Weirdhouse Cinema: Son of the White Mare

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe explore Marcell Jankovics’ hallucinogenic animated masterpiece of Hungarian mythology: Fehérlófia, known to English-speaking audiences as “Son of the White Mare.”

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're kicking
off the new year on Weird House Cinema with two
different firsts. This is our first full length animated film,

(00:25):
and this is our first Hungarian film. You know, we've
done movies on Weird House Cinema before that. I almost
just purely enjoyed that, you know, I had almost pretty
much nothing bad to say about. But this is probably
the first movie we've done that is just purely beautiful
in in Uh. I don't know, Maybe maybe I'm forgetting
a case. So if we've done anything else really of

(00:47):
this caliber, man, I'm not sure that we have. You know.
One of the sort of frequent tropes that I find
myself saying about movies that I think are really beautiful
is that, well, you could take one still from the
film and you could put it on your wall. Um.
And on one hand, that definitely applies to this movie,
the movie we're talking about here today, Son of the

(01:09):
White Man, But it it's also a little unfair to
the film because it is a film as well discussed
that is that has such movement, and it's such pulsation,
such transformation that to make this moving picture stands still
is to rob some of its vital essence. And I
don't know that I've ever felt that about a movie before.

(01:31):
I completely agree, Yeah, that you cannot really capture the
art style of this film with stills from the movie.
You have to see it in movement. Yeah, because it
is constantly moving. It is constantly pulsating and changing colors
and changing forms and in just a way that I
have never seen before in uh, certainly an animated film,

(01:53):
but you know, in any motion picture. It this one
really stands apart. And yeah, I have I have trouble
comparing it to verse really anything else, and certainly to
to anything else that we've we've covered on the show.
I think I will be able to make some comparisons,
but they're all going to be pretty superficial. Uh. This
is one of the most unique movies I've ever seen.
I mean, there are superficial links to other things, but

(02:16):
as a whole package, I can't think of anything like it. Yeah.
This so again, this is Marcel the Gyankovich is son
of the White mayor from one. I was not familiar
with this artist or his work at all before last month,
but then a few different things sort of happened. So,
first of all, credit where credits due. Listener by the

(02:38):
name of A. V wrote in and recommended the film,
calling it quote a strange and strangely beautiful film. But
then I have to admit I kind of forgot about
this recommendation, the strong recommendation, during the sort of December
madness that we always experience here on the show. Um.
But I later found myself needing some you know, hallucinogenic

(02:58):
but nondisturbing vision will stimuli to put on in the house.
And I noticed this film on a few different lists,
and um, and I think I even mentioned it to
you and possibly to Seth. And then I think you
were the one who remembered A. V. Bringing it up,
and I was like, okay, it's been recommended there as well.
And so I what I did is I then went
to see if I could rent it at the local
video Drome rental store here in Atlanta. And while this

(03:22):
first attempt proved fruitless, owner Matt Booth told me that
it was in fact an incredible film and that it
was in high demand of late at the store, in
part because the The U S. Blu ray had just
come out earlier that year, and it also was during
the summer that the director passed away. Uh. So you
know a few different things sort of lining up that

(03:43):
really kind of pushed this film in front of more eyes,
and so I wasn't able to rent it initially. I
wound up watching the film on the Criterion channel, but
then I went back and rented it from Video Drome
just this last week and watched it again. Yeah, it's
my under standing that this film really got almost no
international audience at all upon its initial release, that that

(04:06):
this year now is the renaissance of this movie, uh,
and that far more people had seen an earlier film
by the same director, by Marcella Yankovich called Johnny Corn Cobb.
That's the English translation. It's a phil It's an animated
film adaptation of a Hungarian epic poem from the nineteenth

(04:28):
century that may have been based on some some older
Hungarian folk tales like this movie was. But the the
I think the Hungarian title is yeah, no Hvi tesh.
But in English that's Johnny Corn Cob. And I haven't
seen that one yet, but I I love the name. Yeah,
that one is I believe included as an extra on
this That is recent Blu ray release, um which I'll

(04:51):
reference again. But it's um uh it's comes from our
bloss and it it's a it's a restored four K
version of the film uh by original camera negative from
the Hungarian National Film Institute Film Archives. So um, it's
it's a really beautiful package and it has a number
of extras which will touch on as we proceed. Now.

(05:15):
I don't know know about you, Joe, but one of
the things you know that I I was thinking about. I
was thinking about this in terms of just animation experiences
of the past. Um. I've certainly been wowed by animated
films before, especially when I'm I've been introduced to sort
of a new genre or a new body of work,
or a new sort of you know, national or regional
style of animation. UM. I remember Miyazaki's NAUSICAA had that effect.

(05:38):
I mean when I when I first watched it, and
and I still that hold that up as one of
my just absolute favorite films. And I had a similar
experience with the nineteen seventy three film Fantastic Planet Um
as well as nineteen eight one is Heavy Metal. Both
of these were films that sort of at the time anyway,
sort of made me rethink what animation could do, you know,

(05:59):
because you you know, if you're exposed to Disney growing up,
you're exposed to the cartoons that are on television, you
have a certain idea about what animation is, what a
cartoon is. Oh yeah, well, so one of the extras
on the Blu ray of this that we watched is
a long interview with Marcel Yankovich and he he talks
a lot about his history with like the Pannonia Animation

(06:22):
studio in Hungary where uh he got his start and
and there's one part in the interview where he he
talks about this problem that he experienced early in his career.
He had been working at this place called Pannonia. Will
probably get into more detail about that later on, but uh,
he'd been doing some sort of animation. Uh he wasn't
like leading projects at the time. He'd just been sort

(06:44):
of a you know, an illustrator for hire at the studio.
And uh he said that one of the pitfalls of animation,
quote was that we always had to make the story
either infantile or it had to be humorous. And he says,
aren't there other angles to this world? My greatest film experiences,

(07:04):
and I'm not talking about animations, My greatest film experience
has always happened after I left the cinema, and for
many hours I was still under the influence of the film.
And in the case of a comedy, this never happens.
And so he uses that as a as a point
of inspiration, like that he he wanted to create something
that was a little more, a little more subtle, and

