The Fable of Sisyphus Splendidly Animated in an Oscar-Nominated Brief Movie (1974)

Even if you happen to don’t know the parable by identify, you already know the sto­ry. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Sisy­phus, King of Corinth, was pun­ished “for his self-aggran­diz­ing crafti­ness and deceit­ful­ness by being pressured to roll an immense boul­der up a hill, solely to observe it roll again down, repeat­ing this motion for eter­ni­ty.” In mod­ern instances, this sto­ry impressed Albert Camus to jot down “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” an essay the place he well-known­ly intro­duced his con­cept of the “absurd” and iden­ti­fied Sisy­phus because the absurd hero. And it professional­vid­ed the cre­ative mate­r­i­al for a breath­tak­ing­ly good ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Mar­cell Jankovics in 1974. The movie, notes the anno­ta­tion that accom­pa­nies the ani­ma­tion on YouTube, is “pre­despatched­ed in a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot, con­sist­ing of a dynam­ic line draw­ing of Sisy­phus, the stone, and the moun­tain­facet.” Match­ting­ly, Jankovics’ lit­tle mas­ter­piece was nom­i­nat­ed for the Finest Ani­mat­ed Brief Movie on the forty eighth Acad­e­my Awards.

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