Top 10 Barnyard Bird Films

It's strictly for the birds, as Cinema Paradiso follows up

10 Films to Watch If You Like: Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973) with another selection of films about our feathered friends.

Having explored how director Hal Bartlett adapted Richard Bach's bestselling book about a seagull wanting to fly as fast as he can, Cinema Paradiso recalled the various movies that have featured gulls, pigeons, and eagles. That leaves plenty of species still to cover. So, let's start in the farmyard...

Poultry in Motion

There isn't a fowl in sight in James W. Horne's Chickens Come Home (1931), but there's more than a hint of foul play, as Ollie's chances of becoming mayor depend on Stan keeping old flame Mae Busch away from a swish party in this classic two-reeler that can be found in the original monochrome and colorised versions on Laurel & Hardy: Volume 8: Blackmail. Another guilty secret emerges when Kinuyo Tanaka tells war veteran husband Shuji Sano how she paid for their son's hospital bills in Yasujiro Ozu's potent drama, A Hen in the Wind (1948).

Staying with films with a tenuous galline link, John Wayne reprised the role of the one-eyed lawman that had earned him his Academy Award in Henry Hathaway's True Grit (1969) in Stuart Miller's Rooster Cogburn (1975). Jean Poirer plays the lawman in Claude Chabrol's Poulet au vinaigre (aka Cop au vin, 1985), which boasts a pun in both its French and English titles. When Poiret reprised the role, however, Chabrol opted for the more prosaic title of Inspector Lavardin (1986).

One of the most horrific bird-related sequences in screen history is best left as a chicken surprise. So, Cinema Paradiso shall simply point you in the direction of Tod Browning's controversial chiller, Freaks (1932), and leave you to discover the disturbing denouement for yourself. The mood is also disconcerting in Roman Polanski's Cul-de-Sac (1966), which has plenty of chickens running free in the seaside castle where fugitives Lionel Stander and Jack MacGowran are given sanctuary by eccentric hosts, Donald Pleasence and Françoise Dorléac.

Staying with oddities, who can forget the Iron Chicken that lives on a scrap metal nest orbiting the main planet in the BBC children's classic, Clangers (1969-71) ? And mention of metallic poultry and outer space naturally leads to the trilogy of Star Wars parodies (2007-10) produced by the team behind Robot Chicken (2005-16). But the weirdness prize in this paragraph has to go to the late Bert I. Gordon's The Food of the Gods (1976), which opens with Ida Lupino and John McLiam rearing a brood of giant killer chickens on a mysterious source of nourishment bubbling up from the wilds of British Columbia.

The Wild West in 1881 clearly wasn't a safe place for poultry, either, as the opening sequence of Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) testifies, as William H. Bonney (Kris Kristofferson) amuses himself by shooting at chickens buried up to their necks in the sand of Old Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The most (in) famous scene in Werner Herzog's Stroszek (1977) features a chicken dancing on a revolving plate to the music of a mini-jukebox in the amusement parlour finale. Symbolising the futility of life, this was the last image that Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis reputedly saw before taking his own life and the clip recurs in both Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People (2002) and Anton Corbijn's Control (2007).

From James Frawley's The Muppet Movie (1979) onwards, chickens have always been in plentiful supply in the wonderful world created by Jim Henson. Most notably, there's Camilla, the chicken who dates Gonzo and needs mouth to beak resuscitation after attacking the baddy in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). She also sings 'Forget You' in The Muppets (2011), with her fellow fowls at the reunion show. Sticking with the musical theme, Chanticleer the rooster (Glenn Campbell) heads for the city to become a pop singer after being tricked by the Grand Duke of Owls (Christopher Plummer) into stopping his morning crowing in Don Bluth's Rock-a-Doodle (1991).

