Granpa

Granpa
Screen shot of the title card
Directed by	Dianne Jackson
Produced by	John Coates
Written by	John Burningham (book)
Starring	Peter Ustinov (as Granpa) Emily Osborne (as Emily)
Music by	Howard Blake Sarah Brightman Wroughton Middle School Choir
Distributed by	Channel 4 (broadcast) Universal Studios (VHS)
Release dates	31 December 1989
Running time	26 min.
Language	English

Granpa is a British family-oriented animated film that adapts a picture book by John Burningham. Initially it appeared on Channel 4 Television in 1989 and it was released on VHS by Universal Studios in 1994.^[1]

An expensive film to produce, Granpa is hand-illustrated with coloured pencil, imitating Burningham's style in the book. It was directed by Dianne Jackson, who had previously adapted The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (1978), a wordless picture book, as an exceptionally successful family-oriented animated film (1982). Howard Blake, who wrote the music for the The Snowman, wrote the music and the script for Granpa, which is referred to as an "animated children's opera".^[2] The voices of Granpa and Emily are by Peter Ustinov and Emily Osborne.

Granpa won the Prix Jeunesse International award for excellence in children's television programming in 1990.^[3]

Book

The animated film is an adaptation of the children's picture book Granpa, written and illustrated by John Burningham and published by Jonathan Cape in 1984. Burningham won the Kurt Maschler Award, or "the Emil", from Maschler publishers and Booktrust, which annually recognised the author(s) of one "work of imagination for children, in which text and illustration are integrated so that each enhances and balances the other."^[4]

Plot

Granpa reads to Emily in the last section of the film. Granpa's frailty is illustrated by a reduction in colour tone.

The film celebrates the relationship between a small girl, Emily (voiced by Emily Osborne), and her kindly but ailing grandfather (voiced by Peter Ustinov). Emily's playful innocence is contrasted with Granpa's increasing frailty. Aware that his days are numbered, he shares his memories of adventures and days gone by.

These memories are vividly brought to life by her grandfather's tales, beginning with a description of Granpa's childhood and youth in the early part of the 20th Century. Other adventures include a chivalrous tale of Saint George and the Dragon imagined on a bedcover, a fishing trip which ends with a journey down the Thames on a blue whale, a trip to the seaside which culminates in a re-enactment of the Battle of Britain and a Noah's Ark-influenced story, where Granpa's house is submerged and the pair have to accommodate exotic animals. The final jungle section, in which monkeys steal Granpa's story book, is left intentionally incomplete.

As the seasons pass, Granpa grows frailer, and eventually Emily is left alone with an empty chair and the old man's loyal dog. She leaves the house with the dog and climbs a hill. As they travel a group of children from her grandfather's stories join them.

Production

In 1984, following the success of the animated Christmas film The Snowman, Channel 4 commissioned another animation from TVC studios; producer John Coates approached Dianne Jackson and composer Howard Blake, suggesting Burningham's picture book Granpa. Blake was initially reluctant due to the book's upsetting ending, but was convinced after witnessing his own daughter's reaction to her grandfather's death that year.^[2]

The film was entirely financed by Channel 4 and cost over one million pounds to make according to Coates.^[5] It was first broadcast on the channel on New Year's Eve 1989 at 6.30pm.^[6]

Music

The musical score was written and composed by Howard Blake and is almost in the form of a miniature opera, with many of the tales within the animation sung by the lead characters, along with children from the Wroughton Middle School choir (winners of BBC Choir of the Year) and a forty-piece orchestra (the Sinfonia of London).^[2]

The end title song "Make Believe" is performed by Sarah Brightman and has the theme of "Auld Lang Syne" as a counter-melody.^[2] The song was released as a single at the time.^[7]

Reception

The film won the Prix Jeunesse International award for excellence in children's television programming in 1990.^[3] The film review site Rotten Tomatoes has called the film "a sensitive and life-affirming animated adaptation".^[8]

Fiona Collins noted in Turning the Page: Children's Literature in Performance and the Media that while Burningham's book is open ended, with Emily ultimately left alone to contemplate her grandfather's death, the film offers a less "stark" interpretation; his death is explored through her implied remembrance of him in the final scene. Collins suggests that this was probably because the original offered an unremittingly bleak ending that would be difficult for its intended child audience.^[9]

The film has rarely been repeated, and has never been released on DVD,^[10] perhaps due to its subject matter. The "Toonhound" review suggest that the film takes the tone of the ending of The Snowman even further, "exploring an aspect of life rarely approached in animated form."^[11] Paul Madden, writing Dianne Jackson's obituary in 1993 suggests that the film "was of less immediate popular appeal than The Snowman [but] was perhaps more satisfying to her creatively, demanding a more subtle approach."^[12]

See also

References

External links

• Granpa at the Internet Movie Database
• Granpa at allmovie
• Granpa at the British Film Institute
• Granpa at Rotten Tomatoes
• Granpa at Toonhound.com
• Granpa at Fandando.com
• Howard Blake official site
• Samples of Granpa music scores by Howard Blake