(07:26):
a little more dangerous and a little uh you know,
not just a cartoon for babies or something for adults
that was supposed to be funny, something that could have
have a kind of mythic power or or or touch
on deeper themes, something that might make you cry. Yeah,
And I feel like that still seems to be kind
of a struggle, at least in the public consciousness concerning animation,

(07:48):
even only by virtue of of looking at at what
some of the main uh you know, fonts of animated
material are, you know, and like some of the networks
and all where it does aam that by and large,
you still have a whole bunch of animation for that's
aimed at children, and then you have this this other
subset of animation that is, you know, it's aimed at

(08:11):
at grown ups and intends to have kind of like
a you know, a bad boy style to it, like it's, oh,
it's it's animation, but it's dirty. Oh, it's animation, but
it has cuss words in it. Um, which we mature
thirty minute comedies for TV, you know, based on the
Simpsons model. They turned that into a million other shows. Yeah, yeah,
and generally, you know, drift towards I feel like the

(08:32):
you know, the the baser into the spectrum there, you know. Um.
But but yeah, this, where's this, uh, the mythic rail here?
Where's this this other line of thought in the public
conception and consumption of animation? And I think that's what
Yankovic eventually ended up pursuing with first Johnny corncob Or

(08:53):
Yano shvitish uh and Uh, which again was an adaptation
of a of a classic Hungarian poem, and then later
with with the movie we're talking about today, Son of
the White Mare, which is a is a gorgeous moving
and which I don't want to suggest that it's overly
serious because there are plenty of comedic elements in it um,

(09:15):
but that it is something that is is not just
a throwaway comedy. It's not like these early things that
that he talks about working on, like the Gustav cartoons.
I don't know if you looked any of those up,
but I did not look at this. Well. The Goostav
cartoons appear to me to be about a man who
like gets very angry at a at a rascally boy

(09:35):
who's shooting a slingshot at him. I would say, not
on the same elevated level as Son of the White Mare.
But wait where did I get to? Oh? Yeah, but anyway,
so so here what we end up with is is
a is a very moving and powerful animated film that
that approaches this genre that could have been called cartoons
before as as a real project of art. Yeah. Absolutely,

(09:59):
and it is Again any description, even a screenshot, doesn't
really do it justice, because it is this just hypnotic
affair that just resonates with mythic symbolism like you just
and I feel like sometimes I say things similar to
that about other other pictures, but but this one really
does it Like this this picture seems to have like

(10:19):
a visual language all its own, where um, in which
I feel like you could turn the subtitles off, you
could just uh and being a non Hungarian speaker, you
could you could just let this film wash over you
and you would still get most of it. It would
still speak a language that you understood, but but not
just a simplistic one of sort of like archaic myth

(10:40):
you know, formats and sort of you know, you know,
heroes journey type of thing, but like it's speaking in
some very rich symbols that are sometimes sometimes more obvious
and sometimes seem a little bit more esoteric. Oh yeah,
and I love I think I understand the juxtaposition you're
talking about. I mean, one aspect of this movie is
it's like about as classic of a narrative as you

(11:02):
could get. It's about like a it's about a strong
young hero who must go into the underworld to rescue princesses.
M But but on the other hand, it's got like
the the gnome with a beard as long as a
hoe whose beard turns into a sword, and just much
weirder stuff like that. Yeah, and has he has one eye?
And um, yeah, it's oh it's it's wonderful. Yeah, we'll

(11:24):
get to that creature here in a bit. Uh, they're
not a ton of creatures and entities in this this film,
but every one of the things that pops up, every
one of the entities that pops up in the film
is very memorable. Now, speaking of which, I guess so
we should get to the elevator pitch here. Basically, we
follow Hungarian hero fan Juvo or tree Shaker as he
teams up with his two brothers and tries to defeat

(11:46):
the three dragons of the underworld and save the three
captive princesses. Now, if you think, well, I've seen a
hero fight dragons before, hold on a minute. These are
different than the dragons, you know, this is this is
not so conventional as as scales, wings, the smell garchetype, right,
they are all each one is drastically different from the other.

(12:08):
They're uh, they're shifting symbolic entities that also have a
certain certain comic nature to them as well, without like
overdoing it. Oh yeah, there was one thing I laughed
at in the movie, which is the second dragon, which
is sort of a an armored vehicle or a tank
with many guns attached to it. Uh, it just arrives

(12:29):
already shooting at everything, like before it even understands what
the situation is. And I thought that was very funny. Yeah,
they're I mean, they're they're they're they're monsters in the
you know, the sort of classic and tropics sense. You know,
they're all consuming and they're angry and they're um, they're
they're ready to fight. Oh that's another thing we should mention.
There's a lot of wrestling in this movie. This is

(12:50):
essentially a wrestling movie even Oh yeah, this this is
six Degrees from El Santo. Yeah, there are a lot
of competitions in this movie where uh, two characters are
in a or in a contest of strength, and what
they do to fight one another is grab the other
one and throw them into the ground. And how far

(13:11):
into the ground you can plant them when you throw
them is a sign of how strong you are. So when,
for example, tree Shaker, our our main hero, first meets
up with one of his brothers, the stone Crumbler, they
have a wrestling match, and stone Crumbler, I think he
kind of throws tree Shaker down to his ankles in
the ground. But tree Shaker, you know, pulls his legs
out of the mud and then grab stone Crumbler and

(13:33):
just buries him up to the chin. Yeah. And the
maneuver here is uh, it's great. I'm not criticizing it
at all, but it is. It is unlike any wrestling
hold you've seen. It is grabbing the other individual by
the waist from the front, picking them up as if
you might pick up a child. Yeah, and then and
then just shoving them down feet first into the earth,

(13:55):
often like literally into the earth, embedding them like a steak.
So good, I never wanted to to end. I want
a whole wrestling league where they just operate on that basis. Yeah,
who needs all of of El Santo's moves when you've
got this one? I mean it works for for tree Shaker.
All right. Well, let's go ahead and hear a little
trailer audio from the film. Um, I'm not again, this

(14:18):
is not going to really give you a full taste
of what's coming, but I think you will get a
taste of some of the audio, some of the music
and sound design, which which is also noteworthy in this picture.

