Pied Piper & Jiří Barta Shorts, The (Blu-ray Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Aug 28, 2025
Format: Blu-ray Disc

Director

Jiří Barta

Release Date(s)

1986 (September 16, 2025)

Studio(s)

Kratky Film Praha/Studio Jiriho Trnky Praha (Deaf Crocodile Films)

Film/Program Grade: A-
Video Grade: A
Audio Grade: B+
Extras Grade: A+

deafcrocodile.com

Review

The Pied Piper (aka Krysař, more accurately translated as The Ratcatcher) is an unforgettable stop-motion animated feature film from the great Jiří Barta. It’s ostensibly a retelling of the legends about The Pied Piper of Hamelin, but in reality, it’s something far darker than what even the Brothers Grimm might have envisioned. Like his fellow Czechoslovakian animators Jiří Trnka and Jan Švankmajer, Barta is a visionary with a unique perspective on the world, and he ended up putting his own idiosyncratic stamp on the film despite the fact that he wasn’t even the original director hired for the project.

The Pied Piper was a co-production of the state-owned Krátký Film Praha, Studio Jirího Trnky Praha, and the German TV 2000 Film-und Fernsehproduktions, all of which initially financed the film with the intentions of making a relatively family-friendly take on the story. The script was by Krátký Film Praha executive Kamil Pixa, inspired by the novella Krysař by Viktor Dyk, which was the version of the story that would have been familiar to Czech audiences. Yet it’s still material that lends itself to interpretations that are far darker than what Pixa had in mind, and he had already removed two other directors from the project due to the creative differences that he had with them. Yet when Barta finally took over, he still ended up with the freedom to completely re-imagine the tale in his own unique fashion, something that was more in line with the tone of what Dyk had originally written—much to Pixa’s dismay, as it turned out.

Since Barta decided to return to the dark heart of Dyk’s novel, his version of the Piper is anything but Pied, and that crucial decision influenced the overall look of the film. The protagonist really is Dyk’s Ratcatcher, not the traditional Pied Piper, and appropriately enough, most of the color has been drained out of the figure (and from the rest of the film as well). He’s the personification of Death for the townspeople in the film, and so his cloak is appropriately dark and foreboding. The people of the town are greedy and selfish, and when this mysterious stranger appears and offers a way to remove the rats that have plagued them, they refuse to hold up their end of the bargain. That’s where the film and the novel diverge the most sharply from traditional versions of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, because the Ratcatcher’s revenge is even more decisive. He doesn’t give them the opportunity to feel any regrets for what they’ve done, laying waste to the whole town instead.

Barta envisioned The Pied Piper as a fairy tale directed by Robert Wiene, borrowing the canted angles and forced perspectives of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to create a truly distinctive world for his characters to inhabit. It’s German Expressionism as filtered through the eyes of a Soviet Union era Czech animator, and so it doesn’t look quite like any other film. There’s no discernible dialogue, just a nonsense language that’s not intended to be understood. The only language that these townspeople know is money, and Barta visualizes that fact by showing literal coins flying out of their mouths whenever they talk. It’s a hopeless world that’s dominated by greed, exploitation, and lust. Even the rats are no less greedy, so nearly everyone in The Pied Piper deserves their unhappy fates (with one notable exception).

Barta arguably pushes the conceit a bit too far by utilizing the stereotypical figure of a Shylock, not necessarily a moneylender in this case, but rather as the person responsible for minting the coins that the townspeople use. Unfortunately, Barta really leans into antisemitic tropes in his design of the character, right down to the exaggerated angular nose. Yet as problematic as that element may be, it’s still a minor misstep in a major film, and it doesn’t detract from what Barta accomplished overall. Thanks to the immeasurable talents of Barta and all of his collaborators (yes, even Pixa), The Pied Piper remains a vivid reminder of just how extraordinary that the world of Czech animation can be.

