Director: Gene Deitch
Runtime: 12 minutes
William L. Snyder, an American producer, obtained the film rights to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and set out to make a feature-length version of the film with the director, Gene Deitch. That project fell through, and this twelve-minute, animated film was produced instead in order to retain the filmmaking rights to the property. As a result, the very first film adaptation of this famous piece of literature is a quite cheap-looking, cartoon (without real animation) that obviously greatly condenses Tolkien’s story. Oddly enough, the cheapness actually works in the film’s favor. Continue reading The Hobbit (1966)