'West and Soda'.
Bruno Bozzetto is one of Italy's best-known animated film directors, praised for his satirical depth. He is most famous for his signature character 'Signor Rossi' (1960-1964), whom he also adapted into comic strips. Bozzetto adapted many of his animated feature films into comic books, including 'West and Soda' (1965) and 'VIP, Mio Fratello Superuomo' (1968). His most enduring and internationally well-known animated film is the cult classic 'Allegro Non Troppo' (1976), often compared to Disney's 'Fantasia', though with a satirical approach. Bozzetto's films have received numerous awards and he is still respected as one of animation's most innovative and humorous legends.
Early life and career
Bruno Bozzetto was born in 1938 in Milan. His father was a businessman who produced photographic equipment. Bozzetto's grandfather from his mother's side was Italian painter Girolamo Poloni. Originally, Bozzetto studied with the intent to become a lawyer, but in his spare time he made animated cartoons. He borrowed his father's film camera, while reading the only available animation guide at the time and studying 16mm animated shorts by watching them in slow motion. At age 15, his first short paid tribute to Walt Disney's 'Donald Duck'.
His first professional animated short was 'Tapum! La Storia delle Armi' ('Tapum! The Weapons' Story', 1958), a humorous overview of the history of weapons. It was screened at the Film Festival of Cannes and immediately attracted international acclaim. Much to his luck, he met an enthusiastic film critic at the festival, who helped him get the film more media attention. Animation legends Norman McLaren (known for 'Voisins', A.K.A., 'Neighbours' [1952]) and John Halas (known for 'Animal Farm' [1954]) contacted him and suggested working together in the future. He also received first-hand professional advice from Yugoslav animator Dušan Vukotić. Later in life, Bozzetto also regarded George Dunning and Heinz Edelmann's 'Yellow Submarine' (1968) a huge influence.
Establishing a studio
By 1960, Bozzetto had enough credibility to found his own animation company: the Bruno Bozzetto Film Company. He created serials for the Swiss television network 'RTSI' and his cartoon 'Help?' (1995) aired as part of Hanna-Barbera's 'What a Cartoon!' series on Cartoon Network. He produced animated TV series for RAI called 'La Famiglia Spaghetti' ('The Spaghetti Family', 2003) and 'Topo Tip' ('Topo the Mouse', 2014). Together with journalist Piero Angela, he created about 100 shorts for the scientific TV show 'Quark' (since 1981). His work 'Bruno the Great' (2008) was produced for the Disney Channel. A notable artist who worked for Bozzetto's Film Company was Emilio Uberti.
Bozzetto was also active in advertising. His very first animated commercial won an award in Triëst, allowing more commercial offers to pour in.
'Il Signor Rossi'. Translation: "Ooohhh! Finally I have a unique and precious object."
Signor Rossi
Bozzetto's best-known character is 'Signor Rossi', who debuted in the 1960 animated short 'Un Oscar Per il Signor Rossi'. The plot was inspired by the frustration Bozzetto felt over his films being rejected at the Festival of Bergano, while many far more mediocre pictures did receive airplay there. He therefore drew a caricature of Nino Zucchelli, head of the Bergano Festival, and named him 'Signor Rossi' ('Mr. Rossi'). In the film, Rossi tries to sell a movie to various festivals, but is constantly rejected. In the end, he tramples his movie and sends it to the festival as a deliberate insult, only to see it become a box office hit and win him an Academy Award. In a case of art imitating life, 'Un Oscar Per il Signor Rossi' actually became a hit too, launching Bozzetto's career. This motivated him to make Rossi a recurring character, depicting him more as an everyman than a specific caricature. Between 1960 and 1974, the short-sized mustached man starred in seven animated shorts and three feature-length animated films: 'Il Signor Rossi Cerca la Felicità' (1976), 'I Sogni del Signor Rossi' (1977) and 'Le Vacanze del Signor Rossi' (1978). Their pantomime comedy gave them instant international appeal. Bozzetto also released comic books starring Signor Rossi.
