King Charles V+III = VIII+VIII=XVI reigns over the kingdom of Takicardie (“runaway heartbeat”). The king is arrogant, vain and selfish and loves no-one but himself, and he has filled his kingdom with statues and paintings of himself… he even has the royal gardeners prune the hedges in the park in his image! The people are oppressed and kept under watch. Only a bird which makes its nest on the roof of the royal palace dares to rebel. When the kind falls in love with a shepherdess and throws her fiancé, a chimney sweep, into jail in a fit of jealousy, the bird comes to their aid and leads a popular revolt.
Grimault and Prévert are inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's story but make some changes to it. The statue of the old Chinese, which represented authority in the fairytale, becomes a stupid, arrogant king in the film, and the story becomes a pacifist, antiauthoritarian parable. In this film Grimault's drawing reaches its greatest heights of technique and poetry. Begun as a short film after the war, work on The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep had to be interrupted due to lack of funds. The producer brought it out anyway, but Prévert and Grimault refused to acknowledge it as theirs. In 1966 the funds emerged, and Grimault purchased the rights and resumed production of the film, which crowned his artistic career. A team of almost 100 people worked until 1979 when the film came out under the title Le roi et l'oiseau. In 1980 the film was restored, combining the older parts with more recent ones in the version we can enjoy today.
