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Director: Norman McLaren
Production date: March 17, 1966
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘The Seasons’ is an unfinished film in which Norman McLaren tried to emulate the Canadian landscape in several moving paintings.
The ever changing pastel paintings never cease to amaze, with their metamorphosis of clouds, seascapes and landscapes, but McLaren deemed the film too abstract to entertain and never finished it. Thus, we are left with loose images without a soundtrack, and indeed, in this state, the result is still a little too boring to sit out, despite its short length of only four minutes. And yet, the images themselves are so beautiful it’s a pity this short never reached a final state.
‘The Seasons’ is available on the DVD-box ‘Norman McLaren – The Master’s Edition’
Director: Graham Heid
Release Date: May 27, 1938
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ is one of the last, and certainly one of the most spectacular Silly Symphonies ever made.
There is hardly any story: at the start of the cartoon we hear the poem being sung by a sugary soprano, then we watch Wynken, Blynken and Nod sailing the Milky Way and fishing ‘starfish’ and being at the mercy of some clouds.
The three babies are very alike, with Nod being the ‘Dopey’ of the three, and the humor is mild. But, boy, the looks of this cartoon! Like two other Silly Symphonies obsessed with babies and their bare behinds (‘Lullaby Land’ from 1933 and ‘Water Babies’ from 1935), ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ is a showcase of Disney Animation. The cartoon features extraordinarily beautiful backgrounds, and literally bursts with effect animation, rendering astonishingly beautiful stars, comets, clouds and lightnings. The fantasy is enhanced by a wonderful score, which makes clever use of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. All this gives one the feeling of watching a mini-Fantasia.
Certainly, no animated cartoon would ever show such lushness again. As such, in a sense ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ forms the end and culmination of an era, which had started in the end of 1933, in which the Disney studio combined ever growing ambitions with childish and sugary material.
‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ was the only cartoon directed by Graham Heid. Remarkably little is known about this artist, who also contributed to ‘Pinocchio‘, ‘Fantasia’ and ‘Bambi‘. In fact, I can only find a birth date (November 14, 1909). This is rather surprising, for one can have worse seven minutes of fame than this delightful short. Luckily, animation historians Jerry Beck & Michael Barrier help us out on the Cartoon Research F.A.Q. page.
One trivial remark: ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ is based on the 1889 published poem ‘Dutch Lullaby’ by Eugene Field. Indeed, the words Wynken and Blynken seem to suggest some Dutch origin, but there are no such verbs in the Dutch language, which would translate ‘to wink’ and ‘to blink’ as ‘knipogen’ and ‘knipperen’, respectively.
Watch ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fApNJX01X5k
This is Silly Symphony No. 70
To the previous Silly Symphony: Moth and the Flame
To the next Silly Symphony: Farmyard Symphony
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 