Sylvester Stallone gets to feel 'like a Kentucky fried idiot' after Rocky Balboa chases a chicken as part of his training regime in the self-directed boxing sequel, Rocky II (1979). Others who have demonstrated that catching a hen isn't as easy as it looks include escaped convicts George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Turturro in Joel and Ethan Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Cork scallies Conor McSweeney (Alex Murphy) and Jock O'Keefe (Chris Walley) in Peter Foott's The Young Offenders (2016), which spawned the hilarious BBC series of the same name, which is all set to go to a fourth season.

Having run out of ammunition in his Rambo-like bid to rescue some hostages in Iraq, Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) grabs a handy chicken, loads it into his bow and fires at an enemy soldier in Jim Abrahams's Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993). The (animated) look on the poor bird's face as it flies towards its target wrings a guilty giggle, but it's surpassed by the fact that the bird proceeds to lay an egg after felling its target. There's more projectile poultry on show in Michel Hazanavicius's OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006), as superspy Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (Jean Dujardin) goes undercover as the head of an Egyptian chicken plant and finds himself being bombarded by birds by an enemy agent in a cluckingly funny bit of old-fashioned slapstick.

Regular watchers of Family Guy (1999-) will know that Peter Griffin periodically has epic donnybrooks with Ernie the Giant Chicken. However, Woody Allen beat Seth MacFarlane to the punch, as Miles Monroe (Allen) emerges from a 200-year kip and sees a man walking along with an eight-foot chicken on a lead in Sleeper (1973). A quarter of a century later, Tommy Lee Jones got to don a yellow chicken suit as Samuel Gerard pursues a perp in Stuart Baird's US Marshals (1998), a sequel to Andrew Davis's The Fugitive (1993), which had earned Jones the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Prior to earning the same award for Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987), Sean Connery played William of Baskerville, who is called upon to uncover a killer in a medieval monastery after scullery maid Valentina Vargas is charged with witchcraft for possessing a cat and a chicken by inquisitor F. Murray Abraham in Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Umberto Eco's intellectual whodunit, The Name of the Rose (1986).

Having watched its companions being slain and plucked for the pot, a scrawny chicken decides to beat a hasty retreat through the steepling streets of the Cidade de Deus favela in the opening sequence of Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund's Oscar-nominated City of God (2002), which culminates after a fast-cut chase with an armed gang in a Brazilian stand-off and a flashback. Viewers need a strong stomach before watching Michael Haneke's Hidden (2005), which includes a scene in which a rooster is decapitated. For once, an animal actually was harmed in the filming of this scene, so you have been warned.

When not learning to dance to improve his romantic prospects or helping a migrant buddy run for class president, gawky teenager Jon Heder works on a chicken farm in Jared Hess's Napoleon Dynamite (2004). He's lucky his charges are less troublesome than those in Lloyd Kaufman's Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006), as the man behind Troma unleashes zombie chickens when the National Chicken Bunker chain builds its latest restaurant on a Native American burial ground. Every bit as amusing is the moment when Rowan Atkinson's bus ticket blows out of the window and gets stuck to the talon of a chicken who runs into a busy marketplace before being loaded on to a truck and sparking a frantic bicycle pursuit in Steve Bendelack's Mr Bean's Holiday (2007).

Playing a 15 year-old with learning difficulties, Scott Chambers has a cosier relationship with a pet hen named Fiona in Joe Stephenson's Chicken. However, he doesn't always get on with angry older brother Morgan Watkins and sibling issues also complicate matters for half-brothers, Mads Mikkelsen and David Dencik, when they discover that their father was a demented geneticist who worked in a house filled with large hens on the Island of Ork in Anders Thomas Jensen's bleak comedy, Men & Chicken (both 2015).

Staying in Denmark, Romanian maid Cosmina Stratan notices that the chickens become scared of her after she agrees to carry a child for a couple who live off the grid in a remote lakehouse in Ali Abassi's Shelley. Spanish chicken farmer Anna Castillo joins forces with uncle Javier Gutierrez to recover the ancient olive tree removed from her grandfather's land in Iciar Bollain's The Olive Tree, while fashion model Hansel McDonald (Owen Wilson) participates in an orgy that involves a chicken and a pygmy hippopotamus in Ben Stiller's Zoolander 2 (all 2016).

