THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

AKADEMIA PANA KLEKSA

Title: Akademia Pana Kleksa
English title: Mr. Blot's Academy
Year of release: 1984
Director: Krzysztof Gradowski
Country of Production: Poland
Genre: Fairy tale, Musical
Length: This two-part film consists of 'Prince Matthew's Adventure' (1 hr 25 min), and 'The Secret of Philip the Barber' (1 hr 21 min). The blu-ray, as well as presenting both these parts, also has the option of viewing the whole thing as a single feature (2 hr 36 min). This latter version omits the recap of Part 1 that comes at the beginning of Part 2. However, the recap of Part 1 includes a scene that was not actually part of Part 1 (where Pan Kleks and the boys are singing and dancing in the street).
Language: Polish
Availability: Available on official release blu-ray, with English subtitles.
Principal boy actors: There are numerous boys in this film, of whom the main ones are (below, l-r) Sławek Wronka as Adaś Niezgódka, Adam Probosz as Prince Mateusz, Robert Pluciński as Adolf the Mechanical Doll, Roman Orłow, and Mariusz Lipiński (the last two of whose characters are unnamed in the film).

Synopsis
The film is a Polish fairy tale in the tradition of Król Maciuś I / King Matt the First (1958), Historia żółtej ciżemki / The Story of the Yellow Shoe (1961) and O dwóch takich, co ukradli księżyc / The Two Who Stole the Moon (1962).

Ten-year-old Adaś Niezgódka joins Mr. Kleks' Academy, run by the eccentric teacher Ambroży Kleks (or, in English, Ambrose Inkblot). The Academy comprises solely boys whose names begin with the letter 'A' (because Pan Kleks can't bother his head with all the other letters of the alphabet). In the course of his adventures, Adaś meets Mateusz the Starling, who was once a prince, and collects buttons, hoping one day to find the button that will turn him back into a prince. The idyllic Academy is threatened when Philip the Barber sends his mechanical humanoid doll Adolf into the Academy to destroy it.

The film combines an array of different styles, including animation, puppetry (when Adaś visits Dog Heaven) and even experimental cinema (in the Visions of the Third Eye sequence). Mateusz's story of how he came to be a starling amounts to a fairy tale within a fairy tale. Piotr Fronczewski's Pan Kleks is beautifully acted, with a combination of joie de vivre and an increasing undercurrent of melancholy. He is less an authority figure than a wiser and more experienced colleague of the boys who is on their wavelength and knows how to nurture their imaginations with his fabulous 'lessons', very far indeed from the serious teachers of Hogwarts.

The film was the first in a trilogy of Pan Kleks movies, succeeded by Podróże Pana Kleksa (Mr. Blots Travels, 1986) and Pan Kleks w kosmosie (Mr. Blot in Space, 1988).

A 2023 'reboot' of the film which replaced Adaś with a girl protagonist called Ada was, of course, a disaster.

Below: Two film posters. Left, for the whole movie; right, for part 2.

Premiere
For the premiere of this movie, which took place on a grey day in January 1984 in the Congress Hall at the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, an amusing prologue was arranged. As the lights dimmed and the crowd grew quiet, a voice from the balcony above intoned that the film would not be shown and the audience should go home. A spotlight caught the speaker - Philip the Barber, the villain of the story the children were about to watch, played by Leon Niemczyk, in his trademark villainous black cape and black hat. In a minute he was on the stage at front, but the children were instructed to blow him away. His cape swelled like sails, apparently from the breath of all the kids blowing hard in his direction, and he was blown offstage - and the film could finally begin as planned.

Below: Congress Hall, Warsaw, site of premiere of Akademia pana Kleksa; left, exterior; right, interior

Akademia Pana Kleksa proved a big hit in Poland, with 14 million box office sales, and was the eighth biggest box office hit in Poland in the period 1945-2000.

Source material
Based on the 1946 novel of the same name by Polish writer Jan Brzechwa (1898-1966). The novel was the first in a trilogy, followed by Podróże Pana Kleksa (Mr. Blot's Travels, 1961) and Tryumf Pana Kleksa (Mr. Blot's Triumph, 1965). (Podróże Pana Kleksa was adapted for the 1986 film of the same name, but Tryumf pana Kleksa was never adapted to the screen, the third in the film trilogy, Pan Kleks w kosmosie, being an original story.)

The novel has been translated into English and can be downloaded here (PDF opens in a new tab). The translation is by Marek Kazmierski, who, for the purposes of his translation, has changed the name of the author to Fletching (a "fletching" is the feathered end of an arrow) - which is the literal translation of Brzechwa - on the very reasonable ground that no Anglophone can correctly pronounce Brzechwa.

Below: The Pan Kleks trilogy, Jan Brzechwa, front cover of 2022 edition published by Gościński & Prętnicki, illustration by Jan Marcin Szancer

Production photos

Below, left, director Gradowski Krzysztof (wearing shades), with Fronczewski Piotr as Pan Kleks, and the boys; below, right, Gradowski Krzysztof with Wronka Sławek (centre) and Orłow Roman (right)

Further production photos can be found here.

Screenshots
Part 1
   

Part 2