The Weird and Wonderful World of Raoul Servais


Raoul Servais is now recognised as one of the most prominent directors of animated films in the world or, at the very least, the best known Belgian exponent of this wonderful art form. He was born on 1st May 1928 and, at the age of 20, graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Ghent. In 1953 he started working as an assistant to fellow Belgian Rene Magritte, the famous surrealist painter.

Fast forward to 1965 and Servais received a grant from the film department of the National Education Ministry after a screening of his first two films, Harbour Lights (1962) and The False Note (1963). After the screening, Paul Louyet, head of service, is so enthusiastic that he asks him immediately to make a short animation. In reply to Servais' inquiry as to what the film would have to be about, Louyet promptly told him he had 'carte blanche'. Servais, surprised by this unexpected commission, insists and Louyet tells him "Just do as you wish, as long as it is a film of creation, not of commission." With a budget of 500,000 Belgian Francs, Servais leaves the offices at the Quai du Commerce a liitle bewildered with excitement.


Thus begins the making of Chromophobia (released 1965), in a euphoria that is carried throughout the film. The premise is quite simple: an army of small, all identical, angular characters enters upon a struggle against anything that bears colours, blaming a world that is Servais' world, which is an allegory of a civil society, made of stylised Flemish cities, wooden horse schools, Jack Puddings and little girls carrying balloons. There is a little character that somehow is somehow reminiscent of the character in The False Note and the little P.P.Rubans from one of Servais' early comic strips. This little postcard painter (large hat and Lavallière of the Montmartre daubers) will bring the horrible mechanism to a halt; whereas the army of chromophobes is proclaimed the winner, the system that is established will start faltering, because the colours will quietly take back their rights in an apotheosis of flowers (ushering in the psychedelic era). George Dunning's Yellow Submarine (made nearly four years later) and more recently Georges Lacroix' and Renato's Insektors series, to name just a couple, owe a lot to Chromophobia.

At first sight, the argument of Chromophobia could pass today for a confession of pacifist convictions, as animation film makers have gone on confessing ever since - given the fact that animation film makers are rarely people who go to war. However, this interpretation would ignore two elements. The first, by far the most important, is connected to Servais' biography, and his experience of Nazi occupation during his youth. The second element, more anecdotal, nevertheless deserves to be brought to the foreground: Chromophobia is one of the first animated films that deal with war in a sublime and adult way, and that presents a way to assimilate, or make sense of, the after-effects of the Second World War. Comparing the film to Wrill Listens to the BBC, a patriotic animation by Albert Fromenteau shown in Belgium during the Liberation, or to Le Diable à Ressorts by Jiri Trnka (1946) (who Servais cites as influential) we get an idea of the evolution he has gone through. Today, the world of Chromophobia has passed into the public domain, just like Magritte's skies and crown hats that have become public for over forty years, good fun but also crossing into the realms of cliché.


In the oeuvre of Servais' work, Chromophobia is easily his most legible film. This time, the audience and the critics were unanimous in their appreciation: the film immediately recognised for its innovative value, collect many prizes at festivals, among which was the prestigious Primo Premio at the 1966 Venice Biennale. Servais, who had been intelligent and modest enough to wait until he had made Chromophobia before sending his films to international competitions, now found himself in the forefront of the international animation scene in less than no time. It seems in retrospect that, after completing this film and after its response, he felt free from the weight he had burdened himself with and subsequently gave way to poetry and a much less demonstrative inspiration, retreating into shadowy, less distinct areas. He was moving away into more personal reflections on the medium of animation itself, something which of course fascinated him greatly.

There was a six-year gap between his Pegasus (1973) and Harpya (1979). Whereas the making of Servais' short films so far took place in a sustained rhythm, the making of this new work appears to have taken a particularly long time. There are many reasons for this but the main one being Servais, who had founded an animation section at the Ghent Academy, was forced to assume an increasing amount of responsibilities. Furthermore, he accepted to teach courses at the Institut Supérieur de la Cambre in Brussels and his work as a teacher was doubled by the administrative and legal obligations. Servais, not surprisingly, did not feel comfortable with this and the way it slowed his creativity.

When Harpya was finally shown on screen, most of those who had known Servais were shocked but in a salubrious way as it delivered him the Palme d'Or in Cannes. No more nice poetic stories, no more transparent parables that clearly reveal a message: Harpya is a 'punch in the face'. Two characters run into each other: a Belle Epoque middle-class man, wearing a moustache, straw-hat and striped suit; and a chimera, a harpy that steals the bread from his mouth before eating him partly and turning him into a creature without legs. None of the sweet Sirène here and throughout this thriller, with its merciless rhythm, wry humour, only now and then mitigated by details including a fish-and-chips stand and other typical Belgian phenomena, we get the feeling that Servais is, unconsciously, settling some accounts, particularly with women. He defends this idea however: "I love women a lot. I do not, however, like dominating women as I dislike dominating people altogether." To confirm that this film marks the end of his intention to practise social criticism, he puts forward the theme of authority, domination, which can be found in all his films, and of which Harpya is the most extreme manifestation.

