{"id":28373,"date":"2025-08-27T16:30:38","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T15:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=28373"},"modified":"2025-09-20T14:29:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T13:29:27","slug":"inspiration-a-film-by-karel-zeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2025\/08\/27\/inspiration-a-film-by-karel-zeman\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration, a film by Karel Zeman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/inspiration1-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/inspiration1.jpg\" alt=\"inspiration1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I thought I&#8217;d written about this one before; I had but only a brief mention in a post about Czech film-maker Karel Zeman which links to a deleted YouTube copy of the film. More of a glass world than a crystal world, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=D1qYulQxmws\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Inspiration<\/em><\/a> (1948) is Zeman&#8217;s most celebrated short, one which predates his marvellous semi-animated features based on books by Jules Verne and others.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/inspiration2-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/inspiration2.jpg\" alt=\"inspiration2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A creator of glass ornaments abandons his unsatisfying sketching to gaze at the rain running down a window pane. Outside the window the water gathered on a leaf contains an ice-like world of frozen surfaces, penguins, swans and skating figures. It&#8217;s an entrancing piece that makes glass figurines seem as pliable as creatures fashioned from clay or Plasticine. The film is also notable for a musical accompaniment by Zden\u011bk Li\u0161ka, one of the composer&#8217;s earliest scores that sounds rather anonymous next to the idiosyncrasies of his later works.<\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2020\/07\/08\/zemania\/\">Zemania<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d written about this one before; I had but only a brief mention in a post about Czech film-maker Karel Zeman which links to a deleted YouTube copy of the film. More of a glass world than a crystal world, Inspiration (1948) is Zeman&#8217;s most celebrated short, one which predates his marvellous semi-animated &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2025\/08\/27\/inspiration-a-film-by-karel-zeman\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Inspiration, a film by Karel Zeman&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Inspiration, a film by Karel Zeman","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,21,7],"tags":[191,5099],"class_list":["post-28373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","category-fantasy","category-film","tag-karel-zeman","tag-zdenek-liska"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7nD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}