The Hobbit (1977, Directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass)
Created by the team who went on to produce fantasy film The Last Unicorn, and also known for their various stop-motion projects (the “Animagic” Christmas specials, movies like Mad Monster Party), this is perhaps the most mainstream and well-known adaptation of The Hobbit before Jackson’s Hobbit movies appeared.
While Gene Deitch’s 1967 adaptation abridged to the point the plot was almost unrecognizable, this movie follows the book fairly closely—although it does abridge the opening scene where the dwarves visit Bilbo’s home. While the movie has its good moments, it comes across as interesting but lackluster. Some acting choices (John Huston as Gandalf) work quite well. Others (Otto Preminger doing a bizarre accent as the Elvenking) are confounding. The script covers all the major events, but in a workmanlike way that lacks the sense of tension or adventure that Rankin-Bass achieved in its best work. Some additions (primarily the songs sung throughout the movie by the narrator) feel oddly placed, as if the producers were trying to emulate the musical structure they used in their Christmas specials.
Looking at it now, the movie’s most notable feature might be how the animation feels not quite Western, not quite Eastern. Like several other Rankin-Bass Productions (including The Last Unicorn), the Japanese studio Topcraft created the animation. Topcraft worked with Hayao Miyasaki in 1984 to produce Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. After Topcraft folded in 1985, its members became the basis for Miyazaki’s acclaimed Studio Ghibli.
Whether this makes The Hobbit an anime film is debatable. John Culhane of the New York Times reported that Arthur Rankin created the movie’s conceptual art. However, Tor.com contributor Austin Gilkeson noted suggests the cat-like rendering of Smaug shows Eastern animation intersecting with Western. Viewers get a dragon envisioned by a Western artist, but animated by artists with no background in European folklore.1 Anime or not, Rankin-Bass’ dragon does show one thing: in a time when few fantasy movies were blockbusters, audiences’ idea of what a dragon was supposed to look like hadn’t been canonized yet.
Given its unusual look and unusual place in anime history, this movie may experience a new life soon. The upcoming release of The War of the Rohirrim may bring a more Eastern flavor back to Tolkien animation, leading some to reappraise this movie.
Come back next week for Part 4, where we look at the 1978 Ralph Bakshi film Lord of the Rings.
Footnotes
1. I’m not the first to make this suggestion about Rankin-Bass’ work. Constantine Nasr’s 2018 documentary The Animagic World of Rankin/Bass discusses the company’s Christmas specials. Interviewee Jerry Beck observes that Japanese stop-motion animators did the actual animation on those specials, and he often tells his California Institute of the Arts students that those films meant Japanese animation influenced them earlier than they thought.