Moving into the realms of animation, there are rumblings in the poultry shed in Peter Lord and Nick Park's Chicken Run (2001) because Mrs Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) has imprisoned the birds to improve productivity. But, just as Ginger (Julia Sawalha), Babs (Jane Horrocks) and the other hens begin to despair of ever escaping captivity, Rocky the American Rooster (Mel Gibson) flies in to deliver them. Look out later this year for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023), which sees Jane Horrocks returning alongside Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi for an adventure in which the whole of chicken-kind is imperilled.

In Steve Oedekerk's Barnyard (2006), Peck the rooster helps Otis the bull defend Etta, Maddy and the other hens from marauding coyotes. Pollito the chicken guards the restaurant owned by Eduardo Pérez in Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin's Despicable Me 2 (2013), while Heihei (Ian Tudyk) the stowaway rooster helps Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) in her task to return a mystical relic to an ancient Polynesian goddess in Ron Clements's Moana (2016).

Produced in Mexico, Gabriel and Rodolfo Riva-Palacio Alatriste's Huevos: Little Rooster's Egg-cellent Adventure (2015) tells the tale of Toto, a timid creature who discovers his inner hero when his farm is threatened with closure and the only way he can make the money needed to pay the debt is to fight the champion boxing rooster, Bankivoide. The central story in the animated triptych that is Benjamin Renner and Patrick Imbert's The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales (2017) sees a fox adopt three chicks in order to keep them safe from a wolf. However, one of the hens turns against him and forms the Fox Extermination Club. Sold to a music teacher after she struggles to lay eggs, Turu proves that looks can be deceptive, while overcoming teasing in the coop to be reunited with her loved ones in Eduardo Gondell's The Wacky Hen (2019).

Finally, in this section, we hook up with a Warner animation legend. Created by Robert McKimson in 1946, rooster Foghorn Leghorn appeared in 29 cartoon shorts to 1964, with his best encounters with Barnyard Dawg and Henery Hawk being available to rent from Cinema Paradiso as part of the six-volume Looney Tunes Golden Collection (2006-08). Foggy also crops up in Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Joe Pytka's Space Jam (1999), and Malcolm D. Lee's Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), as well as the compilations Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) and Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run (2015).

Eider Way Up

Since his first appearance in Wilfred Jackson's Silly Symphony, The Wise Little Hen (1934), Donald Duck has been the world's favourite anatine character - cartoon or otherwise. Originally voiced by Clarence Nash (and since 1985 by Tony Anselmo), Donald wears a blue sailor suit that barely covers his modesty. But he brought a bit of irascible sass (which contrasted with Mickey Mouse's amiability) to over 150 Disney shorts, the best can be found on such compilations as Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald and Everybody Loves Donald. He can also be seen in features like Fantasia 2000 (2000), in which he plays Noah's mate in the 'Pomp and Circumstance' sequence.

Daisy Duck is also aboard the ark, but you'll have to look elsewhere for Donald's uncle, Scrooge McDuck, and nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. They turn up in spin-off items like Bob Hathcock's DuckTales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990), as well as the aforementioned Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Donald also puts in an appearance to engage in a piano duel with Daffy Duck at the Ink and Paint Club.

A stalwart of the Warner cartoon stable, Daffy was created by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett and featured in 130 cartoons, primarily alongside Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. Fourteen of the best can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Daffy Duck (1956), but also keep an eye out for Daffy Duck's Easter Egg-Citement (1980), Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island (1983), Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (1988), Bah, HumDuck: A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006), and Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run (2015).

We reacquaint ourselves with Stan and Ollie in Duck Soup (1927), a silent in which the pair pose as the owner of a mansion and his maid. It can be found on Laurel and Hardy Classic Shorts, Volume12: L and H and the Law (2004). Director Leo McCarey liked the title so much he recycled it for Duck Soup (1933), the last Marx Brothers comedy in which Zeppo lined up alongside Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. Some reckon 'duck soup' was slang for something that was a doddle. But Groucho offered his own explanation: 'Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life.'