West and Soda
During the 1960s, Bozzetto drew several comics for the weekly magazine Il Giorno. In 1965, he directed 'West and Soda', an animated feature film which parodies westerns. He deliberately wanted to avoid making a fairy tale adaptation, since this was already Disney's expertise, and therefore went to cowboy stories, since he always regarded these as modern-day fairy tales, because they too have a clear hero, villain and predictable happy ending. The entire movie was made with only three or four animators. His distributors originally sold it to U.S. film producers, but purely because they could reduce the cost from their tax audits, not because they were particularly interested. Bozetto adapted it into a comic strip too, published in Il Giorno between January and April 1966.
VIP
Bozzetto's next animated film, 'VIP, Mio Fratello Superuomo' ('VIP, My Brother Superman', 1968), is a satirical take on superhero comics, particularly 'The Phantom'. He originally had trouble getting it released in the U.S., because a female censor objected to his depictions of Japanese, which looked "too offensive" and would thwart the film's potential release in Japan. She also felt that Bozzetto had to remove two brown people sunbathing, because they looked like stereotypical black people. Interviewed by Enrico Azzano and Raffaele Meale (Quinlan, 4 April 2014), Bozzetto did credit this censor with giving him one good piece of advice. Since she felt that his original story was too short for a full-length film, he expanded the narrative.
'VIP' also inspired a comic strip spin-off, 'SuperVip e MiniVip' (1968), published in Il Giorno. 40 years later, the film was produced into a spin-off TV series, 'PsicoVip' (2008).
'Allegro Non Troppo'.
Allegro Non Troppo
Bozzetto's most internationally famous work is 'Allegro Non Troppo' (1976), an anthology film in which the animated sequences are set to iconic classical music pieces, similar to Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' (1940). Originally, Bozetto just wanted to make a short set to Maurice Ravel's 'Boléro'. Gradually the project evolved to an anthology film set to several classical compositions, directly spoofing 'Fantasia' and even referencing Disney's film in the dialogue. Interviewed by Enrico Azzano and Raffaele Meale (Quinlan, 4 April 2014), Bozzetto said that his least favorite part of 'Fantasia' were the intermezzos with Leopold Stokowski and the orchestra, which came across as bland and rose-colored. As a joke, 'Allegro Non Troppo' also makes use of intermezzos with an orchestra, only here the conductor and musicians are all humorously depicted as befuddled seniors.
Contrary to 'Fantasia', 'Allegro Non Troppo' also has a more satirical edge. During a scene set to Antonin Dvořák's 'Slavonic Dance No. 7', for instance, human rivalry and copy-cat behavior is lampooned. A man wants to be individualistic and builds his own unique house. But the people in his neigborhood al build the exact same house. As the crowds keep imitating him, the individual gets more restless and starts to do deliberate moronic things to make a fool out of them... Igor Stravinsky's 'The Firebird' accompanies the story of Adam and Eve to provide a metaphor about human corruption. The most famous sequence features gradually evolving prehistoric animals, marching to the melody of Maurice Ravel's 'Boléro', until mankind wipes everything out.
Originally, Bozzetto had a hard time finding a distributor. In his home country, film producers didn't know how to market it, since it wasn't child friendly enough for youngest viewers, but also didn't have erotic imagery to make it appeal to a mature audience. 'Allegro Non Troppo' was nevertheless first released in the U.S. and the rest of Europa and once it achieved success there, it received a premier in Italy too in 1977, where it also became popular. In hindsight, Bozzetto was perplexed that nobody ever considered the fact that the film might appeal to teenagers and young adults, since the 1969 re-release of Disney's 'Fantasia' had also become a surprise cult hit among that demographic. Indeed, they elevated 'Allegro Non Troppo' to the status of cult classic, while children and adults also enjoyed the film just fine.