Cinematographers Vladimír Malík and Ivan Vit shot The Pied Piper on 35mm film using spherical lenses at the full-frame Academy aperture of 1.37:1. This 2023 restoration was a collaboration between Krátký Film Praha and Deaf Crocodile Films. The original 35mm camera negative was scanned by Jan Vanek at Pragafilm, with picture and audio restoration work performed by Craig Rogers under the supervision of Dennis Bartok. The results are simply gorgeous. There’s no damage on display, but all of the original detail and film grain has been left intact. Thanks to the usual impeccable encoding by David Mackenzie at Fidelity in Motion, all of those details are reproduced perfectly, with no compression artifacts to mar them. There aren’t any bright colors to be seen here, because there were never any bright colors in The Pied Piper in the first place. The stylized color design emphasizes browns, tans, golds, and dark blues, giving everything a distinctive quality that’s not quite monochromatic, but it’s not exactly desaturated, either. Regardless, it’s the right look for The Pied Piper, and Deaf Crocodile knocked it out of the park once again with this restoration.

Audio is offered in 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with removable English subtitles. (Since The Pied Piper has no real dialogue, the subtitles are for the opening and closing titles only.) Everything sounds clean, with no noise and only limited distortion from the original recordings. The strikingly eerie score was by Michael Kocáb of the Czech New Wave band Pražský výběr, and it’s re-produced well here even in mono.

The Deaf Crocodile Films Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray release of The Pied Piper + Jiří Barta Shorts is a two-disc set that’s limited to 2000 units. It’s a re-issue of the 2023 Blu-ray for The Pied Piper that they had originally released in partnership with OCN Distribution, this time with a second disc containing more of Barta’s short films and new extras related to them. It also includes a 60-page booklet with essays by Jonathan Owen, Walter Chaw, and Irena Kovarova. Everything comes housed in a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork designed by Brian Level and Beth Morris. (Note that Deaf Crocodile is also offering a Standard Edition that omits the booklet and the slipcase.) The following extras are included, all of them in HD:

DISC ONE

Audio Commentary by Irena Kovarova and Peter Hames
The Vanished World of Gloves (17:27)
Chronicle of The Pied Piper (13:13)
Interview with Jiří Barta (51:39)

The contents of the first disc are identical to what was included on Deaf Crocodile’s previous version of The Pied Piper. The commentary pairs Irena Kovarova, film programmer and founder of Comeback Company, with critic Peter Hames, author of The Czechoslovak New Wave. They cover Barta’s inspirations and the themes of The Pied Piper, as well as its production history, including the development of the story. They see the Piper as being a symbol of fate, or even as a figure of Death, and feel that Ratcatcher is a more appropriate title for the film. They also discuss Barta’s career, exploring the ways that he has always combined different cinematic techniques in his work, and devote some time to his long-gestating production of The Golem. (According to the Czech Film Center, it’s still on track for a 2027 release date.) While this may be a bit dry for a commentary track, there are still plenty of tidbits here for anyone wanting to learn more about The Pied Piper.

Chronicle of The Pied Piper (aka Kronika krysaře) is a vintage featurette about the making of The Pied Piper. It provides a somewhat sanitized look at the production, ignoring some of the behind-the-scenes difficulties, focusing instead on the construction of the wooden puppets and the elaborate sets. It’s a priceless look at the work of some extraordinary artisans.

The Interview with Jiří Barta is an online conversation between Barta and Deaf Crocodile’s Dennis Bartok. They cover a wide range of subjects including Barta’s family history, his early influences like Jiří Trnka, and various aspects of The Pied Piper, including the lack of comprehensible dialogue, the unique visuals, and the score. They also briefly discuss The Vanished World of Gloves. Barta’s responses in Czech are translated into English by an offscreen Irena Kovarova, so the rhythms of the interview can be a bit leisurely, but that couldn’t be helped. It’s still a great conversation with an incomparable artist.

DISC TWO

Riddles for a Candy (8:13)
Disc Jockey (9:47)
The Design (6:00)
The Vanished World of Gloves (17:27)
A Ballad About Green Wood (10:39)
The Last Theft (20:57)
The Club of the Laid Off (25:14)
New Interview with Jiří Barta (76:12)
Pushed to the Margins (29:40)

The contents of the second disc are all-new to this edition, starting with six more Barta shorts that have been newly restored by Deaf Crocodile. (The Vanished World of Gloves is also included here to keep them all in chronological order.) They’re presented at full frame 1.37:1, with 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio and removable English subtitles (where applicable).

