Harlequin and Christmas time

Story

Father Christmas ( Santa Claus) works on collecting the gifts that are on submitted wish lists. Suddenly, Christmas pudding is in demand. Also known as Plumb pudding. This one is not available. A harlequin sneaking in offers help.

Harlequin

This film is charmingly made. Which collaborators were involved in this production is hardly known.

The main character, the harlequin, (in English: Harlequin) is clearly a 3D reproduction of the logo depicted on the packaging. It can be seen here that an advertising designer for packaging did not consider the use of this logo as a 3D puppet film character.

To achieve the best possible visual resemblance, the doll's body was cut entirely out of wood. A foam copy was then made from this model. In this copy was a frame with aluminium wires in the arms and legs. The figure was then manually painted with the lozenge pattern.

The moment the harlequin hands the Christmas pudding to Santa Claus, he assumes a pose that matches the pose on the packaging. Presumably, this was a customer requirement.

Tablet avant la lettre

The elves show Santa the wish list on a screen. This can be seen as a high-tech solution, similar to a tablet. In 1952, the technology of tablets was not available, nor did people know it would ever come. The use of this 'analogue tablet' was mainly a practical solution to make it clear at a glance what each person's wishes were. It communicates very directly.

Trivia

In one shot, Santa Claus repeatedly presses a keypad with a button in the centre saying 'christmas pudding'. The button produces no response, so it is pressed repeatedly. An observant viewer can see that this shot was filmed with a real hand. 'Santa' is wearing a white glove, with three fingers and a thumb. The actor's ring finger and middle finger are joined together in 1 glove finger. Why this solution was chosen can only be guessed at. Probably the original puppet did not have sufficient animation capabilities for this sophisticated motor skill. It may also have been impractical to shape the miniature panel in such a way that it still looks believable in a close-up. To create this shot, the panel with the buttons was recreated at full size.

Sleigh

Santa Claus and Harlequin bring the pudding together. Everyone knows that Santa is pulled through the air in a sleigh by reindeer. This flying snowmobile was funny but certainly a cost-effective alternative to the reindeer.
The shot was presumably made by means of a double shot:
Take 1:
The sleigh with dolls was on a black turntable in an otherwise all-black setting. The disc rotates clockwise.
Take 2:
The roof with chimney was filmed, with the clouds in the background. The set was otherwise empty.
In the old film technique, a black background was used in the way that a green or blue background is used now. The difference is that the result is only visible after all the mechanical processing has been carried out and the images have been merged in the laboratory. This merging required excellent technical knowledge on the part of the cameraman. It was therefore a time-consuming job.

Production and delivery time

When filming on Technicolor, it could take several weeks before the result was visible on film. The Dollywood studio was in the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and the film laboratory was in London (England) and the films went there and back by boat.
Dollywood had very skilled camera operators, who even managed to make these double shots directly in the camera. This saved the studio from the very high duplication costs of the film laboratory.

Credits

• Title:  Harlequin and Christmastime
• Year of production:  1952
• Duration: 2 minutes
• Produced by: Joop Geesink's Dollywood
• Client: Harlequin bakery
• Composer: Unknown, probbly Hugo de Groot
• Performed by: Unknown
• Art Director: Unknown. Probably Jan Coolen
• Animation: Unknown. Probably József Misik or Jules Balázs
• Camera:  Unknown
• Puppets: Harry Tolsma
• Puppets clothing: Lia Sten
• Props:  Unknown
• Set paintings:  Unknown
• Format: 35 mm, Technicolor

• Dutch Vintage Animation