It is worth noting that it is the first Polish animated auteur film. Giersz not only created the set design, the artistic concept, the script and directed the film, but he himself ‘worked out each frame without the help of co-workers’, he animated each frame himself, painting directly on celluloid. His next films based on the exploration of painterly qualities were The Red and the Black, a story of a bullfighter and a bull, full of wit and painterly invention at the same time, where the conflict of the bullfighter and the bull becomes a conflict between two colours. Then we had Ladies and Gentleman and The Horse (which was very different from the other works).
The Horse was a search for something different in animated film. Witold Giersz himself realised that ‘old ideas quickly become clichéd’ (Ekran, 20/1965). Hence, there was a need to search for new means of expression. Although The Horse also faced some critique, it was certainly a successful attempt. Here is how Andrzej Markowski described the film:
The flat patch of colour is replaced by one which is rough, coarse and juicy. The watercolour soft brushstrokes are replaced by a texture formed as if with a spatula.
Ekran, 33/1967
An author under the pseudonym ‘Jask’ (Film, 29-30/1967) wrote rightly that in The Horse, Giersz engages ‘the matter of the story itself into action’, making its protagonist not only the horse and the rider, but also the texture of the image, pulsating with ‘a rich scale of colours, contrasts and tensions’, so that we have the impression that the film is being created before our eyes. This new method ‘dynamises the image in an unprecedented way’, Markowski wrote. However, the film was also accused of pulsating too much, irritating the eyes. This technical ‘shortcoming’ was eliminated by the director in his next film, The Intellectual (1969), which used the same technique and dealt with similar themes.
Witold Giersz is a restless spirit. A creator who searches, changes areas of interest, sometimes returning to traditional territory, often trying his hand at areas not necessarily associated with animation. One such excursion into other areas was Giersz’s attempt at making two educational films which became famous – Dinosaurs and Heat Troubles. They had both popular scientific and artistic qualities but also the charm, wit and lightness of his ‘serious’ cartoon films, that is, as Kossakowski wrote, ‘the characteristic stamp of Giersz’s artistic personality’. This charm and lightness was also present in his other, more traditional productions, such as A Magnificent March, or in his animated series, including the most famous one he co-created (later made into a full-length version) – Be My Guest, Mr Elephant.
The visual layer of The Red and the Black and A Little Western was, in turn, referred to through musical miniatures made in the same technique, illustrating music by Mozart or Edward Grieg, Turkish March or In the Hall of the Mountain King.
An interesting ‘excursion’ into other artistic regions was the trick film The Root, the popular scientific film The Card Index made using a combination technique, and above all, the most famous of his non-painterly films, Awaiting, co-created with the well-known documentary filmmaker Ludwik Perski. A puppet ballet of maidens and bachelors made of tissue paper on a café table. They faced a dramatic ending because what fate can end the life of paper characters? A fire.
It is worth noting Witold Giersz’s ability to play with the material, which is the most basic quality of his work. In his book Nie Tylko Disney (Disney Was Not the Only One), Marcin Giżycki wrote about characters made of tissue paper:
What can be a drama, a tragedy for a tissue paper ballerina? Crushing, tearing the material she was made of, or – the worst scenario – burning. What might her experiences be? Light, trifling – because she is only a dancer made of paper.