The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) [USA] Dir. Will Vinton

 

 

After cutting his teeth on a series of ambitious short films, the father of Claymation, Will Vinton, directed The Adventures of Mark Twain, his first and only feature film. This is one of those movies that I was parts of as a child on Cartoon Network, which always evoked in me a feeling of awe, mystery, and slight terror. Based primarily off Twain's later work, this showcases a different side of his vision than what we grow up reading in high school. Though Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are the ostensible protagonists, most of the vignettes are drawn from Twain's later work such as The Mysterious Stranger and The Diaries of Adam and Eve. For a family film, this deals with a lot of dark themes, such as the nature of death and immortality, but it respects its audience and treats these themes with dignity; such a family film would not be made today in Hollywood. Unlike earlier stop-motion techniques, Vinton's Claymation allows for greater facial expression in his models; this is best put to use during the Mysterious Stranger segment, where the stranger's face takes on different and menacing expressionistic forms, but also in more subtle ways in the Adam and Eve segments, where the changes in facial expression show the evolution of Adam and Eve's hostility and confusion towards one another to their deep love. This film is truly a unique treasure of animated cinema, and while it had received a Blu-Ray release, it is now out of print. It would be wonderful to get a deluxe re-release of this that includes Vinton's short films so that audiences can see his evolution as an artist.