René Laloux - La Planète Sauvage AKA The Fantastic Planet [+Extras] (1973)


René Laloux’s mesmerising psychedelic sci-fi animated feature won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and is a landmark of European animation. Based on Stefan Wul’s novel Oms en série [Oms by the dozen], Laloux’s breathtaking vision was released in France as La Planète sauvage [The Savage Planet]; in the USA as Fantastic Planet; and immediately drew comparisons to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Planet of the Apes (both the 1968 film and Boule’s 1963 novel). Today, the film can be seen to prefigure much of the work of Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) due to its palpable political and social concerns, cultivated imagination, and memorable animation techniques.

Fantastic Planet tells the story of “Oms”, human-like creatures, kept as domesticated pets by an alien race of blue giants called “Draags”. The story takes place on the Draags’ planet Ygam, where we follow our narrator, an Om called Terr, from infancy to adulthood. He manages to escape enslavement from a Draag learning device used to educate the savage Oms — and begins to organise an Om revolt. The imagination invested in the surreal creatures, music and sound design, and eerie landscapes, is immense and unforgettable.

Widely regarded as an allegorical statement on the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, Fantastic Planet was five years in the making at Prague’s Jiri Trnka Studios. The direction of René Laloux, the incredible art of Roland Topor, and Alain Goraguer’s brilliantly complementary score (much sampled by the hip-hop community) all combine to make Fantastic Planet a mind-searing experience. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to release Fantastic Planet on DVD in the UK for the first time.

Extras:
- Les Escargots

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File Size (in bytes) ............................: 728,961,024 bytes 
Runtime ............................................: 1:11:48 

Video Codec ...................................: XviD ISO MPEG-4 
Frame Size ......................................: 640x368 (AR: 1.739) 
FPS .................................................: 23.976 
Video Bitrate ...................................: 1120 kb/s 
Bits per Pixel ...................................: 0.198 bpp 
B-VOP, N-VOP, QPel, GMC.............: [B-VOP], [], [], [] 

Audio Codec ...................................: 0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3 
Sample Rate ...................................: 48000 Hz 
Audio Bitrate ...................................: 224 kb/s [2 channel(s)] CBR 
No. of audio streams .......................: 1 

File Name .........................................: Les Escargots (1965).avi 
File Size (in bytes) ............................: 143,503,360 bytes 
Runtime ............................................: 10:48.643 

Video Codec ...................................: XviD ISO MPEG-4 
Frame Size ......................................: 640x464 (AR: 1.379) 
FPS .................................................: 23.976 
Video Bitrate ...................................: 1536 kb/s 
Bits per Pixel ...................................: 0.216 bpp 
B-VOP, N-VOP, QPel, GMC.............: [B-VOP], [], [], [] 

Audio Codec ...................................: 0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3 
Sample Rate ...................................: 48000 Hz 
Audio Bitrate ...................................: 224 kb/s [2 channel(s)] CBR 
No. of audio streams .......................: 1