Zdeněk Miler

Biography

In 1956 Miler was commissioned to make an educational film for children, and he did not like the script. He decided to replace it with a story of his own and began looking for a hero among the animals: influenced by Disney, he wanted an animal in particular. Later he said that the idea of a mole came to him when he stumbled over a molehill on a walk.

That was how the Mole began.

He was born on 21 February 1921 in Kladno, not far from Prague. As a child he liked to draw. In 1942 he entered a graphic school in Prague, and then studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Prague. His studies fell in the years of the German occupation; according to some accounts, Miler took part in the demonstrations after the death of Jan Opletal, which were followed by the closing of the universities, escaped being sent to a concentration camp and ended up working in animation instead. This version is hard to verify, and I would treat it with caution.

He learned the trade in practice, in the animation studios of Zlín, where he picked up what is needed to produce a film. He came to the studio Bratři v triku (“Brothers in T-shirts”) at Barrandov, which was headed by Jiří Trnka, after the war; according to some accounts, in 1945. He worked first as a draughtsman, then became an author and director, and later headed the studio. Its logo, three curly-haired boys in sailor shirts, was his design. His first independent work was the film “The Millionaire Who Stole the Sun”, based on the poetry of Jiří Wolker.

The mole film, “How the Mole Got His Trousers” (“Jak krtek ke kalhotkám přišel”), appeared in 1957. It was educational: small children were shown how linen cloth is made. In it the hero still spoke, and the text was read by a first-grade boy. When foreign studios became interested in the film, Miler gave up words: the quality of dubbing was low at the time, and he wanted the films to be understood in any country. Since then the Mole and his friends, a mouse, a hedgehog, a hare and a frog, have made do with laughter, crying, sighs and the odd word. The voices were recordings of Miler’s daughters, Kateřina and Barbora, and the girls were also the first audience: from their reaction he could see whether the idea worked. At the Venice Film Festival in 1957 the film won an award: the Venice Lion, or, according to other accounts, the Silver Lion.

The series went on for decades: “The Mole and the Little Car” (1963), “The Mole and the Rocket” (1965), “The Mole as Painter” (1972), “The Mole in the City” (1982), “The Mole and the Eagle” (1992), “The Mole and the Frog” (2002). In all, the series has about fifty films. Alongside it Miler made cycles about the Cricket (1978–1979) and the Puppy (1960) and films for adults, among them “The Red Trace” (1963) and “A Helgoland Romance” (1977).

He illustrated many children’s books: “The Fairy-Tale Grandfather” by Eduard Petiška (1958), “The Merry Little Locomotive” by Jan Čarek (1971), “The Journeys of the Carter Šejtročko” by Václav Čtvrtek (1977), and “Kubula and Kuba Kubikula” by Vladislav Vančura. Under the previous regime, according to some reports, he lent his name for some of the Mole works to the writer Ivan Klíma.

In 2001 Miler announced that there would be no more new films. By then the Mole was being shown in more than eighty countries, and in 2011 a plush toy of the Mole travelled into space: the astronaut Andrew Feustel took it with him on the space shuttle Endeavour and then to the International Space Station.

Among his awards are the title of Merited Artist of Czechoslovakia (1986), the Medal of Merit, First Class (28 October 2006), the Kladno city prize (2006) and honorary citizenship of Prague 4 (2009).

Miler died on 30 November 2011 in a nursing home in Nová Ves pod Pleší, aged ninety. He was cremated the next day and buried in Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague, near the Slavín tomb.