The first sequence in any film that aspires to win respect, like the first sentence in a book that wants to be literature, is always thought through isn't it. The first sequence in Karel Zeman's The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is a small piece of genius surely? It somehow resonates with Kubrik's 2001 early hominid section, only this is in storybook style. Water, life, footsteps, and flight (this film is obsessed with flight isn't it). Everything delightfully odd. Recall that beat of the music which matches the tread of the footprints? The film cuts. And then it does not cut - isn't that, there, the moment of editing genius? The shift from 'cuts' to a moving 'take' implies life finally taking hold - but the real reason that shift is there is simply because it resonates with film people. And then the camera lifts its wonderful head.
Doesn't Karel Zeman's Munchausen make the point that everything begins with a problem? How to get from the Moon to Earth, for instance? Or how to escape from the belly of a rather personable whale? Most people solve the problems of life (scarcely anything more than one tedious problem after another surely) with some kind of 'science'. Or at the very least with a strain to become logical just for a moment, or perhaps a wild stab at common-sense? Thus is the Moon-man in The Fabulous Baron Munchausen. Actually the Moon-man is a bit dull isn't he? He'll greet you with a common grin, whereas the Great Baron Munchausen will startle you with a turned ankle and a flourish of hat. The Moon-man probably has a difficult degree in engineering, and he knows how to do hard sums. The Good Baron has a different way of solving problems, for there exists a Munchausen way - fantasy. Fantasy as the alternative to science. You have an appointment at the Turkish court and you need to speak the language of diplomacy? Well you could learn a foreign language and a foreign convention; or you could employ a translator. Or alternatively - why not make harmonica noises? And how does a Sultan deal with a pair of irritating supplicants who have bored him from the outset? Well, apparently, he could snap behind his curtain and replace himself with a slowly protruding cannon-barrel (one of the film's finest flights of imagination isn't it?). It can be done. Travelling astride a speeding cannonball then hopping aboard a returning one; circling fingers into a telescope and knowing that the ship is a Dutch merchantman and that its cargo is Turkish tobacco - all possible for the Baron. Fantasy begins with a problem.
Lastly - if you want to see something that you've never seen before, then wandering around in the movies is probably going to feed you results isn't it. How fond are you of that dancer following the swing of the grapes held by that bored Sultan in The Fabulous Baron Munchausen? If every narrative does indeed begin with a problem, then exactly what was the nature of this sultanic problem? In any case, something from the scene will probably do nicely as the perfect frame in this film.
(If you haven't seen it.) Karel Zeman's The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is an extraordinary and a charming film of the adventures of the breezily self-confident Baron Munchausen (and his companion) in which skies are crossed in a galleon drawn by winged horses, battlefields are scouted-out sitting astride passing cannonballs, and other nonchalant absurdities are passed off as the everyday. Right from the off, this Czech film made in 1961 resembles a storybook come to life, a mixture of live action, stop-motion animation, colour-washes, and much more besides. Monty Python meets 19th c. engravings. Despite its limitations, probably ones that are ingrained in all storybooks because of their form (slightly one-dimensional characters surely, and the over-rich flavour of a relentless extreme style) The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is a must-see film of imagination and some surreal humour.
(Off-film.) By the way, this Munchausen story character (not the films) is indeed the one that inspired the title of the best-named complaint in the medical text book - Munchausen syndrome by proxy. That's the one to have.
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