Riddles for a Candy (aka Hádanky za bonbon) is Barta’s debut short from 1978, telling the story of an anteater-like creature who must solve riddles in order to gain a piece of candy. It utilizes dimensional but relatively flat components animated on a 2D plane, with Barta employing repeated transformations to re-assemble the constituent parts of the creature into different forms. It’s a far more whimsical and family-friendly fare than any of his later films.

The Disc Jockey (aka Diskžokej) was released in 1980, expanding on the techniques from Riddles for a Candy by maintaining an overhead perspective on a flat plane, but employing cutout animation similar to the style that Terry Gilliam made famous. The story follows a disc jockey as he gets up in the morning, goes to work, and then heads home, with the repeated imagery of circles evoking the circular nature of his workaday existence.

The Design (aka Projekt) from 1981 also maintains the overhead perspective, but relies on pixelation instead, with the real hands of a draughtsman being animated frame-by-frame. Intriguingly, it does employ cut out animation like The Disc Jockey, but they never move on their own, only under the direct influence of the draughtsman’s hands. Just like the DJ in that short, the draughtsman’s subjects find themselves to be nothing more than cogs in a machine that can’t escape their industrialized existence.

The Vanished World of Gloves (aka Zaniklý svet rukavic) is a 1982 short that takes Barta’s experimentation to the next level, freely mixing a variety of techniques and even utilizing live action material. It opens in live action, showing a construction crew digging up an old film reel along with some abandoned gloves. When the reel is spooled up, it provides a history of the cinema, divided into six different tableaus, with all of the parts performed by animated gloves. Barta uses this setup to explore everything from the silent era to science fiction like Godzilla and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (He even throws in an amusing homage to Un Chien Andalou along the way.) It’s a beautiful example of Barta’s boundless creativity, and unsurprisingly, it was the first short that drew international attention to his work.

A Ballad About Green Wood (aka Balada o zeleném drevu) followed the next year, tracing the changing of the seasons through a much more extensive interplay between live action and animation. Rather than simulating all of that on an animation stand, Barta shot most of it outdoors, animating objects like logs and a stuffed crow against real backdrops under natural lighting—with all the challenges that entailed. Inspired by elements from Slavic mythology, A Ballad About Green Wood helped lay the tonal groundwork for The Pied Piper, if not the actual techniques that Barta would end up using in that film.

The Last Theft (aka Poslední lup) was released in 1987, the year after The Pied Piper, and it fully embraces the horrors that lived in the margins of that film. A thief breaks into a seemingly abandoned building and gleefully helps himself to the treasures that it contains, but discovers to his dismay that it’s not as abandoned as he thought. Since it features live actors in real locations, rather than employing animation techniques like pixelation, Barta shot it as full live action and then manipulated the footage in post in order to make it look animated (including tinting each frame by hand). Just like the hapless protagonist finds himself caught between two worlds, Barta used his technical prowess to bridge the two mediums.

The Club of the Laid Off (aka Klub odložených) was Barta’s final film from this period, closing out the Eighties (and his work under a Communist regime) in singular fashion. An abandoned group of mannequins in a dusty old warehouse come to animated life in cycles of repetition like those in The Disc Jockey. Their routines are disturbed by the intrusion of a group of younger mannequins, who have also been displaced by modern society, but who don’t respect tradition. While that initially leads to conflict between them, the older group inevitably ends up assimilating the rowdy consumerist ways of their younger rivals.

The New Interview with Jiří Barta picks up more or less where the old one left off, this time focusing on the short films in this collection (and once again, Irena Kovarova provides some offscreen assistance). Bartok steps through each of Barta’s shorts one at a time, discussing the original circumstances of their creation and what Barta was trying to say through them. They close by returning to the subject of his still unfinished film The Golem. Finally, Pushed to the Margins is a new visual essay on Barta’s shorts, featuring Kovarova and Peter Hames. They also break down each film individually, while at the same time providing an overview of the ways in which Barta’s style evolved relative to the work of other Czech animators.

Deaf Crocodile’s previous release of The Pied Piper was already a wonderful set, but the addition of six more shorts and new extras takes this one to the next level. It’s now a complete collection of all of Barta’s work from 1978-1989, accompanied by enlightening interviews and commentary. It’s a worthy upgrade, even for anyone who owns the old disc, and it belongs in the library of any fan of international animation.

- Stephen Bjork

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