Players Pleasure Revived

Content

Survival at the North Pole. A planned fishing trip turns out badly. Puppet film in which a man goes fishing at the North Pole but ends up in a snow mountain due to an accident. Fortunately, local people offer him Player's cigarettes.

Standing out

Advertising for tobacco products has long been the most normal thing in the world. In cinemas, numerous competing advertising films ran prior to the main film. The puppet film medium (in colour!) allowed the advertiser to stand out from the usual films. Apparently this was successful, as several animated films by the same advertiser appeared. Several are included on this website.
The design of this film is, on the one hand, a stylised design; on the other hand, there is a lot of detail in the puppets. Note the amount of expressions of the main character, but also of the locals. The seals that ‘walk away’ startled also deserve attention. These are solid wood phases. A series of 12 pieces were used alternately to show the ‘seal running’.
‘Players Revived’ won second prize in the puppet film category, at the IXth International Film Festival in Berlin (June 1959) while shortly afterwards, this film won this second prize at the International Advertising Film Festival in Cannes in July 1959.

Trivia

This film contains all the ingredients for a typical Geesink puppet film. This is possibly the reason why this very film became the thread within an internal documentary Dollywood commissioned: ‘Fifty pairs of hands’. In this short 10-minute film, the entire production process is explained in a popular, humorous way. Target audience were potential clients and business visitors to the Dollywood studios. This film laid the foundation for a sales pitch. It also shows why making puppet films was a time-consuming and costly business. After all, one movie required 50 pairs of hands to make the production.