Disney animator Ward Kimball named 'Allegro Non Troppo' one of his "favorite animated films of all time." Nina Paley saw 'Allegro Non Troppo' at age 12 and stated that it "blew her young mind." John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar, said: "Bruno Bozzetto's films have been one of the greatest inspirations for me as an animator and storyteller. He has created some of the funniest animated films ever made and is one of the most clever storytellers around. Bruno's designs are so appealing and his comic timing is truly unsurpassed." Because of the success of 'Allegro Non Troppo', Bozzetto was once contacted by Federico Fellini to create animated opening titles for his film 'Ginger e Fred' (1986). However, Bozzetto felt that Fellini's films already featured such cartoony characters that animation would be unneccesary. On top of that, Bozzetto feared that Fellini would want to control the production to such degrees that he would feel excluded.
In 2024, Bozzetto directed a companion piece to 'Allegro Non Troppo', also adapting classical pieces to socially conscious visuals. The short film was titled 'Sapiens?'.
Live-action
In 1987, Bozzetto directed his first and only live-action film, 'Sotto il Ristorante Cinese' ('Under the Chinese Restaurant'), a comedy about a man who witnesses a robbery and has to hide inside the basement of a Chinese restaurant, where he discovers a portal that transforms him to a different, more fantastical dimension, full with strange creatures. Interviewed by Enrico Azzano and Raffaele Meale (Quinlan, 4 April 2014), Bozzetto said that live-action was a "fascinating" experience, because it was enjoyable to work with a team. On the other hand, it brought new, unforeseen problems along, which he couldn't fix by simply making a new drawing. It was such an exhausting experience that he swore to never make a live-action film again.
Translation: - Rossi: "I want federalism." - Waiter: "Venetian style or Roman style?". Girl: "Is it true that the communists eat little children?" - Rossi: "Not all of them, only the ones who are industrialists."
Recognition
Throughout his career, Bozzetto has won countless awards. His animated short, 'Mister Tao' (1988), about a mountaineer in search of the highest tops in life, received a Golden Bear at the Festival of Berlin. The anti-war cartoon 'Cavallette' ('Grasshoppers', 1990), was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short, but lost to Nick Park's 'Creature Comforts' (1990). In 1982, Bozzetto won the Winsor McCay Award, followed by an award for his entire career at the 1998 Animation Festival of Zagreb.n 2008, the animation legend won a Vittorio de Sica Award for a lifespan of work, handed directly to him by Italian president Giorgio Napolitano. The prestigious ASIFA award for "outstanding achievements in the art of animation" followed in 2013. On 27 November 2014, he received the Lifetime Achievement Maria Adriana Prolo Award at the Film Festival of Turin. In 2024, Bozzetto's film 'Sapiens?' recceived the award for 'Best Short Film' at the Cartoons on the Bay festival.
The University of Bergamo named him 'honoris causa' in the field of "theory, techniques and management of all performing arts" (2007), while the Free University for Language and Communication in Milan bestowed him the Stella della More award (2024) for his efforts to raise people's environmental awareness.
Bozzetto's work has been subject of several exhibitions in Milan, Bergamo and Torino and, between 21 November 2013 and 7 April 2014, in the Theater Gallery at the Walt Disney Family Museum.
Recent years
Bozzetto also moves along with the latest technology. Since the 1990s, he works mostly with Adobe Flash animation. His first short in this style, 'Europe and Italy' (1999), about the behavioral differences between Italians and Europeans, quickly became a worldwide success. In 2012, he launched his own YouTube channel. During the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic, Bozzetto posted a daily series of cartoons about a man and his dog, Doggy, on his Facebook page. A booklet was released later, with the profits going to dog kennels. Personally, Bozzetto isn't much of dog fan: he owns a pet sheep called Beeelin.
Bozzetto's career has been subject of a documentary film, 'Bozzetto Non Troppo' (1976), directed by Marco Bonfanti. In 2023, Bozzetto also published his autobiography, 'Il Signor Bozzeto - Una Vita Animata' (2023), with help from Simone Tempia.
'SuperVip e MiniVip'.