yugoslavian cartoons.I get the feeling that members of the order Diptera must sometimes feel as if humans are out to get them.

I just saw this 1980 animated Oscar-winning short from Hungary on Cartoon Brew linked to YouTube. It concerns the point-of-view of the fly as it whisks through various grasses, windows, rooms, and houses. Everything is line drawings with no color with the camera swooshing through in a scenic panorama of speed. Besides the buzzing, you hear piano keys being banged on, windows slamming, and someone swatting. Then you hear human footsteps as that person gets the insect and takes it to a collection of other creatures of that insect's breed...Great visuals and well deserving of the Academy Award. Hard to believe so much was packed in just 3 minutes. A Legy is well worth seeking out.

This short, an Oscar winner, is an exceptionally detailed effort that can be a bit unsettling at first (particularly for anyone who has problems with depth-perception), but is a fascinatingly drawn and meticulously constructed animation and is a must-see if you like animation. Fortunately, it is currently in-print. Most highly recommended.

As this is an East-European animation from the early 1980s, we must assume that it is An Allegory. These can be very difficult to interpret for the Western viewer. This film is probably only comprehensible to anyone who lived in Hungary at the time, each frame loaded with specific historical or cultural detail. The most that can be made out is the crushing of life - the fly begins the film very alive, hurtling through nature, and ends it squashed in a tray of other flies in a centre of civilisation - a Big House - loaded with statues and insect classifications. The paralells seem obvious. The fly's patterned halting to inspect its own shadow may be a hint of the film's own double nature.Or it may be a dulled awakening of consciousness. This for me is the film's real achievement - the perfect mimicing of a scuttling insect's point-of-view, whirring through space, a vertiginous journey. The restless, sepiad animation is beautiful, allowing an untrammelled access live action never could, as the fly travels through sparse forest, over flat greenery, and up to the house itself.The change from a barely sensed impulse of freedom to trapped panic is shockingly done - we move with the fly, interestedly examining the rather stiff furniture and ornaments (the apparatus of the state?) until we realise that it is these that will kill it: he will be squashed against some chair, pane or wall.The house sequence opens with a joyous, privileged fly's eye view that would normally be denied to us, as it zooms through candles hanging from ceilings, making us rethink our own everyday accoutrements, space, even existence. Everything the fly meets is a voyage of discovery, new, not the dulled routine of a police state. This clear-eyed view can be very dangerous and must be crushed. The fly, as it tries to make its escape, can't understand, as he hits against the window, why he can see the open countryside - freedom - and yet can't escape.The symbolism may be obvious, but it is terrifyingly effective. The brief journey from darkness through unthinking consciousness, to enforced darkness again, is awing, yet chilling. Most East-European animation seems to get lost in self-defeating, pretentious circles, but this is a wonderful film, with a clear, impassioned, angry yet humorous focus.