The Snowman
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The Snowman is a children's book by British author Raymond Briggs, published in 1978. In 1982, this book was turned into a 26-minute animated movie by Dianne Jackson for the fledgling Channel 4. It was first shown on Channel 4 late on Christmas Eve 1982 and was an immediate success. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1983. It has been shown every year since and has become a part of British and international Christmas popular culture. The cartoon version was scored by Howard Blake who wrote both music and lyrics of the song and also composed and conducted the complete orchestral score for the film with his own orchestra, The Sinfonia of London.
The book and film have no words, instead telling the story through picture, action and music. This adds to their charm, as well as making them easy to publish in other languages.
The film's one song, "Walking in the Air," was written specially for it and performed by a St Paul's Cathedral choirboy, Peter Auty. The song was released as a single, reaching number 5 in the UK charts, sung by Welsh chorister Aled Jones, who also sings on the soundtrack of the later re-released version of the film.[1]
In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, the film was placed 71st. It was voted 4th in UKTV Gold's Greatest TV Christmas Moments.
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[edit] Plot
The Snowman is the tale of an unnamed boy who builds a snowman one winter's day. (The day appears to be either Christmas or New Year's Eve, but this is not explicitly stated.) That night, at the stroke of twelve, the snowman comes to life. The first part of the story deals with the snowman's attempts to understand the appliances, toys and other bric-a-brac in the boy's house, all while keeping quiet enough not to wake the boy's parents. The two then venture back outside and go for a ride on a motorcycle pursued by a brown horse.
In the second part of the story, the boy and the snowman take flight — the song "Walking in the Air" appears at this point — and head towards the North Pole. They fly over the boy's town, over houses and large public buildings before flying past a pier and out into the ocean. The boy points out a ship below upon where a party appears to be taking place. On board is a red-haired man wearing a crown and brandishing a bottle of brandy who spies them flying by and stares on open-mouthed before glancing inquisitively at the glass bottle. The boy and the snowman are then met by birds who fly by in a flurry of feathers. As they continue their journey they fly past a snow-covered coast as some sheep watch on from the cliffs. A little girl is gazing out of her bedroom window and reacts with joy and wonder when she sees them fly by. She picks up a Christmas card from the window sill beside her and looks at the picture on the front of Father Christmas on his sleigh being pulled by two reindeer. Further along the coast the boy and the snowman encounter a large whale who flicks his tail as they fly by, splashing them with cold oceanic water in the process. Then a dolphin playfully squirts water from its blowhole at the boy. Two penguins in the snow are distracted by the sight above them of a flying snowman and a boy leading them to crash into one another and fall to the ground. The two flyers come to rest at the North Pole after flying through the aurora borealis and "Walking in the Air" comes to an end.
The two wander hand-in-hand into a snow-covered forest. Whilst at the North Pole they attend a snowmen's party, at which the boy is the only human. They meet Father Christmas and his reindeer, and the boy is given a scarf with a snowman pattern.
The story ends after the return journey. Next morning the sun has come out, and the boy wakes up to find the snowman has melted. The viewer begins to wonder if the night's events were all a dream, but the boy discovers that he still has the scarf given to him by Father Christmas.
[edit] Alternate beginning
After the initial showing on Channel 4, and in its initial showings on U.S. television, an alternative introduction was sometimes used. Instead of Raymond Briggs describing how much it had snowed the winter he made The Snowman, while walking through the field that morphed into the animation of the same landscape, David Bowie was shown walking into a boy's room reciting the same speech while holding a scarf that resembles the one given to the boy towards the end of the film. The Universal DVD The Snowman & Father Christmas (902 030 - 11), released in the UK in 2000, uses the Bowie opening. (The Bowie intro is actually missing on some Sony DVDs, despite being featured on the packaging. [2])
In recent years, Channel 4 used another alternate opening directed by Roger Mainwood, with Raymond Briggs' interpretation of Father Christmas recounting how he met the boy.
[edit] Trivia
- Although the boy and the Snowman appear to fly north, towards the North Pole, they pass a group of penguins, which are native to the southern hemisphere.
- Though the boy in the book is unnamed, in the film we discover he is named "James." This is clear on the tag for the present he receives from Santa/Father Christmas, added by one of the animators who decided to use her own son's name.
- In the film, the boy's home seems to be in the South Downs of England, near to Brighton; he and Snowman fly over what appears to be Brighton; the Royal Pavilion and Palace Pier are clearly depicted. Later in the film, the tag on his present confirms this.
- The Snowman is also the basis for a commercial for the Christmas 2006 Irn-Bru advert in which the slightly edited song tells the story of a boy and a snowman flying though Edinburgh, over Loch Ness, and over Glasgow before The Snowman drops him into the snow near George Square due to the boy not giving the snowman a taste of the drink.
- The Snowman also features in a television advert in Ireland for the national postal service An Post.
- Viz magazine had a parody of The Snowman, featuring a snowman who was surly, unshaven, drinking, horseracing and breaking into cars, accompanied by an eager young boy who he generally dislikes.
[edit] Other Christmas stories
- Father Christmas - Briggs' earlier two works Father Christmas and Father Christmas Goes on Vacation were combined into a film which was released in 1987.
- Another Raymond Briggs book/film in a similar vein is The Bear.
- The Polar Express, a picture book.
- A series of novellas by Charles Dickens known as The Christmas books:
- A Christmas Carol (1843)
- The Chimes (1844)
- The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
- The Battle of Life (1846)
- The Haunted Man (1848)
- of which A Christmas Carol is the most famous.
