Rainbow Dance
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- Basil Charles Wright
- Alberto Cavalcanti
| Rainbow Dance | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Opening titles | |
| Directed by | Len Lye |
| Written by | Len Lye |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | Rupert Doone |
| Cinematography | Frank Jones |
| Music by | Rico's Creole Band |
| Distributed by | GPO Film Unit |
Release date |
|
Running time | 4 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Rainbow Dance is a 1936 British animated colour film, directed and written by New Zealand-born animator Len Lye. It was commissioned by the British Post Office, produced by the GPO Film Unit[1][2][3] and was filmed using the Gasparcolor process.[4]
A man is holding an umbrella in the rain. Then, he starts dancing, and as he does, the backgrounds completely change. Then, he starts dancing near the ocean, with a woman and fish following. Then, he plays tennis with cel-animated circles as another man watches. A colorful array of shapes follow, and the man sits and thinks, as the shapes come back and images come off the score sheet. The music ends, and a man's voice says: "Post Office Savings Bank puts a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for you", followed by "No deposit is too small for the Post Office Savings Bank".
Cast
- Rupert Doone as dancer
Reception
Sight and Sound called the film a "syncopated, startlingly experimental animation ... dreamy avant-garde dramatisation of young love cruelly dashed by a faulty address, N or NW."[5]
Jamie Sexton wrote for the British Film Institute: "The advanced effects, visual motifs and music that Lye used on this short film can be seen as a precursor to today's music videos."[4]
In Art Monthly, critic David Trigg wrote: "It may seem rather quaint to modern eyes, but Lye's use of jump cuts and extreme close-ups was way ahead of its time – so much so that this Post Office advertisement was even lauded by the British surrealists."[6]