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Director: Jack King
Release Date: September 12, 1941
Stars: Donald Duck
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Old MacDonald Duck’ was the cartoon announced three months earlier in ‘The Reluctant Dragon‘. As Donald Duck explains himself in that feature in this cartoon he’s a farmer.
The short opens with a musical routine on ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ (naturally). This almost Silly Symphony-like sequence lasts ninety seconds. Then the main body of the cartoon starts, in which Donald milks his cow Clementine, hindered by a fly. This leads to a battle between Donald and the fly, with Donald using milk squeezed from Clementine’s udders to bomb the little insect, in a rather early war analogy (predating the attack on Pearl Harbor by two months). Of course, it’s the fly who has the last laugh.
Clementine, whose theme music is, of course, ‘Oh My Darling’, is wonderfully animated. The fly is the second of a line of insects Donald had to deal with, after the bee in ‘Window Cleaners‘ (1940). The battle between duck and fly is well done, but never becomes hilarious. There’s a little too much emphasis on the fly being a small, innocent creature unnecessarily bullied by Donald. Apparently to give the otherwise obnoxious animal some sympathy, something that’s typical for all the Donald vs. insect cartoons. I guess, however, that the humor would have worked better, if the audience’s sympathy had remained with Donald himself, with the fly playing the same role as the inanimate objects did in contemporary, much better cartoons like ‘Donald’s Vacation‘ (1940) or ‘Early to Bed‘ (1941).
Watch ‘Old MacDonald Duck’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Donald Duck cartoon No. 27
To the previous Donald Duck cartoon: Truant Officer Donald
To the next Donald Duck cartoon: Donald’s Camera
‘Old MacDonald Duck’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Chronological Donald Volume 1’
Director: Bob Clampett
Release Date: January 15, 1938
Stars: Porky Pig
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Porky’s Poppa’ starts with a close harmony group singing a variation on ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’, ‘Porky’s Poppa has a farm’.
On his farm Poppa also has a mortgage, and his prize cow, Bessie, is ill. So he orders a mechanical cow. Porky, however, revives Bessie, and makes her compete against the mechanical cow.
For his cartoons Clampett had redesigned Porky Pig, making him more boyish and more appealing than he was in Freleng’s, Avery’s and Tashlin’s shorts. Porky is still a child character in this cartoon, but the cartoon humor is not. Despite the sentimental Great Depression theme, this cartoon is delightfully silly and nonsensical.
‘Porky’s Poppa’ is only director Bob Clampett’s fifth film, and the short simply bursts with energy. The cartoon already shows what Clampett had in store for the world: nonsensical gags, zany animation and sheer fun.
Watch ‘Porky’s Poppa’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Porky Pig cartoon no. 34
To the previous Porky Pig cartoon: Porky’s Hero Agency
To the next Porky Pig cartoon: Porky at the Crocadero
‘Porky’s Double Trouble’ is available on the DVD-sets ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Five’ and ‘Porky Pig 101’
Director: ?
Release Date: May 20, 1933
Stars: Scrappy, Oopy
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Penned by Sid Marcus and animated by Art Davis, ‘Technoracket’ is one of those cartoons inspired by rumors of robots taking over, like Fleischer’s ‘The Robot‘ from 1932, and ‘Mickey’s Mechanical Man‘ from one month later.
Unlike those boxing-themed cartoons ‘Technoracket’ is surprisingly prophetical. In this cartoon Scrappy has a farm, in which Oopy does all the work, with help of the farm animals. But when Scrappy reads about the new age of technocracy he fires all animals, switching to robots, instead. Because it’s a cartoon, even the cows and chickens become robots, with the cows producing bottles of milk instantly. There’s also a scene in which a robots plants bolts to grow plants of canned tomatoes.
At one stage, however, Oopy sneaks into Scrappy’s house and destroys his controls, making the robots go wild. This leads to some nightmarish scenes. There’s for example a robot which devours a pig to spit out hams, another robot brutalizes a mechanical chicken forcing it to produce numerous eggs. Soon the robots create havoc in Scrappy’s home, and he himself removes the controls, which explode in the backyard, destroying all robots.
‘Technoracket’ illustrates the 1930’s fear of work replacement by robots very well. Nevertheless, its predictions have somewhat become true, albeit in a less cartoony fashion, as farms are all but mechanized factories, today…
Directors: John Foster & George Rufle
Release Date: September 16, 1932
Stars: Tom and Jerry
Rating: ★
Review
‘Barnyard Bunk’ opens with a farmer at sleep at a farm, which falls apart. It’s soon clear the farm is destroyed by numerous cheeky mice.