(14:45):
Hold on wanting to get the magic atm odd lad

(15:06):
editors editional heading now regarding the sound design in this movie.

(15:28):
Of course it has wonderful music, but beyond that, I
was also very impressed by the quality of the vocal performances,
which are again in Hungarian so uh so I couldn't understand,
you know, what they were saying. Of course it's subtitled,
but but the voices they use it like, the cast

(15:48):
has this very soothing tambre. Uh that that I noticed
while I was watching the movie, and then afterwards when
I watched the interview with mar Hel Yankovic, he actually
talked about how the soothing quality of the vocal performances
was absolutely on purpose because he was trying to recreate

(16:11):
the quality of a parent telling a fairy tale to
a child who's about to go to bed, and that
ties into his broader vision of what this movie is
supposed to represent. Uh I guess to go ahead and
say it. A lot of people have called this movie psychedelic,
and that is I can understand why people say that,

(16:31):
but he sort of gently pushes back against that by saying,
you know, people assume when they see all the all
the protean animations and the way that the forms of
the characters and and everything in the world is constantly changing,
that this must assume that people assume he must have
taken I think at one point he calls it a
quote a magic substance. Uh that you know, he must

(16:53):
have been on LSD or something like that. But he
says no, He says he's never taken any psychedelic drugs,
that his vision for the art style of the movie
was based on dreams. Well, yeah, I mean that, you know,
dreams and psychedelic experience are not are not unrelated phenomena. Um,
But yeah, I guess that's that's why I'm trying more

(17:15):
to say hallucinogenic and describing it than than psychedelic, because
I know that I had also seen an interview where
he kind of push back against that terminology. However, if
you are looking for a psychedelic film, uh, this will
not disappoint. Well, I mean, I think you can understand
it in the broader sense of psychedelic if you you
go beyond you know, the pharmacogenic psychedelics and just say

(17:38):
psychedelic means manifestations of the mind. You know that, Uh,
you're not just getting a pure read on a realistic
looking scene, but allowing your perceptions to be transformed constantly,
something that would be a byproduct of a lot of
pharmacogenic psychedelic experiences, but could also just be yeah, a
dream or you know, your your consciousness is altered in

(17:59):
some way for some reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I often
use the term and describing something that feels psychedelic uh
in its final form. Uh, not so much about like
what may or may not have been uh going around
in the you know, the brain or the blood vessels
of the individuals that created the film, because certainly, just
because you're using psychedelics does not mean that you're going to, um,

(18:23):
you know, produce something of quality. Um. I mean we've
I think we've we've covered a film or two on
weird House Cinema where there were at least some stories
about how the the director or the writer had had
been using psychedelics and and the results are not always
um uh top shelf. Let's just say at any rate,
I will say that in um, you know, in psychedelic

(18:46):
cinema and psychedelic literature and so forth, and and then
the arts. Yeah, there's often in a you know, this
tapping into this kind of protean energy, like you said,
tapping into the mythic and uh and uh. Yeah, so
it does seem that our so Yankovic uh was tapping
into two similar currents of consciousness and storytelling, but again

(19:06):
via dreams and via just a knowledge of mythology and folklore.
He he was, you know, deeply involved in the study
of mythology and folklore throughout his life. Well, I guess
should be transitioned to talking a bit about his life. Yeah,
let's let's do so. Um. He was the director, the
co writer, and also has animator and layout artist credits

(19:29):
on this though to be clear, there was there were
a number of animators that worked on the film. I've
seen him describe to foreign audiences as both the Hungarian
Walt Disney and the Hungarian Miyazaki. I'm not I'm not
sure what he thought of those two labels. It's like
the Hungarian animation director that I know. Yeah, um so Yeah.

(19:51):
He was an acclaimed and award winning animator. He was
a longtime figure at Hungary's Pennonia Film Studio, creating such
feature length films as Any Corn Cob which we already mentioned, Uh,
the Tragedy of Man, which I think was his last
full length work, as well as such a claim shorts
as ninety four's Sisyphus and nine seventy seven's The Struggle.

(20:13):
Both of these are included as extras on the Blu
Ray for A Son of the White Mayor. And they're
both excellent. They're very different. They're they're black and white. Um,
you know, they lack that kind of pulsiting color we
find in this film. But they're they're also both very clever,
and they also take certain mythological ideas and kind of

(20:33):
twist them, uh though into interesting forms. Did you watch
both of these rob I did, Yes, Yeah, they're very good.
So Sisyphus is I believe done with grease pencil, and
I think that Yankovic did that almost entirely by himself.
I think he had help of um, maybe one or
two other animators, but that one wash was almost entirely

(20:55):
his project. UM. And it depicts the you know, just
a figure pushing a boulder up a hill, but in
a very evocative way. And then of course it has
the it has a sort of reveal at the end,
you know, not to spoil anything. It's two minutes long,
but that you know, he's pushing a boulder up a mountain.
That is at the end revealed to be made of boulders.
So the idea is like, you know, the mountain is

(21:16):
made by this, by this tireless labor um. But then
the other one, the Struggle, I thought was very interesting
because the premise of that is that it's about a
sculptor who is chiseling away at a hunk of stone
to make it into a sculpture. But once the sculpture
begins to take on human form, it lashes out and
begins to sculpt the sculpture. So it gets a chisel

(21:39):
and starts hammering away like his hair line and stuff.
And by the end, the sculptor himself has been chiseled
down to a withered old man by the art that
he's been working on. Yeah, it's such a simple concept,
especially when you you know, just sort of describe it.
But it was, it's it's it's just brought to life
so wonderfully and you're watching it like, yes, that's this,

(22:00):
he's captured it. This is this is what what art
does to you. This is what work in life due
to you. Yeah, you're you're crafting the the thing and
the thing is also um taking his chisel to you.
Now sisiphus was was apparently also used or part of
it was used in a two thousand eight Super Bowl
ad for GMC. Um. Yeah, does that make people want

(22:21):
to buy cars? I don't know, Um, I mean I
guess GMC was making like the statement is like we're
doing it, we're putting Maybe they didn't really understand the
stand the underlying this all that well, um, and they
just wanted something that would grab football fans attention. Well,
I want to be fair, I haven't seen how it's
used in that ad, or if I have, I don't
recall it. So maybe maybe I don't know, maybe it
makes sense in context, maybe it does, yes, um. But