In a gag worthy of the Marx Brothers, Adam West utters the immortal line, 'Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb,' as some ducklings swimming with their mother thwart his attempt to defuse a potentially explosive situation in Leslie H. Martinson's Batman: The Movie (1966). On the subject of superheroes, despite boasting George Lucas as executive producer, Willard Huyck's Howard the Duck (1986) is one of the most notorious flops of the blockbuster era. But it still makes for grimly fascinating viewing, as it follows the eponymous anti-hero after he is swept from his own planet of Duckworld and lands in Cleveland, Ohio, where he encounters such humans as Beverly Switzer (Lea Thompson) and scientist Phil Blumburtt (Tim Robbins) in his bid to vanquish the Dark Overlords of the Universe and return home.

It's back to cartoonland for the popular ITV series Count Duckula (1988-93), a spin-off of Brian Cosgrave and Mark Hall's Danger Mouse (1981-92). David Jason not only provided the Count's voice in 65 episodes, but he also graced such feature sidebars as Chris Randall's The Vampire Strikes Back and Vampire Vacation (both 1988) and Robert Cullen's Danger Mouse: From Duck to Dawn (2016).

Quackers as it may seem, the name of the ice hockey team in Steven Herek's The Mighty Ducks (1992) and Sam Weisman's D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) takes its name from Josef Sommer's character, Gerald Ducksworth, after he pays for the equipment to allow a team of underducks coached by Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) to compete with their richer rivals. Disney named its hockey team, The Anaheim Ducks, in honour of Estevez's Twin Cities outfit.

Everyone of a certain age remembers Hilda Ogden's duck 'muriel' in Coronation Street (1960-) and memories will come flooding back on seeing the painting on the wall of the apartment where Mexican teenagers Moko (Diego Catano) and Flama (Daniel Miranda) have been left to stay out of mischief in Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season (2004). The hunting theme continues, as Serge (Danny Mann), the mallard with a French accent, joins Boog the bear (Martin Lawrence) and Elliot the deer (Ashton Kutcher) in seeking to outwit the gun-wielding predators in Jill Culton and Roger Allers's Open Season (2006), and its sequels, Open Season 2 (2008) and Open Season 3 (2010).

Hunters eventually come to the rescue in Suzie Templeton's animated version of Sergei Prokofiev's symphonic fairytale, Peter and the Wolf (2006), but not before a duck, a bird, and a cat have had an almighty scare. A gentleman fox provides the menace in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, the classic Beatrix Potter story that is retold in balletic form in Reginald Mills's Tales From Beatrix Potter (1971) and in the style of the author's own illustrations in The Beatrix Potter Collection (1995). For more on the writing of the story, why not catch Renée Zellwegger in Chris Noonan's Miss Potter (2006), which shares a director with Babe (1995), a multi-Oscar-nominated adaptation of Dick King Smith's yarn about a sheep-pig whose barnyard buddies include Ferdinand, a duck who crows like a rooster in the mornings in an effort to prove to Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) that he's far too useful to eat.

Larry the duck (Marshall Efron) and Audrey the chicken (Estelle Harris) are just two of the critters out to nab a rustler and save the Little Patch of Heaven farm in Will Finn and John Sanford's Home on the Range (2004), while the chattily scheming Ratso befriends a hatchling called Ugly in Michael Hegner and Karsten Kiilerich's The Ugly Duckling and Me! (2006), a reworking of the fairytale that is sung with enduring charm by Danny Kaye in Charles Vidor's delightful musical biopic, Hans Christian Andersen (1952).

The misadventures of Adam Seymour Duckstein (Jim J. Bullock) are most definitely not for younger viewers in Keith Feinberg's Queer Duck: The Movie (2006), as he wonders whether life would be improved if he stopped living with partner, Stephen Arlo 'Openly' Gator (Kevin Michael Richardson) and married drama queen, Lola Buzzard (Jackie Hoffman). Rhys Darby is the one being dumped by his girlfriend in New Zealander Paul Murphy's romcom, Love Birds (2011). However, his decision to nurse an injured paradise shelduck leads to him seeking the assistance of vet Sally Hawkins.

