The Pied Piper is a 1986 Czechoslovakian animated dark fantasy film directed by Jiří Barta. Its original Czech title is Krysař, which means "The rat catcher". The story is an adaptation of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a fairy tale originated in medieval Germany. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival Plot The film starts with the image of a mechanism beginning to work - as the gears move (behind the scenes), the sun slowly rises up over a town and a new day begins. The town, Hamelin, is shown to be one which is full of miserly and petty people, where everything is wasted and money and social rank are the first priority. The waste leads to an enormous rat infestation at night that spills out into the streets the next day. As the town leaders meet to decide on the best course of action, a stranger appears in the doorway - a hooded piper who demonstrates that with the sound of his playing he can entice rats to their deaths. The town leaders are delighted and offer him 1000 gold coins as payment if he would get rid of all of the town's rats. The piper accepts and begins walking through the city, drawing all of the rats behind him. At the same time, a jeweler, who was among the elite group of leaders, walks into a woman's home and tries to seduce her. The woman (who is the only character who does not look grotesque, implying innocence) refuses. The jeweler persists, but before he can do anything the piper passes by her house and at the sound of the music the jeweler is forced to jump out of the window. After all of the rats plunge off a cliff-side tower into a lake, the piper comes back into town, on the way once again preventing the jeweler's advances on the woman. The piper and the woman sit on a bench together as he plays a beautiful melody that is accompanied by paint-on-wood animation (a complete change of style from the rest of the film). Finally, the piper goes to collect his promised payment. The town leaders (who are in the middle of gorging themselves on food and wine and among whom is the jeweler seen drinking and telling his sad tale of rejection to his friends) give him