(22:44):
but he was no stranger to advertisements as well, because
he also made a promotionary animation for Air India UM,
which is also included as an extra on this Blue
ray and is also very fascinating because you watch this
eight or nine minute long UM Air India commercial. It's

(23:06):
sort of a commercial, but there's no there's no voiceover.
Uh that's included in this kind of it anyway. It
only occasionally do things resemble airplanes or spell out Air
India and the rest of the times just kind of
this free forming animation of about sort of like travel
in India and a little bit about flight. So there's

(23:27):
a really interesting part of that, that thirty minute interview
on on the ray where I think the interview there's
you can actually find it online if you want to
look it up. It's called uh, it's called something like
brighter Colors or the colors or brighter or something like that.
Um and uh and and so it's worth a look.
But he tells the story of how actually working on

(23:47):
that Air India commercial sort of inspired what I would
say is the most defining artistic feature of Son of
the White Mare, which is the transforming quality that none
of the four ms in the movie are fixed. That like,
the forms of the characters are always kind of changing,
the forms of the landscape and the props within it

(24:07):
are always changing. Um. That in a way grows out
of his experience working on this commercial for an airline.
So he says that you know, he was when he
was younger, before he had had much success. He I
think he had just been working on stuff like you know, uh,
the the gustav cartoons and stuff. At this point he
was at Pennonia Studios and a man representing Air India,

(24:31):
which had recently opened an office in Hungary, came in
looking for a specific director or specific animator who worked
at that studio and said, uh, you know, I want
this guy to make a to make a commercial for
for our airline. And the way yank I it, she
tells the story, I'm not quite clear whether how much
deception was involved, but sounds like maybe what happened is

(24:54):
they came and got him and they were like, hey,
this the guy that uh, the guy that they want
doesn't want to do this. Can you pretend to be him?
And uh so Yankovic is like, sure, I'll do that.
Or maybe maybe it wasn't quite that deceptive, but there
was some kind of switcheroo involved and he ended up
working on this commercial when this other guy had been requested.

(25:14):
But he said, uh, he got a number of directions
from this representative from Air India about what he wanted
in the animation, and the first thing the guy said
that what he wanted more than anything else was that
there should be constant transformation. And he says this was
a turning point for me. I mean, I would say
constant transformation is the Yankovic style. Yeah, yeah, but He

(25:36):
also said that his work for This Air India ad
inspired him in a way to pursue projects that were
beautiful and full of emotions. Yeah, and so throughout his
career he seems to have stuck mostly to his own
projects and was again deeply involved in the study of
mythology and folklore. Um. His his one real foray into
American cinema comes from a perhaps unexpected play ice Uh.

(26:00):
He has an art department credit on Walt Disney's two
thousand film The Emperor's New Groove. Now have you seen
The Emperor's New Groove? I don't think I have. Um,
it's one I don't think I've ever seen it in
its entirety. I've seen parts of it. It's like a
farcical uh inc in silly adventure kind of a thing.

(26:22):
I think that's, Oh, this is something the inc and in.
But it's got a Llama. I think there's a Llama
and there's David Spade. Uh Yeah, it's got some got
some good talent involved. I know that this is a
film that many people grew up with and still find
a lot of fun. And I don't doubt that for
a second. Uh. You know that it's it's uh, you know,
it's worthy of your fun. But it does sound like

(26:43):
this was a much different film. Earlier in its production,
it was going to be called Kingdom of the Sun,
and it was apparently going to be more steeped in
Incan mythology. Uh. And then apparently this shifted when the
co director left, and that was when Yankovic also left
the picture. But he still retains that credit. I was
looking around for more information invation on this to see

(27:04):
if there were like any surviving sketches that he had
done or um, you know. I it almost makes me
want to sit down and watch The Emperor's New Groove
to try and pinpoint things in it that feel like
at least an echo of his ideas in his work.
You know. So I already mentioned that that his work
on that Air India commercial being influential in in what

(27:24):
would come later, But in the interview he also talks
about an interesting but I don't know whether he would
say this as an influence on him, but a lot
of people have pointed out the similarities between his earlier
movie Corn Cob Johnny or Yanoshvitish and Yellow Submarine, and
he talks about how there was a point where he

(27:45):
was trying to secure funding for Corn Cob Johnny. This
was I guess he hadn't made a feature by himself yet,
and he had to do some storyboard presentations for a
bunch of big wigs. I don't know who they were.
I guess the you know, money people. And he thinks
that the success of Yellow Submarine really helped him break
through on that because he says, you know, before Yellow Submarine,

(28:09):
I don't know if this is fair, and you know,
animation historians would think of it this way, but at
least in his impression, there were basically two sides. He
says there was the Hollywood style and that was by Disney,
and there was the New York based up a style
which he says was closer to European animation. And then
he says, I needed a third side, and Yellow Submarine

(28:29):
emerged and that was sort of a good starting point
for an alternative, a third side with which to approach
animated features. Ah, that's that's interesting. I wish I could
say more on it, because I have to. Then, I've
never actually watched Yellow Submarine already. I've only seen like,
you know clips, I know what the Blue Man he
looks like that sort of thing. But I watched it.
You would love Yellow sub You would, Yeah, I probably would.