Demanding ducklings Chi (Zendaya) and Chao (Lance Lim) befriend a wayward Chinese goose named Peng (Jim Gaffigan) on their way to Pleasant Valley in Christopher Jenkins's Duck Duck Goose (2018). Among the creatures they meet along the way are a pair of red-crowned cranes, who are voiced by Stephen Fry and Craig Ferguson. And another duck who means well features in Stephen Gaghan's Dolittle (2019), with Dr John Dolittle (Robert Downey, Jr.) lavishing affection on his energetic pet, Dab-Dab (Octavia Spencer), who waddle-hobbles along on a metal leg.

Take a Gander At This Lot

We're only 11 years away from the bicentenary of the publication of 'The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean'. Depending on which version you read or view, the golden-egg laying creature stolen by the avaricious giant is either a hen or a goose. It's very much a hen in the case of one of the earliest screen versions of Jack and the Beanstalk (1902), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Charles Musser's Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982). Bud Abbott also goes in search of a hen named Nellie in Jean Yarbrough's comic reworking, Jack and the Beanstalk (1952).

However, the bird possessed by Thunderbell (Bill Barretta) in Brian Henson's Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001) is the Goose of Prosperity and Jack Robinson (Matthew Modine) comes to learn how it was stolen by his ancestors in this engaging revision. Another goose is coveted by Eddie Karanja in Donald Sant's Jack and the Beanstalk: After Ever After (2020), which was adapted from a bestselling book by David Walliams, who also plays the giant. But there's a twist in the tale in Gary J. Tunnicliffe's Jack and the Beanstalk (2009), as a goose named Grayson eats a bean and grows to human size (and assumes the voice of Gilbert Gottfried) to accompany Jack Thatcher (Colin Ford) into the realm of the giant (voiced by James Earl Jones), who has turned a girl named Destiny (Madison Davenport) into a singing harp.

A goose lays golden eggs in the Chocolate Egg Room in Mel Stuart's take on Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, while Dean Jones discovers that his son's pet can lay golden eggs in Vincent McEveety's Disney saga, The Million Dollar Duck (both 1971), which really should be available on disc in the UK. However, nothing can match Great Terror, the kingsize golden egg-laying goose sought by the murderous Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton, and Amy Sedaris), Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), and a certain dashing feline (Antonio Banderas) in Chris Miller's Puss in Boots (2011).

The animation is more traditional in Charles A. Nichols and Iwao Takamoto's Charlotte's Web (1973), an adaptation of the much-loved E.B. White story that has Jeffrey the gosling (Don Messick) befriend Wilbur the piglet (Henry Gibson). Gary Winick's 2006 version mixed live-action and computer-generated imagery. Moreover, it adds Gussy and Golly geese to the story, who are voiced by Oprah Winfrey and Cedric the Entertainer. Bestselling children's writer Maurice Sendak served as producer on Raymond Jafelice's The Little Bear Movie, which sees the eponymous hero enlist the help of his friends Duck, Hen, Owl and Cat to find the missing parents of a lonely baby bear named Cub. Benny the squirrel (Jim Belushi) hitches a ride with some Canada geese in trying to catch up with Samson the lion (Kiefer Sutherland) in Steve 'Spaz' Williams's The Wild (both 2006), after his son Ryan is accidentally taken out of Central Park Zoo.

Hamir the pigeon also goes along for the ride, which reminds us of two pullastrine pictures that slipped through the net in the Jonathan Livingston Seagull article. Alan Bates's accidental hero cares for military homing pigeons in Great War France in Philippe de Broca's King of Hearts (1966), while Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage build an aviary for the pigeons they capture in a working-class neighbourhood in 1960s Philadelphia in Alan Parker's affecting adaptation of William Wharton's debut novel, Birdy (1984).

