Hope the music store gave him a receipt for that bow
Monsieur Pointu is a 1975 animated short directed by Andre Leduc and Bernard Longpre, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
It is a tribute to Paul Cormier, aka "Monsieur Pointu", a famous Quebec violinist. In the short, Pointu and his violin appear on a bare black stage. Cormier plays his violin, but the violin starts struggling against him. Pointu, his violin, and even his clothes start breaking out in all sorts of dreamlike, surreal ways.
Employs the "pixilation" technique of animation pioneered by Norman McLaren and made famous by several films produced by the NFB in this era.
Tropes:
- Concert Film: A stop-motion pixilation version, as Pointu plays his violin while the visual effects grow increasingly bizarre.
- Deranged Animation: The violin bends, the strings grow longer and sag, the man's hat starts changing form rapidly and then sort of melting over his head...
- No Plot? No Problem!: Certainly no attempt at a story, but just an increasingly weird concert.
- Stop Motion: "Pixilation" involves using a live actor as a sort of live animated puppet, moved from frame to frame in a stop motion sort of way. The effect is quite unusual.
- Stop Trick: This oldest of motion picture effects is used when Pointu's violin turns into his hat, and then back again.
- White Void Room: Inverted with Pointu against a black void room (actually, what is probably a stage covered in black curtains).
