Animation i Väst

PER ÅHLIN: ANIMATION CLASSIC FROM THE NORTH

Even thought Per Åhlin is the most productive Scandinavian animator, he has never been just an animator.
He is actually a man of many professions and interests who has worked as a graphic designer in advertising,
illustrator in newspapers, photographer, costume and set designer in theatre and on film and as a skilful animator
who collaborated with those live action film directors who wanted animated sequences in their films.

So, for example, he created animated sequences for “Father to be” (Jag är med barn, 1981), one of the early
successes of Lasse Hallström, a famous Hollywood director from Sweden. He also worked for his friends and
collaborators, a famous couple of versatile artists and comedians, Hasse Alfredson and Tage Danielsson on
their films “The Adventures of Picasso” (Picassos äventyr, 1981) and “Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter” (Ronja
Rövardotter, 1984), based on the book by Astrid Lindgren, a famous Swedish writer. In Pennfilm Studio, Åhlin
has created a number of animated series based on popular books of children’s literature, the most popular of
them being a series of animated films about the boy Alfonso, a character from Gunill Bergström’s books.

Åhlin was born in 1931 in the small town of Hofors, he grew up in the village of Åby, near the town of Växjö in
the province of Småland, but most of his life he has spent in Malmö. Same as his colleagues, he got “hooked
on” animation by watching Disney films. As a young boy in the 1940s he had an opportunity to watch “Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1938) and “Pinocchio” (1940) owing to a travelling cinema that used to pay
visits to Åby. As is often the case, he started by making drawings for newspapers, which was followed by the
publication of his first comic book in 1949 in the Swedish weekly TV and radio guide Röster i Radio, but a
desire to animate his drawings was constantly present and so he started studying animation techniques on
his own. At the beginning of the 1960s, thanks to television, he got the chance to give it a try as an animator.
For the next several years he collaborated with Swedish National Television, creating animated vignettes and
title sequences for different TV programmes.

While creating the title sequence for the film “Swedish Portraits” (Svenska bilder, 1964) he met Hasse Alfredson
and Tage Danielsson, and since then their relationship, both professional and personal continued for
many years on. The three of them were the creative team behind the first animated feature film in Sweden
called “Out of an Old Man’s Head” (I huvet på en gammal gubbe, 1968).

The ambition of these young authors was to demonstrate the inner, subjective dimension of old age. Clearly,
adults were their target audience, which was quite contrary to the then universally accepted notion of animation
as a kind of a motion picture book intended solely for children. The film starts as a live action film directed
by Danielsson with Alfredson, who was thirty-years old at that time, playing the role of a seventy-year-old
man recollecting his life. The camera is moving closer to his face and it finally “enters” his head; the old man’s
thoughts become visible thanks to the magic of animated drawings created by Per Åhlin.

With the help of four collaborators, it took Åhlin two and a half years to create those 56 minutes of animation
out of 75 minutes of the film. But those 56 minutes represent the author as a mature artist aware of the golden
rule, according to which animation starts off where the possibilities of live action and documentary film end.
Picture metaphors, representing the old man’s desires and hidden thoughts that meander through the wide
open spaces of his memories were created in accordance with the most modern perceptions of animation
coming from American independent studios, primarily UPA and some films by Ernest Pintoff, as well as Zagreb
and Polish animators. It was all enriched by the pronounced presence of recognizable Scandinavian visual art
and feeling.

“Out of an Old Man’s Head” is indisputably a classic work of film animation and, together with the Norwegian
puppet animated feature film “Pinchcliffe Grand Prix” (Flåklypa Grand Prix, 1975) and another Åhlin’s film
“The Journey to Melonia” (Resan till Melonia, 1989), it is a serious candidate for the title of “the best Scandinavian
animated feature film of all times”.