We return to matters anserine with two more films with a combat theme, although each flies under a flag of convenience. Taking the codename 'Mother Goose', beachcomber Cary Grant is persuaded to report on Japanese aerial activity in the Pacific, only to find himself sheltering Frenchwoman Leslie Caron and some stranded schoolgirls in Ralph Nelson's Father Goose (1964). The mercenary unit dispatched on a rescue mission to the fictional African republic of Zembala takes its insignia from a 17th-century Irish force in Andrew V. McLaglen's The Wild Geese (1978), which stars Richard Burton, Roger Moore, and Richard Harris.

Trapper Brian Keith and son Brandon De Wilde hope to build a sanctuary for migrating Canada geese in Vermont in Norman Tokar's Disney adventure, Those Calloways (1965), even though they can't afford the lake and its surrounding property. Thirteen year-old Anna Paquin takes to the skies in a microlight to help a flock of the same species head south for the winter in Carroll Ballard's exquisite family favourite, Fly Away Home (1996), which earned Caleb Deschanel an Oscar nomination for his wondrous photography.

A French scientist and his disaffected teenage son team up to save an endangered species of geese in Nicolas Vanier's Spread Your Wings (2019), while tundra swans and Canada geese appear regularly in Nick Cassavetes's The Notebook (2004), notably in the scene in which the aptly named Ryan Gosling takes Rachel McAdams out in his rowing boat and they bob on the water around them. Gulls, snow geese, and wild turkeys all keep their counsel in Olivia Newman's Where the Crowdads Sing (2022), a compelling adaptation of Delia Owens's bestselling thriller about a murder in the North Carolina marshlands.

The Norfolk Fens provide the starting point for an epic odyssey in Richard Eyre's Laughterhouse (aka Singleton's Pluck, 1984). With his scruffy trio of feather pluckers on strike, poultry farmer Ian Holm sets out on a 100-mile trek to deliver 500 geese to Smithfield Market in London. The fate of the gaggle deprives this Ealingesque excursion of the feel-good factor, but a bird in the hand raises a smile or two in John G. Blystone's Swiss Miss (1938), Stan Laurel tosses goose feathers in the air to convince a St Bernard dog that it's snowing and let him drink from the brandy barrel around its neck. Get clicking now on Laurel & Hardy: Volume 17 to brighten your day in both colour and black and white.

Let's Talk Turkey

In cinema parlance, a turkey is a calamitously poor film. Indeed, brothers Harry and Michael Medved published The Golden Turkey Awards in 1980, which saw John Boorman's Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977) pipped for the ignominious top spot by Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). The making of the latter features in Tim Burton's affectionate biopic, Ed Wood (1994) and, presumably, prompted Gary Svehla's 2013 documentary, The Ed Wood Awards: The Worst Horror Movies Ever Made.

In strictly melagrine terms, turkeys on screen have tended to be linked to the festive feasts of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hence, the title of Tom Walls's Turkey Time (1933), which reassembles the cast of Ben Travers's West End play about a stowaway guest at a Yuletide house party. This can be found on Aldwych Farces, Volume 1, while Gregory the turkey makes an appearance in the second part of a musical double bill that's made up of Roy Del Ruth's On Moonlight Bay (1951) and David Butler's By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953). Inspired by Booth Tarkington's 'Penrod' stories, this pair of Americana charmers stars Gordon MacRae and Doris Day, whose younger brother, Billy Gray, refuses to allow his beloved pet to be served up for holiday dinner.

In addition to having telekinetic powers that are coveted by a criminal gang, Romani teenager Davor Dujmovic also has a soft spot for his pet turkey in Emir Kusturica's magic realist masterpiece, Time of the Gypsies (1988). Plenty of geese also scratch around in this fine film, which earned Kusturica the Best Director prize at Cannes. There are a couple of violent moments, but nothing compared to the bloodshed in Anglo-Australian Brian Trenchard-Smith's dystopian hunting saga, Turkey Shoot (1981), which provided the inspiration for Jon Hewitt's Elimination Game (aka Turkey Shoot, 2014), which sees SEAL Dominic Purcell wind up on a brutal game show after being accused of war crimes in Libya.

