February 1st was Hungarian animator/film producer/director George Pal's birthday, so I decided to include his Oscar-nominated "Puppetoon" shorts as part of my Academy Awards marathon: he actually received 7 such nods, but I only managed to locate 4 of these films. This begins as a fairly ordinary romance between a young couple, albeit in an atypical and appealing Dutch setting, but soon adopts an allegorical stance to effectively present a standard WWII theme. In fact, the peaceful village is overrun by mechanical "Screwballs" (obviously standing in for the Nazis); despite the extensive damage done to the land, the tulip (the country's national flower) still grows and even forms a victory sign in defiance at the end!
Review of Tulips Shall Grow
