''Grasshoppers (Cavallette)'' is an Italian animated short by

Bruno Bozzetto Bruno Bozzetto (born 3 March 1938) is an Italian cartoon animator and film director, creator of many short pieces, mainly of a Politics, political or Satire, satirical nature. He created his first animated short "Tapum! the weapons' story" in 19 ...

which condenses the whole of human civilization into 9 minutes, focusing primarily on the human race's predilection for warfare and the vanity of war. It was nominated for an

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...

in 1990, but lost to Aardman's ''

Creature Comforts ''Creature Comforts'' is a British stop-motion comedy franchise originating in a 1989 animated short film of the same name. The film matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes, making it appear as if the ...

''.

Summary

Each piece of history is presented as a simple vignette, usually depicting a few simply-drawn characters arguing and making war, over and over again. Generally, a single figure is meant to stand in for an entire group (i.e., a single Caesar-like caricature for the entire line of Roman Emperors). There is very little spoken dialogue; instead, most of the cartoon is accompanied by a bouncy piano-driven score, which frequently changes style to suit the particular historical era. However, the score rests on a single simple theme, which is

Antonín Dvořák Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8September 18411May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predec ...

's " Humoresque No. 7" , to which it frequently returns in between vignettes.

Plot

In the course of 9 minutes, Grasshoppers takes us through the following parts of history: * The discovery of fire, and the development of tools and weapons, which Modern Man uses to remove the threat of the larger but less intelligent

Neanderthal Neanderthals ( ; ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or sometimes ''H. sapiens neanderthalensis'') are an extinction, extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle to Late Plei ...

; *

Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

: an animal worshipper clashes with a sun-worshipper; * A tragedy in

ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

, where a dancer and a musician fall in love and are killed by a king, who is then attacked and defeated by the Roman Empire; * The

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, represented by a single "

Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war. He ...

-like" figure, who repeatedly sends troops off to plunder the cultures at the fringes of the empire, until they eventually come back to defeat the now lazy, unprepared later Empire. The birth of

Jesus Christ Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

is also alluded to, but it only distracts the warring parties for a split second; * The continual fight for supremacy between the monarchies of medieval Western Europe (including an allusion to

Joan of Arc Joan of Arc ( ; ; – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the Coronation of the French monarch, coronation of Charles VII o ...

); * The rise of

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

, leading eventually to the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

; *

Genghis Khan Genghis Khan (born Temüjin; August 1227), also known as Chinggis Khan, was the founder and first khan (title), khan of the Mongol Empire. After spending most of his life uniting the Mongols, Mongol tribes, he launched Mongol invasions and ...

's siege of China, and the construction of the

Great Wall The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand Li (unit), ''li'' long wall") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection agains ...

; * The

Spanish conquest The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It ...

of the Americas; * The French Revolution; * The British/French Wars (possibly the wars of the First and

Second Coalition The War of the Second Coalition () (1798/9 – 1801/2, depending on periodisation) was the second war targeting revolutionary France by many European monarchies, led by Britain, Austria, and Russia and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, ...

); * The

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

; * The

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

; * The United States' systematic removal of Native Americans; *

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

, which leads to the

Atomic Age The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the '' Trinity'' test in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 during World War II. Although nuclear chain r ...

(a bright white flash from off-screen vaporizes goose-stepping Nazis, though not a literal occurrence, like many events in the cartoon, a metaphor for the fact that the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

effectively ended World War II, and ushered in a frightening new era); * Recent years, up to the present day (1990, the year of the cartoon), which encompasses the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, the

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

and/or

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

s, and the continual skirmishing that occurs still today, between all nations, organizations, and individuals. As the centuries (and later decades) pass, the pace of the animation grows gradually faster and more frantic. At the beginning and end of the cartoon, and occasionally in between vignettes, the cartoon abandons the struggles of humanity to focus briefly on a shot of grass growing and insects buzzing over the ruins of previous battles. In the final shot, the camera finally zooms in tighter on the grass to allow us to glimpse two

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are amongst what are possibly the most ancient living groups of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grassh ...

s happily mating.

References

External links

Bruno Bozzetto's Webpage
*
''Cavallette'' on Bozzetto's official YouTube channel
{{Bruno Bozzetto 1990 animated short films Italian animated short films Italian satirical films 1990 films Italian historical films Animated films set in prehistory Films set in classical antiquity Animated films set in the Middle Ages Animated films set in the 15th century Animated films set in the 16th century Animated films set in the 17th century Animated films set in the 18th century Animated films set in the 19th century Animated films set in the 20th century Anti-war films Films directed by Bruno Bozzetto 1990s political films 1990s war films Animated films without speech Animated films about grasshoppers