Goosey Loosey (Mark Walton) tries to reassure best buddy Ace Cluck (Zach Braff) that the sky is not going to fall on his head in Mark Dindal's Chicken Little (2005), a Disney reworking of the 'Henny Penny' story that also features Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall) and Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack). The poultry isn't safe on the farms of Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness), and Bean (Michael Gambon), when the eponymous hero (George Clooney) resorts to his old turkey-stalking, chicken-snatching ways in Wes Anderson's top-notch stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox (2009).

Reggie (Owen Wilson) is feeling good about life, as he has been chosen as the turkey to receive a presidential pardon on Thanksgiving. But just as he is breathing a sigh of relief, he is swept back to the first Thanksgiving by Jake (Woody Harrelson), the leader of the Turkey Freedom Front who is determined to see that turkey stays off the menu for good in Jimmy Hayward's time-travelling animated comedy, Free Birds (2013). The animation isn't of the same calibre, but the message is pretty much the same in Sylvain Viau's The Great Turkey Rescue (2011), as Walter and Tandoori strive to prevent the sleepy village of Hart's Landing from falling into the hands of a greedy tycoon in the days before Christmas. And, staying in the barnyard, Max the Jack Russell (Patton Oswalt) is acquainted with the pecking order by Rooster the sheepdog (Harrison Ford) after he's chased by a turkey when the family goes to stay on a farm in Chris Renaud and Jonathan del Val's The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019).

The turkey doesn't talk and isn't accorded a name, but he leaves an impression. As does Bob Hope, as he plays Orville 'Turkey' Jackson alongside Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in David Butler's Road to Morocco (1942). He's not alone in having a melagrine moniker, however, as the Cinema Paradiso catalogue demonstrates via George Templeton's The Sundowners (1950), Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), Michael Gordon's Texas Across the River (1966), John Sturges's Hour of the Gun (1967), Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979), Ross Cramer's Riding High (1981), Walter Hill's Geronimo, George P. Cosmatos's Tombstone, Lau Wai-keung's Naked Killer 2 (all 1993), Stephen Chow's God of Cookery (1996), and Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022).

Swanning Around

First performed in Moscow by the Bolshoi Ballet in 1877, Swan Lake rather dominates this section of our survey. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's travails while composing the score are examined in Ken Russell's The Music Lovers (1970), which chronicles the relationship between Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) and his wife, Nina (Glenda Jackson). The story of Odette being transformed into a swan by the enchanter Rothbart hails from folklore. However, the character of Prince Siegfried probably derives from Tchaikovsky's fascination with Ludwig II of Bavaria, who had been marked with the sign of the swan and whose troubled life is scrutinised by Luchino Visconti in Ludwig (1972) and mentioned in passing in Marie Kreutzer's Corsage (2022).

Among the versions of the ballet available to rent from Cinema Paradiso are Apollinari Dudko's celebrated Kirov presentation, Swan Lake (1968), and Peter Mumford's Swan Lake (1998), which offers a reinterpretation by the contemporary dance troupe, Adventures in Motion Pictures. Norwegian ballerina Vera Zorina can be seen dancing Odette in a lengthy extract in Gregory Ratoff's I Was an Adventuress (1940). Dancer-cum-informant Tamara Toumanova is also en pointe when she spots Paul Newman and Julie Andrews sneaking out of a performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), an espionage thriller that was released just a year after bungling agents Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise had found themselves in the middle of the corps de ballet in Robert Asher's The Intelligence Men (1965).

A young lad (Jamie Bell) from County Durham hears the story from his dancing teacher (Julie Walters) in Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot (2000), which concludes with Bell dancing in Matthew Bourne's interpretation of Swan Lake. The onus of perfecting the roles of Odette and Odile while under pressure from Mila Kunis sends Natalie Portman to the dark side in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010), which earned Portman the Oscar-Golden Globe double for Best Actress.

