ADVENTURES IN LILLIPUT

Southland Times, Issue 24163, 27 June 1940, Page 11

ADVENTURES IN LILLIPUT

NEW TREATMENT OF FAMOUS STORY

“GULLIVER’S TRAVELS” AS ANIMATED CARTOON

During the past 200 years millions of people have read and chuckled over Jonathan Swift’s immortal history of the wanderings of Captain Lemuel Gulliver. Children have read it and loved it for the fantasy which made it a fairy tale. Adults have read it and loved it for its devastating treatment of politics and politicians. Millions have read it in English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, i Spanish, Portuguese and almost every | other printable language. Language | made no difference. The fantasy was there for the children and the satire was there for the adults, because politicians are universal. When readers put down the book, however, they felt that Dean Swift had not been quite fair to them. He had written the book from the viewpoint of Gulliver; but what was the viewpoint of the Lilliputians? Swift told how Gulliver regarded the Lilliputians, but how did the Lilliputians regard Gulliver? What kind of a person was the King of Lilliput? Were there eccentric characters in Lilliput, as in other races? What were their foibles? Gulliver’s reactions when he awakens on the beach and finds himself tied down by a race of tiny beings was outlined in the book; but what about the reactions of those tiny beings at seeing a terrifying monster in their midst? In other words, Dean Swift arouses an intense curiosity about a people in the book, but gives only clues with which that curiosity can be satisfied. So when Max Fleischer decided to make the full-length animated cartoons in Technicolor, “Gulliver’s Travels,” which is soon to be shown in Invercargill, he turned the story around. The satire and the fantasy are still there. There is no change in the story jn any important detail. The famous scenes of tying Gulliver down on the beach, of Gulliver pulling the enemy warships through the water, and so forth, are in the picture. They have not been touched. But the story is done purely from the viewpoint of the Lilliputians. It is Gulliver, the ordinary man, who is the giant and the audience will see him as though they, themselves were Lilliputians. And it is great fun.