Love on the Wing
Drawn animation, UK, 1938
Director: Norman McLaren
Language: No dialogue
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 5 minutes
Short Synopsis
A short story about a letter's journey between two lovers.
Long synopsis
This artful animation, rich in symbolic imagery, is a short story about a love letter's journey between two lovers, and its contents. It is also an advertisement for the Post Office.
A series of two-dimensional white images continually mutate against a moving, multiplane coloured background. Accompanied by specially composed music, a drawn letter transforms in rapid succession, as it travels, into a variety of symbolic images. Starting as the man posting the letter, it takes the shape of a man and a woman, their lips, eyes, hearts; butterflies, a snail, a finger, a skull, a horse which disintegrates; and many more, all simple lines, black or white against a colourful backdrop. Then there are paired shapes: a man and a woman, two letters flying off into the sky, an apple and a mouth, a bee and a flower, a butterfly and a candle, a knife and a fork, a lock and a key and, finally, a letter and a stamp. On the letter it is written 'Empire airmail'. The letter folds itself up into a small dot and disappears into a black screen.
Background information
About the film
Love on the Wing was one of the first examples of McLaren's experiments in drawing and painting directly onto the film strip. One of his prime beliefs was that animation was not the art of drawings which move, but of movements which are drawn. Intended as an advertisement for airmail services, it was banned by the Post Office for its supposedly "Freudian" imagery.
About the film-maker
Norman McLaren is considered to be one of the most significant abstract filmmakers of the British inter-war period. Born in 1914 in Stirling, Scotland, he entered the Glasgow School of Fine Arts in 1932, where he became interested in film and joined the School's Kine Society.
John Grierson had become aware of the work of McLaren after awarding him the Best Film Award at the 1935 Scottish Amateur Film Festival for Colour Cocktail, and McLaren subsequently became a member of the GPO Film Unit. Unlike Len Lye, however, McLaren did not fully develop his creative faculties there, having to make a number of straightforward educational films. His most significant film for the unit was Love on the Wing.
After working for the GPO, McLaren moved to North America in 1939 he moved to North America and joined the National Film Board of Canada, and two years later teamed up again with Grierson at the National Film Board of Canada, where he directed a number of educational films. He stayed with the Board after the war and, unlike at the GPO, enjoyed a significant degree of artistic freedom, making a number of innovative animated and abstract films and acquiring an international reputation as a visual artist.
Teaching materials and additional materials
The teaching materials have been developed by practising teachers to provide a springboard for your own work with your pupils. Feel free to use and adapt them appropriate to your pupils' needs.
The additional materials, provided by the film-makers, can be used to develop your work with the film and deepen pupils' understanding of the process of film-making.
