Zasadil dedek repu (1945) Online

Jiří Trnka was a Czechoslovak animator known as the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe. "Zasadil dědek rěpu" (which means "grandfather planted a beet") is the first Trnka cartoon that I've seen. It's based on an Eastern European children's story in which an old man plants a vegetable that grows really big and he can't pull it out of the ground. His wife pulls him while he pulls the vegetable, still to no avail. They keep adding help, until finally it's a mouse pulling the cat pulling the dog pulling the granddaughter pulling the grandmother pulling the grandfather.

The vegetable here is a beet. I learned the Russian version of the story, in which the vegetable is a turnip. Of course, when I first learned the story, I imagined a Monty Python-style conclusion: they pull out the turnip and it comes out with so much energy that it causes the universe to shatter. Yeah, I probably have too much time on my hands.

Anyway, it's an OK cartoon. I would like to now see Trnka's stop-motion cartoons. I understand that his work influenced Jan Švankmajer, and if you've seen any of the latter's work then you can see an influence on Terry Gilliam.