(28:53):
I know it was my uh my father in law
is one of his favorite films, so I should definitely
give it a viewing sometime. I'll let you borrow my copy. Okay. Oh,
but there's one thing I wanted to come back to, uh,
which is he starts explaining this whole schema he has
in mind for what Son of the White Mayor is
and what its relationship is to dreams, to fairy tales

(29:15):
and to childhood bedtime. And so I just want to
read a longish quote from his interview that I think
helps illuminate some of the things we're going to talk
about when we get into the contents of the movie. Um. So,
he starts off again by saying, you know that the
movie was called psychedelic by people in the press, and again,
he never tried psychedelic drugs, so he couldn't exactly speak

(29:38):
to that. But he said that what he was going
for was to recreate the feeling of dreams. So he says, quote,
dreams play a crucial role. The dreamlike quality of the
score and the dreaminess of the voice acting is also important.
Why was that important? It was important because based on
what I know, my interpretation, and based on their prevailing roots,

(29:58):
I say that hales should be told at bedtime, so
when a child is going to bed and approaches the
nighttime darkness. Even as an adult, I know that every
bad night keeps haunting me. Even when I can't sleep,
I only have bad thoughts. That's what dreams try to ease.
So at night, children are normally asleep, not awake, and

(30:19):
dreams help them through the difficult parts of the night.
That's what we have to feed with a positive story
and a happy ending. What is the happy ending? I
wake up and the sun is shining. And so from there,
he goes on to explain how it was important to
him that the voice acting in the movie have the
soothing quality of a mom or a grandma, or a

(30:40):
dad or a grandpa telling a tale to a child
at bedtime. I think that that absolutely comes across, and
especially the voice of sort of the godlike figure in
the movie. When it speaks, it is deep and soft
and reassuring, even when it's delivering bad news. And then
he later goes on to talk about how there there

(31:00):
was an interview he did in the nineties two I
believe Hungarian newspaper and um, when he was talking to
the photographer who came along for the interview, he said
that the photographer says, my son told me. Well he
first of all, he says, you know, my son, he
loves son of the White Mayor. But then he said,
my son says his dreams are like this. Oh wow.

(31:25):
And I don't know if that means that the movie
captured what his dreams were already like, or if the
movie had influenced the way that he's dreamed, like what
his vision for dreams was. But I don't know. And anyway, Um.
Yankovic goes on to say that it's a it's a
true acknowledgment of an artist's intentions, uh, to to have
a child say that this is what my dreams are. Yeah,

(31:48):
I can imagine. So um. Oh man, it's so much
to unpack their Like he kind of has his own,
uh theory of of why we dream and what purpose
dreams lay in our lives, um, as well as advice
and what kind of what sort of stories should be
you should be reading to your child at night. I
feel like maybe maybe I'm doing it slightly wrong right

(32:10):
now because we're reading Japanese ghost stories and I don't
worry about it. But no, no, no, I I do
very much like his his take on this and UH.
And in terms of dreams being like this film, I mean,
I'm tempting. My gut reaction is I don't feel like
my dreams are ever this beautiful uh and the you know,
and in this visual But on the other hand, I

(32:32):
do feel like the logic of dreams is very much
in the narrative such as it is of dreams, UH,
is very much like the visual representation of this film,
that things shift, take on different forms, merge together in
ways that seem novel and symbolic, and then can easily
disengage and become something else again, and we don't question

(32:53):
why that's happening. That's a very good point. I see
that parallel entirely. One last funny tidbit from this interview
I wanted to share. He says that when his mother
saw a Son of the White Mayor, she said to him, son,
you'll never make another film that's as good as this one. Wow,

(33:15):
this is combining the compliment with pure discouragement. You've done it.
You've made the best film you can possibly make. It's
over for you. Well, it is a great film. And
I haven't I haven't seen any of his work than
that he did after this, but I've heard good things.

(33:35):
The guys at Video Drome were encouraging me to try
these other films of his, But I already had my
heart set on The White Mare, and I knew from
the you know, from some of the visuals that it
had to be The White Mare, had to be Son
of the White Mayor. Uh, these other films were not
going to be the appropriate first viewing experience. Oh yeah,
I mean whatever good qualities his other works might have,
I think, at least in terms of features, if you

(33:57):
exclude the shorts, it is agreed by probably both him
and by his audiences that Son of the White Mayor
is is the masterpiece. That's the one. Don't start with
Gustav which while we were talking, a glanced at it,
and it it has kind of a Mr. Magoo kind
of look. If you're curious what it is like, it's
that style of animation. Gustav is the Misadventures of a

(34:18):
grump with a peanut head. All right, just a few
other people I wanna credit here for being involved in
the film, and I also want to go ahead and
apologize for any uh in fact, all butchering of the

(34:40):
Hungarian language and Hungarian names here. But I'm going to
do my best. Um. First of all, the co writer
on this was Louslow Georgy who lived eighty six, primarily
an actor. This is their only writing credit, at least
according to IMDb. Now, as far as the cast goes, again,
we have to to drive home that the vocal performances

(35:02):
in this, all in Hungarian, are beautiful and everyone does
a great job, but most of these names are not
going to really be that familiar to anyone outside of
Hungarian cinema or you know, outside of that was apart
from anyone who's familiar with Hungarian cinema. But one of
the individuals credited is Georgi Shami, who was born in

(35:24):
Uh does a few of the different voices in this,
including tree Shaker, our our primary character, our hero. This
guy seems to be a pretty big name in Hungarian
cinema based on just some of the credits I was seeing.
He was in the nine eight one German film Mephisto
by East von Zabo and this film won the Best
Foreign Language Oscar So uh, you know, uh, that sounds

(35:47):
like like he's somebody of note, and I'd be interested
to hear from anyone who has certainly more experienced with
Hungarian cinema than I do. Uh. Now, in terms of music, uh,
there's not a credit on this picture for for music score,
but there there are two credits for sound engineer, and
I'm assuming these are the two individuals that we we

(36:07):
should thank for this film's otherworldly sonic landscape, which again,
is this wonderful combination of kind of I mean, it's
almost hard to describe because it's not very um, you know,
it's it's not a tune you're gonna find yourself humming,
but it is has this kind of electronic pulsation, but
without at times feeling very electronic, but other times just
feeling very ethereal. Actually, one of the things he talks

(36:29):
about in that interview is the difficulty of synchronizing music
with animation, which I'm sure is uh is a nightmare probably,
I I can't even begin to imagine. There's like one
part where he's talking about having to divide the film
into into half second blocks that you would try to
match with the like the number of frames that would
be on the screen and how much time would elapse

(36:51):
in the musical composition. I don't know, it's hard to like.
When you watch the final product, it's it's so ethereal
and artistic and beautiful, but so much brute crunching, grinding work,
tedious work of that kind had to go into it
to make it make the beautiful product we got in
the end. These are the real stone crumblers right here. Yes,

(37:13):
and the two credit individuals are and again, apologies for
butchering these names at all, but Maches Scally and Bella Sendner. Okay, Well,
here's the part of the episode where in a lot
of cases we would sort of break down the plot
in more detail. You know, I can kind of go
through sequentially and talk about things that caught our interest. Um,
this movie, you can't really break down the plot and

