I'm not the only one who thinks "Citizen Kane" is a great film because Orson Welles and his collaborators thoroughly exploited the potential of the sound film in telling their story, combining fine acting, intricate plotting and editing, and well-composed visuals and sounds in ways that just NAIL the viewer. Very few films have ever juggled so many filmmaking resources so well, but one of the few to do so, in my opinion, is the English clay-animated short "The Wrong Trousers".
As in "Kane", Nick Park and his crew of animators expertly combine a variety of methods in telling their story. The "acting," or rather the character animation, is wonderful, more so for the dog Gromit than for the goofy-looking human Wallace; Gromit's subtle expressions conveying everything we need to know about what he's thinking. Even more subtle is the penguin lodger, with a deliberately bland face but expressive gestures and body language. The plot is ingenious, with hardly an ounce of fat, and perfectly paced, starting slowly and gaining momentum almost imperceptibly until the climax.
The visual storytelling is excellent, especially since so much has to be conveyed without dialogue, and the clarity of the climactic sequence at the end marks a high point for film editing. The staging includes dramatic lighting and other bits of visual texture with which few animators bother. Finally, the music is one of "Trousers"'s most overlooked features--the sequence in which Gromit leaves in the rain while the penguin watches from the window offers a neat demonstration of music's effectiveness as a storytelling tool.
I don't really think "The Wrong Trousers" is really BETTER than "Citizen Kane", in an artistic sense. Of course, Orson Welles didn't try to make "Kane" as a 30-minute animated film with only three characters (two of whom are silent), either. As with "Kane", however, I get more out of "The Wrong Trousers" every time I watch it.
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