Director: Paul Driessen
Release Date: 1970
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Paul Driessen’s very first film is a charming little short for children.
Made largely in Spain with help of small subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Culture, the film tells about a small boy who accidentally sets a forest on fire, but repays his deed by extinguishing another one with help of an elephant with two trunks.
The simple story is hampered by the childish voice over (the English version is much more enjoyable than the original in that respect), and the film certainly doesn’t belong to Driessen’s best works, but its imaginative colors and weird perspectives are still thrilling. It already shows the film maker’s very distinctive animation style, which he would expand and improve over the years, creating such masterpieces as ‘On Land, at Sea and in the Air‘ (1980) and ‘The Writer‘ (1988).
Watch ‘Het verhaal van Kleine Yoghurt’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzQ1MTE2NTI=.html
‘Het verhaal van Kleine Yoghurt’ is available on the DVD ‘The Dutch Films of Paul Driessen’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
1 comment
Comments feed for this article
May 25, 2018 at 13:21
Chris Sobieniak (@ChriSobieniak)
Despite being five years at this point, I will say I first saw this film probably over a decade ago (from the release “The Dutch Films of Paul Driessen”). As an early effort, it’s a rather interesting one given how far Paul developed his techniques further. It’s a fairly simple, linear story, one pretty accessible for anyone to watch of all ages, thought he though of an elephant with a second trunk where the tail was kinda brought a rather ugly thought to me that thankfully didn’t go there. I only watched it with the English audio as I didn’t think to listen to it in Dutch anyway, but interesting to learn of it sounding childish. I guess this Bill Ashley did a fine job as a storyteller for “Little John Bailey”, as it at least fits the tone the story was going for. Perhaps not the best story about preventing forest fires (especially to Americans raised on Smokey Bear), but it holds it’s own in the humor dept.