Animated Couple Looks at Love Among the Ruined

Alison Snowden and David Fine, who will speak at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art tonight and Saturday, have an enviable record: They’ve made two animated films and received two Oscar nominations. Their most recent work, “George and Rosemary,” which is nominated in the animated short category this year, is screening at the museum in its annual Festival of Animation.

Husband and wife as well as co-creators, Snowden and Fine, who live in Montreal, met at the National Film and Television School in England, where they studied live action film making. As graduation neared, Snowden decided to use the leftover money in her budget to make their first animated film, “Second Class Mail” (1984).

“I just assisted on the first film,” Fine said by telephone from Montreal. “On ‘George and Rosemary,’ we split the animation up equally.”

“Second Class Mail,” the story of a frowsy little woman who sends away for an equally frowsy inflatable male doll--with disastrous results--reflects the couple’s lively sense of humor. After completing the film, they moved to Canada. Fine, who is from Toronto, “got homesick and kind of kidnaped me,” said Snowden, who was born in Nottingham, England.

In addition to winning prizes at several animation festivals, “Second Class Mail” caught the attention of Eunice Macaulay at the National Film Board of Canada. The Oscar-winning creator of “Special Delivery” (1979), Macaulay was developing “Over 65,” a series of three animated films intended for older viewers. She invited Snowden and Fine to submit a script for the project.

“We wanted to write a film that wasn’t exclusively for old people but that they would appreciate,” said Fine. “We were considering a lot of ideas when it struck us that the simplest things always work best, so we decided to transpose a typical teen-age infatuation to older people.”

“George and Rosemary” offers a gently absurd look at love among the ruined. Quiet little George Edgecomb develops a gritty crush on Rosemary Harris, a dowdy matron who lives across the street. He imagines them sharing romantic interludes, including a stylish shipboard tango and a grand opera, with Rosemary as an improbable Valkyrie.

“We knew the film was supposed to be funny,” said Snowden, “but we didn’t want to offend anyone. The scene of George dropping his false teeth into the glass is the riskiest joke in the film in that sense. I remember people saying we could take some of the jokes further, but we didn’t want to risk becoming offensive.”