The ending of the ballet can be glimpsed towards the conclusion of Dominic Cooke's The Courier (2020), while music from the score can be heard in films as different as Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), Robert Florey's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Karl Freund's The Mummy (both 1932), Xavier Beauvois's Of Gods and Men (2011), and Aleksey Sidorov's Iron Fury (aka T-34, 2018). Barbra Streisand even gets to lampoon the ballet en route to winning an Oscar on debut in William Wyler's Fanny Brice biopic, Funny Girl (1968).

The libretto also inspired Richard Rich's The Swan Princess (1994), which sees Odette (Michelle Nicastro) befriend a French frog named Jean-Bob (John Cleese) after she is abducted by Sir Rothbart (Jack Palance). Fortunately, Prince Derek (Howard McGillin) comes to the rescue and Rich was able to make the sequels, The Swan Princess: The Mystery of the Enchanted Treasure (1998), The Swan Princess: Christmas (2012), and The Swan Princess: A Royal Family Tale (2014), before Brian Nissen came aboard to co-direct The Swan Princess: Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today! (2016).

Out on its own is Owen Hurley's Barbie of Swan Lake (2003), which casts the iconic doll as Odette. This made a tidy sum at the box office, unlike Terry L. Noss's The Trumpet of the Swan (2001), an animated adaptation of a cherished E.B. White novel that follows a trumpeter swan named Louie, who discovers that he doesn't have a voice and has to rely on a gift from Father Swan in order to play his part in the communal song. With Carol Burnett, Reese Witherspoon, Jason Alexander, Mary Steenburgen, Seth Green, and Joe Mantegna among the voice cast, we reckon this one is well worth another look.

The lake is replaced by the open seas of the Caribbean in Henry King's The Black Swan (1942), an adaptation of a Rafael Sabatini swashbuckler that sees pirate Henry Morgan (Laird Craigar) enlist the help of buccaneer Jamie Waring (Tyrone Power) to rid the islands of privateers after he becomes the governor of Jamaica. The waters are much calmer in two tales of romantic obsession, as swans glide past the punt in which Oxford don Dirk Bogarde join students Michael York and Jacqueline Sassard, only to make a fool of himself by falling into the river in Joseph Losey's Accident (1967). Meanwhile, Jean-Claude Brialy drifts into sight in a boat that passes through a bevy of swans in the opening scenes of Éric Rohmer's beguiling comedy, Claire's Knee (1970).

Twin zoologists Oswald and Oliver Deuce (Brian and Eric Deacon) become fascinated with the origins of life and time-lapse images of decay after their wives are killed in a car crash caused by a swan hitting the windscreen in Peter Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts (1985). We're bending the rules even further to include Michael Patrick Jann's Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), but we do recommend you see Kirstie Alley's reaction to the swan float going up in flames in this brutally funny beauty pageant mockumentary.

The legend of Leda and the swan features prominently in Lynne Stopkewich's Suspicious River (2000), as elegant waterfowl preen on the lawn of the aptly named Swan Motel, where receptionist Molly Parker offers personal services to the guests. Swans also patrol the Scottish river where Tilda Swinton lives on a barge in David Mackenzie's Young Adam (2004), while Simon Pegg and Mark Frost have trouble catching a swan belonging to Stephen Merchant in Joe Wright's Hot Fuzz (2007). The creature just happens to be called Elvis and there's a lot more than a whole lotta shakin' goin' on in a rather rude scene involving Jack Whitehall and a swan in Elliot Hegarty's The Bad Education Movie (2017).

Finally, we bow out with a pair of 2021 films entitled Swan Song. Unfortunately, we can't bring you the Benjamin Cleary cloning fable that earned Mahershala Ali both Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. But Cinema Paradiso can offer - and heartily recommends - Todd Stephens's Sandusky saga, which features a standout performance by Udo Kier, as Pat Pitsenbarger, the retired hairdresser seeking to cadge a few odds and ends in order to do a longtime client's hair for her funeral.