‘The Cat & The Composer’: A Famed Publishing Mistake Makes For A Fun Watch In Matteo Bernardini’s Short

Matteo Bernardini’s The Cat & The Composer: A Tribute to E.T.A. Hoffmann (Kreismurriana) is a compact but conceptually rich animated short that transforms a centuries-old literary error into a visual strategy.

The film is loosely based on an unusual 19th-century book, Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, centered on a simple accident: a printer mistakenly combined two completely different stories. One follows a self-important cat as he writes his autobiography, while the other tells the life story of a troubled composer. Instead of fixing the error, the author kept it, so the two narratives interrupt each other mid-page. Bernardini borrows that idea, translating it into animation where contrasting characters, moods, and visual styles constantly collide and overlap.

Working in his signature “Illustrated Cinema” style, Bernardini rejects polish in favor of something more tactile and provisional. The animation unfolds like a sketchbook brought to life with jagged lines, collaged textures, psychedelic colors, and abrupt transitions, echoing Hoffmann’s own graphic sensibility while pushing it into motion.

Set to Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana, the film oscillates between playful absurdity and unease, channeling the Romantic fixation on doubles, alter egos, and fractured artistic identity. The result is less an adaptation of the famed text than a cross-disciplinary encounter, in which literature, music, and animation blend into a single work that feels both historically grounded and distinctly contemporary.