He gained international fame with his next feature project “Thundering Fatty” (Dunderklumpen!, 1974) based
on the book Förtrollningar by Beppe Wolgers. In this film he combined animated images drawn on film stock
with live-shot backgrounds. Animated drawings moving through beautiful landscapes of the Swedish province
of Jämtland, thanks to the perfect rendering of animation, based on the so-called rear projection was one
of the most significant features of this film. It took him four years of production for such a complex technological
project, but it was worth it in the end. “Thundering Fatty” was a great commercial success with both the
audience and critics. It was the first time that an animated film had won the Golden Shoot (Guldbagge), an
annual award for the best Swedish film. The film was sold in more than 20 countries and considered the greatest
commercial achievement of Swedish animation until the 1990s and the creation of the animated television
series by Magnus Carlsson.

Åhlin’s next project was the 23-minute-long film “The Christmas Eve of Karl-Bertil Jonsson” (Karl-Bertil Jonssons
julafton). It is based on a Tage Danielsson’s short story and it has become a phenomenon unique in the
history of animated film. Since its premiere in 1975 the film has been broadcast every Christmas at the same
time on Swedish National Television, which makes it one of the most popular animated short films. Åhlin’s
adaptation of this heart-warming Christmas tale shows his great talent for drawing and animation combined
with a developed flair for plot structure and timing. Once again, he uses an interesting technique; he draws
on film stock as usual, and its backgrounds are photographs of three-dimensional models, created by his collaborator
Pelle Svensson.

In his interviews, Åhlin occasionally complains that the success of this film has cast a shadow over all other
films, and so it seems as if he has made no other film but this one. Nevertheless, he is satisfied with the film’s
success and he unpretentiously gives credit for its quality to Danielsson’s screenplay: “The fact that people
want to watch the film over and over again, proves that animated, as well as any other film, no matter what it
looks like, needs to have a good story at its core.”

The film “Yellow Submarine” (1968), inspired by the music of the Beatles had a large impact on the future
of Åhlin’s career, which is obvious in his most ambitious film “The Journey to Melonia”, the most expensive
animation project in the history of Sweden, supported by nine production studios.

The screenplay, written by Åhlin with a few collaborators is conceived as a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s
The Tempest in the form of four variations on the themes of the play in which some important issues regarding
modern civilisation are integrated. The film is primarily concerned with ever present environmental issues and
warnings; it is a protest against the man’s inclination to cover the globe in concrete. Despite its slightly slow
pace, the film can impress the filmgoer of today owing to beautiful pictures and meticulously studied characters
drawn in Åhlin’s typical meandering line (as if he is sitting in a rocking chair while drawing). In a technical
sense, “The Journey to Melonia” represents the peak of his career. His drawings of beautiful open landscapes
of untouched nature are as fascinating as his original and skilful animation of water waves that reminds of his
great predecessor, the father of Scandinavian animation Victor Bergdahl, who enjoyed the most in animating
the sea and sailors.

I met Åhlin for the first time in 2002, at a small festival in Sweden. That is when I got one of the most valuable
answers to the question what is animation:

“Animation is a compilation of all existing art forms, its only limitation being human fantasy… and money”.
Unfortunately, this other limitation was evidently present in the production of “Dog Days” (Hundhotellet,
2000), an interesting attempt at combining detective fiction and animated drawing.

Nowadays, Åhlin is as active as before, even though he is as old as the character from his first film. After all,
seventy-year-olds in Sweden are not considered to be of a very old age, and therefore it’s to no one’s surprise
that he is still working diligently with his collaborators in Pennfilm Studio on several ambitious projects, such
as the animated television series “The Little Ghost Laban” (Lilla spöket Laban, premiered in 2006) based on
the tales of Inger and Lasse Sadberg. At the same time, drawings that need to fit into Åhlin’s lifelong dream
- an animated feature film based on Hoffmann’s tales, are circling around the desks of the studio.

Per Åhlin and his work, although well known and popular on the Scandinavian Peninsula, is still waiting a full
valorisation in professional and popular literature on film and animation. It seems to me that the retrospective
of his films in Zagreb is an important step in that direction.

Midhat Ajanović Ajan