(37:35):
a lot of detail because the plot is very high level.
I mean, it's sort of at the level of a
fairy tale, and a lot of the moment to moment
happenings on screen or sort of abstract artistic changes and
uh and and just visual representations of emotions flowing out
of the characters or out of the scene. Uh. Doesn't

(37:56):
make for a very good verbal summary on a podcast,
but I think we can at least talk some about
the characters and the players in the film and and
what struck us about them. Yeah. So, first of all,
the film is titled Son of the White Mayor. Uh. Well,
the amazing main character we should mention first is the
White Mayor. This is the main character's mother. She is

(38:17):
this um, this sort of cosmic horse, this beautiful white Mayor,
and UM. I did some brief reading about, you know,
some of the mythologies and belief systems of um. You
know that's kind of like the of the of this
part of European culture. And apparently you do see bits

(38:39):
of this and various customs that you know, this idea
of some sort of of of of a primeval horse
that has some sort of relationship with heroic figures and gods. Yeah.
So you see this horse giving birth to this little
creature that is at first sort of shaped like a horse,
but then there is the quality of humanity in the

(39:02):
little horse, in the like the what do you call
a baby horse? A full is in the full I think,
and something like like a human form somehow kind of
erupts out of the full like it it pulses out
and then eventually just seizes the form entirely. I'm not
sure what that was supposed to represent, but but it's

(39:23):
it's a wonderful sequence. Yeah. Yeah. And this this hero
we're we're told is the third offspring of the White Mare.
And this is our hero tree Shaker, who as a
child is just this kind of adorable little blonde haired
boy that has this kind of loincloth or diaper that
I think she gives him made from her own main uh,

(39:44):
But he will grow up in time to become this,
this flameheaded hero who is all summer in daylight, all
passion and courage, tremendously strong, and a great wrestler of
men and monsters. He seems to represent again, both summer
and just just bright daylight. He is. He is the
culmination of those ideas. He has a yellow golden color scheme,

(40:08):
and as an in his adult form, he's got this
big uh like what would you call it is almost
a flame shaped hair do, kind of like the ThunderCats
or like a troll doll. I had, you know, I
didn't think about ThunderCats until you mentioned it, but yes,
it is very ThunderCats. It makes me wonder if they
were inspired by you know, because I forget which who

(40:31):
always involved in ThunderCats, if those were those set of
Japanese animation studio or not. But I wonder if within
the animation world like these influences. You know, we're we're
already in place at that point. Yeah, I don't really
know anything about ThunderCats. Um, but but hey, we should
mention the other two brothers. Yes, they neither are as

(40:52):
impressive as True Shaker. Like True Shaker is the main
show here. Uh, he has all the gifts. Meanwhile, Stone
Crumbler is mostly this bumbling brother who represents I think
the morning. Uh he can crumble Stone, but he isn't
really good at anything else. He's mostly there for kind
of comedic fodder. Yeah, he's the comic relief, I would

(41:13):
say he And he's got a funny voice in a mustache.
He looks a little bit like Mario. Yeah. Yeah, and
he has big like he has big shaggy pants right,
like they're made out of a wool or something. Yeah,
he's got big pants and thick legs. And that actually
reminds me of one of the things that's interesting about
Corn Cop Johnny. I don't know if you saw depictions

(41:34):
of the main character in that, but he has a
small head and big legs, and uh, Yankovic said, you know,
some people kind of criticize that, like, oh, why is
his head so small here? Why are his legs so big?
Why are his feet so big? But he had to
go to explanation for that. He's like, well, you know,
it's it's almost like perspective, like this character is larger

(41:55):
than life. So when you look at him, it's like
he's even though he's sort of scale to the other characters,
the fact that his legs are huge and his upper
body is smaller, it's like you're looking up at a
figure that is vanishing into the clouds, as you know,
Like the perspective is taking the upper parts of his
body uh to a vanishing point. Uh. And it's it's
very good, you know, the big the big cuffs on

(42:16):
the ankles. That kind of works makes them look like
a giant, that's true. Yeah. And then the third brother
is Iron Temperer. This is our kind of winter iron
worker brother, who I think has elements of like nighttime
to him. He's he has this uh this colder uh spirit. Yeah,
he's blue, he's he's he's far more serious, but also

(42:39):
gets criticized by tree Shaker for not doing a good
job on things. Uh. There are there are sequential scenes
where both Stone Crumbler and Iron Temperer get brutally spanked
by their other brothers when they failed to cook a
porridge and weave a rope correctly during the daytime. And
to protect that porridge from the next actor. We should

(43:00):
mention um who we alluded to earlier. This is the
gnome the I believe they refer to him in the
translation as the seven colored Gnome. Yes, he appears when
the brothers or so they're looking for a hole that
will provide an entrance to the underworld because they've been
given a quest where they know that there are three
princesses who are imprisoned in the underworld where they're they're

(43:24):
kept prisoner by these three horrible dragons, and so they're
looking for a hole where they can get down into
the underworld. And while they're looking for a hole, each
day two brothers go out and the other one stays
home to cook a porridge and weave a rope and uh,
every day this gnome shows up and he's like, hey,
that looks like some pretty good porridge. Can I eat
it all? And when the brother says no, the gnome

(43:48):
overpowers them with his With his he has a tentacle
like beard. It's like a beard that can sort of
grab you and change into anything. And so he'll overpower
them with his tentacle magic beard and then put the
burning hot pot of porridge on their belly and then
eat it and then force the brother to eat a
bunch more porridge and give them a belly ache. Yes,

(44:11):
so it's a little strange, but yeah, yeah. The the
other strange thing about this gnome and this is technically
a spoiler, but nothing I can really say can spoil
this movie for you. Um if we later on find
out that the gnome, who is the depicted as having
one eye, uh is seems to be like a shard
of or the remnants of the Forefather, the the primordial

(44:34):
sort of deity that is alluded to earlier, and it
is ultimately restored at the end of the picture. Yeah. Oh,
but so the gnome gets the better of the other
two brothers. But when tree Shaker finally encounters him. Uh,
tree shaker, of course, you know, he can't be beaten.
So he gets the GNOME's beard, he cuts it off,
and he turns the beard into a sword. Yes, yes,

(44:57):
the sword that the then comes in play and the
battles to come. All right, So let's so we have
the three princesses and the three dragons. I wonder if
we should talk about the three princesses first, or or

(45:19):
talk about the pairings like the princess and the dragon. Oh, yeah,
we can talk about the pairings, okay, okay. So the again,
like all three brothers seemed like they seem to be
tied with the difference with a certain season in a
different time of day, and the same goes for the princesses. Uh.
You know, we have our night princess, we have our
morning princess, and we have our day in summer princess um.