Servais, for the first time, gives the impression that his phantasms are having free rein and, in so doing, he invents an entirely personal technique and style: shoot the characters and print them on cellophane sheets that are coloured on the back side, marked and placed, and can be filmed on backgrounds. He contacted Agfa Gevaert, explaining to them what will become an entirely new process, registered as Servaisgraphy. The most interesting asset of the invention is the relatively simple way live action shots can be integrated into animated backgrounds. At this point, Servais is already working on his next film, for which he wants to use this Servaisgraphy technique.


After Harpya, another project was haunting Servais’ imagination. We already know he worked with Magritte and of his appreciation for surrealism. However, the painter who for a long time had fascinated him most (and who was his neighbour in St. Idesbald) was Paul Delvaux. His eerie dreamlike ghost-towns - populated by pale naked women, absent-minded scholars and vacant men, all dressed up, the abandoned railway-stations and trains without destination - all attracted Servais' attention. He worked on some shots inspired by Delvaux' paintings in Servaisgraphy and was rather pleased with the result. Servais talked it over with the eighty-year-old painter, who accepted the idea of seeing his universe become part of an animation film. Servais wrote a first draft of the plot, intending it to become a full-length feature film rather than a short film. Supported by a writing and pre-production grant from the Flemish Community, he went looking for a producer, as the project turns out to be long and complex, therefore expensive. The days since Servais made a Goldframe on his own account has long gone. The project was not immediately realised and instead his heavily laden feature - the story of a land called Taxandria (1994) (the name actually exists: it is the name of a province of Gaulish Belgium) - was met with much indifference. Taxandria is, of course, an imaginary country, much like The Nebelux in Servais’ Operation X-70 (1971), one of these anti-utopias that are timeless in literature.


Night Butterflies (1997) marked the return of Servaisgraphy and will become its first real application and arguably Servais’ masterpiece, though at eight minutes a much shorter compromise on his original intentions. The use of this technique gives a touch that is sensibly different from the digital incrustation technique - which justifies it. Servais is not the kind of man who abandons an idea when he really likes it and he went back to the world of Paul Delvaux. Rendering some of Delvaux' paintings scrupulously on the screen, he moulds them to match his own purposes, and we feel pretty close to the world of Harpya as well. There's the same oppressive atmosphere - a world in which the difficult relations between the characters are sealed with the label of incommunicability -but a more subtle fear seems to have replaced the exacerbated tensions of Harpya. With Night Butterflies there is an odd feeling of irresolute waiting and is, in that respect, it is a fitting tribute to Delvaux' paintings.

It is here that Servais underlines his talent as both a painter and filmmaker and that he never seems to have been closer to the final aim he has always wanted to achieve without proclaiming it: "…between the plastic arts and animation film, we could have created more interesting passage ways. And these passage ways have never or nearly never been utilised… (…) I ventured into this unknown zone; this 'no man's land' between live cinema and painting, where there are things to discover…"

Servais managed to do something different again in his next film, Atraksion (2001). It was made in black white, not a choice made by lack of money this time, but as a purposeful departure from Nocturnal Butterflies strong use of colour. Servais found inspiration in the black and white striped uniforms of the prison inmates (a parable of people as prisoners of society? themselves…?), chained on hands and feet, working their way through the most desperate of film backgrounds towards an illusion of light somewhere in the distance. In this film Servais pronounces his hopes for a better future, but at the same time points out that society will have to provide it for themselves but not for the self.


Servais again claimed this is not an animation film, and correctly so, since there is no animation technique involved. The film is a very convincing combination of live-action and graphically conceived backgrounds, in which Servais made use of computer processors for the first time. With Atraksion, Servais has accepted the technology of the digital era, but at the same time used it in a very personal way to create his own signature. Atraksion was awarded with the Special Prize at the Valladolid Festival as well as a Special mention at the UIP competition of the European Film Academy in Ghent.

Recently, Servais made a 3 minute contribution to Winterdays (2003); a Japanese produced animated feature film. This collaboration between 36 of the world's best animators was a tribute to Basho Matsuo (1664 - 1694) the legendary haiku poet and based on his 17th century Japanese poem.

The diversity of Servais’ artistic output, comprising of 20 animated films (one full-length), still has its roots in Flemish culture and focuses around expressionism and magic realism. Also his collaboration with Magritte, mentioned above, had an impact on his individual style.

According to Professor Jerzy Kuæ, a member of the Programme Committee in the Cracow Film foundation, Raoul Servais brought his own concept of an author film into an animated film tradition distinguished by deep humanism, sensitivity to social matters and penetration of the human soul. The audience of the 47th edition of the Cracow Film Festival (31st May - 5th June, 2007) will have an opportunity to see the films of the Dragon of Dragons winner in his career retrospective.