The Snowman

​Based onThe Snowman
by Raymond Briggs

Directed byDianne Jackson

Music by Howard Blake

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The Snowman is a 1982 British animated television film and symphonic poem based on Raymond Briggs's 1978 picture book The Snowman. It was directed by Dianne Jackson for Channel 4. It was first shown on 26 December 1982, and was an immediate success. It was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 55th Academy Awardsand won a BAFTA TV Award.

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The story is told through pictures, action and music, scored by Howard Blake. It has no dialogue, with the exception of the central song, "Walking in the Air". The orchestral score was performed by the Sinfonia of London and the song was performed by Peter Auty, a St Paul's Cathedral choirboy.

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The film ranked at number 71 on the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, a list drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, based on a vote by industry professionals.  It was voted number 4 in UKTV Gold's Greatest TV Christmas Moments. It came third in Channel 4's poll of 100 Greatest Christmas Moments in 2004. Its broadcast, usually on Christmas Eve on Channel 4, has become an annual festive event in the UK and Ireland.[4]

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Plot

In a rural area of Brighton, after a night of heavy snowfall on Christmas Eve, a young boy named James wakes up and plays in the snow, eventually building a large snowman. At the stroke of midnight, he puts on his dressing gown and sneaks downstairs to find the snowman who magically comes to life. James shows the snowman around his house, playing with appliances, toys and other bric-à-brac, all while keeping quiet enough not to wake James' parents. The two find a sheeted-down motorcycle in the house's garden and go for a ride on it through the woods. Its engine heat starts to melt the snowman and he cools off by luxuriating in the garage freezer.

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Seeing a picture of the Arctic on a packet in the freezer, the snowman is agitated and takes matters into his own hands by taking James in his hand, running through the garden until they take flight, much to James' surprise. As "Walking in the Air" plays, James and the snowman fly over the South Downs towards the Channel coast, seeing the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Palace Pier, and north along the coast of Norway.

They continue through an arctic landscape and into the aurora borealis. They land in a snow-covered forest in the North Pole where they join a party of snowmen and snowwomen. They eventually meet Father Christmas along with his reindeer; he gives James a card and a scarf with a snowman pattern.

The snowman returns home with James before the sun rises and the two bid farewell for the night as the snowman returns to his original position, becoming lifeless again.

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The following morning, James wakes up to find that the snowman has melted, leaving only his hat, scarf, coal eyes, tangerine nose, and coat buttons in a pile of melted snow. A saddened James finds his scarf, indicating the events really took place and were not a dream, as he kneels down by the snowman's remains.

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