(45:40):
And then the dragons themselves have sort of different themes
going on. We'll we'll discuss here. But the first princess
that he attempts to say, and he meets her before
he encounters the dragon, is this night princess, who is
certainly the most seductive of the three, like very very
sensual depiction. Um. She has often picked a topless or

(46:01):
and or nude or nearly nude um. And she's also
has kind of a sneakiness to her, a kind of
selfishness to her. Yeah, she seems tricky in a way
that the other two princesses are not. And then the
dragon that is guarding her, that has kidnapped her, that
that is protecting her, and that that the tree Shaker

(46:23):
must defeat is the three headed dragon, which uh again,
Buddha side any any like vision in your head of
what this dragon should look like, because what we're talking
about here is kind of this rock and jewel eating monolith,
this kind of golem with three heads and prominent testicles
dangling uh between its legs. It's like a stone broute

(46:47):
with vaguely Mesoamerican design elements. In the way it's depicted,
it seems to represent kind of like mining and consumption
of natural resources. Like it's very hungry. It just wants
to eat a bunch of gems and rock. Yes, there
is a There was some interview I came across where
Yank Fitch described the idea he had for the three

(47:08):
different dragons, in that the three dragons sort of represented
the darker elements of human industry in three different stages.
So the first dragon, the three headed dragon is is
somehow like mining and uh and the dark parts of
human industry going back to the Stone Age. And then
the next dragon we're going to talk about is more

(47:30):
the present, and then the third dragon is the future. Yes,
so obviously he's going to defeat all these dragons. So
then we don't really have to describe the battles all
that much. I guess we can a little bit as
as it comes up, but basically, you know what's gonna happen.
They're gonna wrestle. Tree Shaker is going to win, and
then he's gonna move on to the next saving the
next princess defeating the next dragon. The next princess is

(47:54):
the Morning Princess, and she's she's good mannered, she's she's
not like her her sneaky sister, but she also seems
very anxious. Um and the dragon that is guarding her
is this seven headed dragon. And and this guy is
just a tank like juggernaut of just cannons and warfare.
He is like a battle ship but with treads. A

(48:16):
tank a land battleship. Yeah, and it's you know, watching
this this film, it's it's enough of a of a headshaker.
When you encounter that first dragon, it's like, oh, there's
nothing like a dragon. This is not what I expected.
But it's a marvelous and it's it's so inventive and creative.
And then the yeah, the the dragon. The next dragon
to come along, the seven Headed Dragon, is just a
completely different beast. But I think the third dragon is

(48:38):
maybe even the most interesting of the three. I don't
know about visually because they all look beautiful, but it's
the most conceptually interesting because it doesn't even have the
form of something you you normally think of as able
to attack you. So the first has like legs and arms.
It's like a three headed monster, but made of stone.
The second one is at least to vehicle. It's a

(49:01):
you know, an armored vehicle attacking you with guns and
rolling ahead on treads. The third dragon, known as the
twelve Headed Dragon, is a city. It's like a city
skyline made out of skyscrapers. Yeah, and there's this wonderful
when it's shifting forms, because again, everything in this this
film kind of shifts forms and is constantly transforming and pulsating.

(49:22):
It has this pixelized quality to it, which feels like, yeah,
it's it's it's it's the it's modernity in the future.
It is not only the idea of the city, but
it's also uh like digital technology, you know, it's it's pixelization. Yeah.
At some point, the lights in the skyscrapers that formed
the heads of the dragon starts sort of like beeping

(49:45):
in patterns that look more like when you watch sci
fi movies from the mid twentieth century you'll see like
button panels where all the buttons are lighting up in
different ways. I think it was trying to evoke that. Yeah. So,
so each dragon more underous than the last um and
I guess to a certain extent, the princesses as well. Uh,

(50:06):
because the third princess is the summertime Princess, and she's
clearly the one. Like the second that tree Shaker sees her,
there's this marvelous scene where they clearly fall in love
with this. It's like their eyeballs have each other's heads
in them and it's marvelous and hypnotic. Yeah, totally, She's depicted.
I think as Um as like a brave and true

(50:27):
like she she actually helps Tree Shaker defeat the dragon,
like she helps him swing his sword. Yeah, whereas the
first one is kind of conniving and kind of like, well,
I guess i'll let you, I'll help you, or you know,
if we'll see what happens. The second one is too anxious,
and this one is actually brave and will help. But
in any case, yeah, each each of these challenges Tree
Shaker is up for. He's gonna bury each of them

(50:48):
up to their neck in the in the in the
dirt via wrestling, and then he's going to cut their
many heads off with his magical sword. Oh and then
one thing I love about it is this is true
of a lot of great old myths. It doesn't end
with the battle with the like the last Boss, you know,
the last Enemy. There's an epilogue where you've got to
find a way to return to the mundane world to

(51:08):
get out of the underworld. And he does this by
by conferring with a griffin who needs him to get
some stuff before you take him to the up world.
And I think it was twelve oxen and twelve barrels
of wine. Yes, yeah, that was the bribe and he
has to constantly feed the Griffin these things as they
ascend out of the underworld, and towards the end, I

(51:31):
believe he accidentally eats one of tree Shaker's legs and
he's like, oh, if I knew you tasted so good,
I was just eating you outright, but uh, and instead,
I'm going to repair your leg and then he does so.
He uses like griffin magic to stitch his leg pieces
back together after puking them up. Yeah. Yeah, the Griffin
is tremendous, and it has this kind of Star Drake

