In
1964 the animator Richard Williams sought to create the greatest animated film
ever made – The Thief and the Cobbler. His magnum opus was to be
entirely hand-drawn, at twenty-four frames per second, and self-funded by the
odd spots of television work that he could pick up along the way.
Yet,
in 1990, after Williams had worked as animation director on the hugely
successful Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, he managed to secure a deal with
Warner Bros. to finance the independent film that had become his obsession and
life’s work. However, the enormous standard of detail in every hand-drawn frame
led to the constant missing of deadlines, and Warner Bros ultimately pulled out
their $24m of funding leaving the film unfinished and out of Williams’ control.
The Thief was eventually acquired by Miramax, a subsidiary of Disney,
who laid-off Williams’ team of animators and re-hired them to work on Aladdin.
Miramax heavily edited the film; re-dubbing voice rôles by 60s icons such as
Sean Connery with the likes of Matthew Broderick, and adding songs and voices
to previously silent characters in order to make the film more marketable. The
re-titled Arabian Knight was given a limited release in 1995, and
intentionally driven into the ground so that Disney could plagiarise Williams’
plot and key characters in order to create Aladdin – thus introducing
the first wholly CGI characters, and hammering the final nail into the coffin
of the Golden Age of Animation.
However,
after much effort from animation fans, Richard Williams’ masterpiece has now
been restored using early sketches and workprints, to follow his original
script as closely as possible. The Recobbled Cut is available to watch
for free on YouTube, and the result is an absolute joy. Considering that the
animation is now half a century old, you have to keep telling yourself that you
are not watching contempory CGI. Perfectly three-dimensional cylindrical
staircases, chase scenes through Escherian buildings, heart-warming and
terrifying facial expressions, and impeccable detail right down to the
wallpaper of impossible constructs; The Recobbled Cut is a remarkable
celebration of the painstaking efforts of a perfectionist animator, and the
skill and desire of his masterpiece.
