The Birth of the Robot

• 1936
• •
• 6m

• Animation

★ 7.0 TMDB Rating · 12 votes

This experiment was a “prestige advertisement” for Shell Motor Oil. As conventional animation became dominated by Walt Disney, many European filmmakers turned to puppets as an alternative, and Lye enlisted the help of avant-garde friends such as Humphrey Jennings and John Banting to make the amusing puppets. Exploring the still-complex color process, which involved the combination of three separate images, Lye creates such a vivid storm scene that reviewers hailed it as “proof that the color film has entered a new stage.” The music is Holst’s The Planets. - Harvard Film Archive

Director

Len Lye

Release date

Oct 1, 1936

Original language

English

Origin

United Kingdom