Guess who's right there!

Content

The "union of Sinterklaas" is meeting. They have solutions to numerous practical problems. ("Sinterklaas" or "Sint Nicolaas" is the ancient Dutch legend from which Santa Claus was later led.)

Tradition

This film hooks up with an old, well-known tradition: the St Nicholas feast. In the period after World War II, luxury items were scarce. That explains the choice of some presents. Christmas at that time was exclusively a church celebration, with the family. The idea of giving each other presents at Christmas did not yet exist (in the Netherlands) in 1952. Elsewhere on the website, you can see an American production from the same year, Harlequin and Christmas time (1952) in which Santa Claus has a similar dilemma.

A second tradition is that the original Sinterklaas song "hoor wie klopt daar kinderen?" was used. In the end, only the melody was used and the lyrics were completely rewritten to suit the needs of this commercial.

Trivia

The realisation of a television playing in a puppet film setting was possible because the images shown were pre-recorded on 35mm film. These were then projected onto the screen as a series of slides. The television had a hole in the back for that purpose. The slide projector was positioned (invisible to the camera) off-screen. In this way, the device could also show liveaction images.

A television set was the ultimate gift imaginable in the 1950s. The ordinary bourgeois could only dream of this. Ownership of television sets was very limited at the time. Only one (national) television channel existed in the Netherlands at that time. Foreign channels could only be received sporadically at the country's borders. The reproduction of the picture was in black and white. In this colour film, you can see the television set playing. The meeting Sinterklazen are shown on the screen; in black and white, of course.

Credits

• Title:  Guess who's right there? ("Hoort wie klopt daar kinderen?")
• Year of production:  1952
• Duration: 3,5 minutes
• Produced by: Joop Geesink's Dollywood
• Client: Philips
• Composer: Unknown (Probably Hugo de Groot)
• Performed by: Unknown
• Art Director: Unknown (Probably Jan Coolen or even József Misik)
• Animation: Jules Balázs
• Camera:  Unknown (Probably Jules Balázs)
• Puppets: Harry Tolsma
• Puppets clothing: Lia Sten
• Props:  Unknown
• Set paintings:  Unknown
• Format: 35 mm, Technicolor

• Dutch Vintage Animation