(51:55):
quality to it, you know, it's a very cosmic looking
entity that uh that I actually feel it's more like
a you know what, the popular conception of a dragon. Uh,
you know, it looks more like that than than any
of the villainous dragons in the film. One thing I
thought was interesting about the Griffin was that it in
a way kind of lacks a texture that most of

(52:16):
the other characters had and looks more like the simple,
two dimensional way that Griffins or other creatures would be
depicted on Heraldry. And I wanted that was that purpose.
I feel like there's there's nothing in this film visually
and symbolically that isn't on purpose. You know. This is
one of those films where where every everything that happens,

(52:37):
you're you're you feel like there's there's a reason here,
there's a there's a message here, and maybe I can
understand it, maybe I can't. You know, I have to
say there there's a lot of what I guess you
might call sort of psycho sexual imagery in the picture. Um,
not in a way that that generally feels obnoxious or anything,
but but it's it's certainly there, you know, well in

(52:59):
the way that it's there in a lot of myths. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's like, how do you tease the two apart?
How do you know, present mythology that is accurate to
the myth without having these themes? And so those themes
are very very apparent in this film as well. Though
I want to stress like it's not the kind of
film that I would I would hesitate to show to
my my nine year old. In fact, I invited him

(53:20):
to watch part of this with me, and he I
think he ended up going and doing something else. He
was like, this doesn't make any sense. Okay, Um, maybe
I'll try it a get on him. Another time when
he's he's you know, ready to sit down and watch something.
But but you know, I guess with with all films
like this, you know, check it out, go to IMDb
and uh and look at the the parental advice, uh

(53:41):
to see if it is what you're comfortable to showing
your your your young ones. Um. But but I I
feel like like everything is is pretty well managed in
this film as long as you're okay with you know,
nude cartoons at times and repeated hilarious spanking scenes. Yes,
I guess it's mainly for concerned parents. It would be
the spank kings, the breasts, and the pendulous testicles of

(54:04):
the first dragon. Um. Though there is a lot of
phallic imagery with the sword of of tree Shaker that again,
like any kind of symbolism, and this seems very intentional.
While I'm at it, I will go ahead and just
mentioned that the parental advice that is user generated on
IMDb is one of my favorite things these days, and
first of all, because it's useful. Anytime we're about to

(54:24):
cover a film and weird house, I go and see
what's there because generally, if unless it's a film that's
super obscure, I can get a heads up on any
problematic material that's going to be in the film. But
also I just I love the user generated comments because
sometimes it's very much you know, it's it's very straightforward, like, well,
there's a certain amount of nudity in this there's this
kind of violence, and there's this kind of other stuff.

(54:47):
Other Times it's something like there is implied nudity in
this scene, which which I'm not even sure needed to
be called out, you know. But but but I love
reading that stuff. I like the ones where it's like,
there is picture of a tobacco pipe, Yeah, it is
implied that someone smokes it. Yes, Uh, it is implied

(55:10):
that this character went toilet at something. Yeah, that sort
of thing. There's a lot of good you tc out there. Yeah. Well, anyway,
I loved Son of the White Mare. I did. Is
we already recommending it to friends of mine? I wonder, though,
if you have any thoughts on this. What were to
make of the film's final image, that of tree Shaker

(55:32):
Gigantic walking through a landscape of modern buildings, you know,
like like it's a forest. Because I'm again reminded of
the themes of time and myth and modernity in this film,
And I'm wondering is is this is this the filmmaker
trying to, you know, create a sense of balance of
like the modern world in the mythic world sort of coexisting. Yeah. Maybe,

(55:55):
I don't know. I don't think I had an opinion
on that. It just sort of washed over me. But yeah, yeah,
it's it's stuck with me. I mean a lot of
with this film is stuck with me. It certainly reminds
me of that quote from him about you know about
the idea of of the the important films are the
ones that you think about the next day, you're thinking
about later that they're they're resonating in your mind. And

(56:15):
I feel like this one, this one resonates. I highly
recommend this to our our listeners. Yeah. Yeah, coming back
to that quote, I mean, that is something that I
don't think I'd ever put into words like that before.
But there is clearly a distinction in different types of
movie experiences, Like I can go see a movie and
I walk out of the theater and well, that was cool,

(56:37):
and then I don't really think about it again. And
there and then there are the ones that put you
in a different state of mind, and you are, like
the words he uses are you are under the influence
of the film after you're walking around outside the theater um.
And yeah, they're definitely movies like that. This is one
of them, and I do love that quality. Yeah, I mean,

(56:58):
just thinking about weird how cinema selections like Spooky's is
not a film that I think about a lot, you know,
it didn't. It doesn't really inspire a lot of deep contemplation.
But then other films like Psychomania. I probably think about
Psychomania every every couple of days. How can you not? Yeah, alright, well,
some of you out there may may be saying, well, okay,

(57:20):
I'm I'm on board. I want to see Son of
the White Mayor. How can I see it? Well, speaking
at least to us audiences here, Uh, the Blu ray
again is tremendous. It's a new four K restoration. Uh.
This comes from original camera negatives that were supplied by
the Hungarian National Film Institute Film Archive in collaboration with

(57:40):
our bloss highly recommend picking that up. We rented it
from Atlanta's own Video Drome, So if you are in Atlanta,
you can go to Video Drome and rent it. We
recommend that, but also you have a streaming option. Uh,
you can stream it on the Criterion channel, which is
is pretty great and of itself. I mean, it's the
Criterion Collection, so you know what caliber film you're gonna

(58:01):
encounter there. But if you want to, if you want
to be a little cheap, uh, you can do what
I initially did. You can you can sign up. You
can get that free trial of your Criterion channel. Watch
Son of the White Mayor, and then you can decide
if you want to stick around for the rest of
what they have to offer, which of course is a lot.
I was gonna say, it's a good movie to watch
if you're trying to convince yourself not to shave your beard. Yeah,

(58:23):
you don't want to be this weakling gnome who just
stuck in the underworld. All right, we're gonna go and
close it out then. But if you want to listen
to other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes every
Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
We are primarily a science and culture podcast with core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays that's our

(58:44):
time to set aside most serious matters and just discuss
a weird film. We also have listener mail on Monday
in a short form episode on Wednesdays, which thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
for the future, or just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

(59:07):
dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.