Review: The King and the Mockingbird

The first thing you need to know about The King and the Mockingbird is that it is clearly the product of many disparate styles, sensibilities, and time periods. Although the film was initially developed in the 1940s, various rereleases over the decades have gradually added new material; thus, the version that currently exists is a bit of a visual hodgepodge: the quality of the animation varies dramatically from scene to scene, and characters frequently veer “off-model.” At one moment, the vibrantly colorful and gracefully fluid imagery evokes the Golden Age of Disney (especially Pinocchio); the next, the sketchy outlines, flat shading, and rapid-fire editing more closely resemble those weird Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry shorts.

Fortunately, the story’s substance—its fiercely antiauthoritarian, anti-capitalist themes—remains consistent throughout. Utilizing the familiar tropes and archetypes of a conventional fairytale as a narrative foundation, director Paul Grimault and his co-writer, Jacques Prévert, craft a delightfully subversive satire. Our heroes—a humble chimneysweep, a beautiful shepherdess, and an anthropomorphic bird clad in the garb of a pauper—are average, blue-collar, working-class folks increasingly radicalized by the indignities that they suffer under an oppressive regime. The primary antagonist, on the other hand, is the eponymous monarch—an incompetent, ineffectual tyrant that is nevertheless cruel, egomaniacal, and insatiably bloodthirsty. He reigns in the fashion of a schoolyard bully that amuses himself by shooting stray cats with a BB gun—and his worst habits are enabled by a servile, sycophantic, and grotesquely conformist (its members are literally indistinguishable) secret police force. The symbolism isn’t exactly subtle… but considering it still feels relevant and topical to today’s political climate, perhaps that obviousness isn’t such a grievous flaw.

The Museum of the Moving Image recently screened The King and the Mockingbird to contextualize its historical significance to the anime industry as an acknowledged influence on Studio Ghibli in general and Hayao Miyazaki in particular (though I’d argue that Don Bluth is far more indebted to it). While that bit of trivia is certainly interesting, I find it somewhat tragic that even serious scholars and cinephiles have reduced the movie to a mere footnote; it is a masterpiece in its own right, worthy of being celebrated for its artistic merits rather than just the spiritual successors that it inspired.