Enter Tom and Jerry playing saxophones. Their music makes a hen laying eggs, a cow producing tons of milk, and two woodpeckers producing a pile of wood. At one point all the lifeless objects of the farm start dancing. In the end the farmer pays the duo for the saxophones, but the moneybag turns out to be filled with mice.
It’s quite shocking to see that in ‘Barnyard Bunk’, a film made well into 1932, still features animation language of the silent era. The short features no dialogue, and the gestures of Tom, Jerry and the farmer are still of the 1920s. The designs of the farmer and the mice do not fare better, and the whole cartoon exudes from archaism. Its only modern feature is the dressed cow, which shows that already by 1932 the Hays code was getting hold of the cartoon industry.
Watch ‘Barnyard Bunk’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 15
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Jolly Fish
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: A Spanish Twist
‘Barnyard Bunk’ is available on the DVD ‘The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren Studio’s Tom and Jerry’
Directors: Harry Bailey & John Foster
Release Date: June 28, 1932
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In ‘The Farmerette’ a sexy kitten applies as ‘farmerette’ at an ailing farm.
The farmer (a goat) asks her if she can get the farm on its feet. And indeed she can, because as soon as she starts singing ‘Some of These Days’, the farm animals start working, and the hens are laying eggs by the dozen, anticipating similar gags in the Warner Bros. cartoon ‘The Swooner Crooner’ (1944).
These scenes are accompanied by Gene Rodemich’s peppy jazz music, showing that he was one of the best cartoon composers of the era. Unfortunately, the embryonic story is soon abandoned, and we witness a donkey, a sheep, a dog and a cow performing a barbershop quartet song.
With ‘The Farmerette’ the Van Beuren studio apparently tried to copy Max Fleischer’s success with Betty Boop. The kitten sings with a voice very similar to that of Betty, and her main feature is her sexiness. Sadly, the cartoon is troubled by erratic animation and poor staging, so typical for the Van Beuren studio, and the kitten never approaches Betty Boop’s charm.
Watch ‘The farmerette’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Farmerette’ is available on the DVD ‘Aesop’s Fables – Cartoon Classics from the Van Beuren Studio’
Director: Mark Baker
Release Date: 1988
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
‘The Hill Farm’ is a long animation film exploring man’s relation to nature.
First we watch the inhabitants of the hill farm themselves: simple farmers, who know the dangers and hardships of nature, and who treat their livestock without romanticism (as exemplified by the farmer’s wife killing chicken without ado).
At one point the hill farm is visited by tourists, who are completely alienated from nature. One of them faints at the sight of the farmer’s wife killing a chicken. When confronted by nature’s dangers (as embodied by a gigantic bear-like beast) they don’t recognize the danger at all. To them nature is something to visit, something to make snapshots from. The third party is a group of huntsmen, who (try to) kill everything in sight, including even the farmer’s bees.
The whole film takes place at a leisurely speed, without dialogue. Mark Baker’s visual style is simple, but very effective. His angular designs and graphic backgrounds are beautiful, and his animation has a unique timing, which is as comical as it is to the point. The narration is very open, leaving the interpretation to the viewer. The end result is one of the most beautiful animation films of the 1980’s.
Watch ‘The Hill Farm’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Hill Farm’ is available on the DVD Box Set ‘Annecy – Le coffret du 50e Anniversaire’
Director: Frank Tashlin
Release Date: August 22, 1936
Stars: Porky Pig
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Both director Frank Tashlin and composer Carl Stalling make their Warner Bros. debut in this film in which Porky (with his old ugly voice) has a fowl farm, threatened by a bunch of evil buzzards.
‘Porky’s Poultry Plant’ looks primitive when compared to Disney films of the same time, looking more like a Disney film from 1932-1933. Its story is sweet, and not very funny, but Carl Stalling’s music is fresh, and Tashlin’s staging is already very impressive. Especially the air battle sequence (in which Porky, in a small army plane, fights an air fleet of hawks ) is remarkably stunning, showing unparalleled fast montage and original ‘camera’ shots. Both these techniques would become Tashlin trademarks, and would contribute to a faster, more gag-orientated style at Warner Bros. Tashlin had replaced Jack King, who had returned to Disney, and with his first Warner Bros. cartoon he immediately proves to be a more inventive director than his predecessor.
Watch ‘Porky’s Poultry Plant’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/822/porky-pig-porkys-poultry-plant.html
This is Porky Pig cartoon no. 12
To the previous Porky Pig cartoon: Porky the Rainmaker
To the next Porky Pig cartoon: Milk and Money
