The air here is strangely impermeable.
The Fly is a 1980 animated short film from Hungary, written and directed by Ferenc Rofusz.
A fly flits about a forest. Eventually it wanders into a stately home located in a clearing in said forest. The fly buzzes around the mansion, exploring a new and very different environment—until it is confronted by a mortal threat.
No connection to the short story "The Fly" or any of the several movies that were adapted from that short story. Compare Blackfly, a later animated short from the National Film Board of Canada, which has a rather different take on flies.
Tropes:
- Dead Guy on Display: The film ends with the fly being pinned to a display panel along with other bugs that the human has killed.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The whole cartoon is drawn in sepia tones, representing the limited color range perceptible to a fly.
- Downer Ending: The fly is swatted.
- The Faceless: Both characters. The fly is the POV character so the only part of it we see is its shadow a few times. The human is never seen at all, only the sound of footsteps as the human hunts the fly.
- Humans Are Cthulhu: Certainly they are from the perspective of the fly, which desperately tries to escape as an unseen force stalks it around the mansion. Consider also that the person could have simply opened the window rather than killing the fly. And then there's the bright blinking light from the house that drew the fly in—was the person luring bugs into the house to kill? Considering the person has a collection of pinned insects, it is entirely possible.
- Impairment Shot: Ends with one last shot from the perspective of the dying fly as it is pinned to a display case.
- Jitter Cam: The camera shakes and spins crazily as the fly, trying to escape from the human, hurls itself at a window and repeatedly bounces off the glass.
- Mood Whiplash: The film, which starts out as a fun visualization of how a fly sees the world, suddenly becomes terrifying when a human shows up and starts trying to swat the fly.
- P.O.V. Cam: The whole cartoon is shot from the fly's perspective; all we see of it is a couple of times when it casts its shadow on something.
- Silence Is Golden: There is no talking in the short. In fact the only sounds on the soundtrack are the buzzing of the fly, the footsteps of the person stalking the fly, and one dissonant chord from a piano, when the human tries to swat the fly when it's perched on the keys.
