You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘war’ tag.
Director: Kazimierz Urbański
Release date: 1962
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Playthings’ is a film on fighting. The film knows only monochrome yellow and red backgrounds and silhouetted, abstracted human figures and weapons.
The film starts with some designs based on ancient cave paintings. We watch a group of human figures hunt a deer. When one is killed, another group of more tangram-like humans, arrives, and the fighting starts, with more and more advanced weaponry, like cannons, machine guns, tanks, bomber planes. As can be expected, in the end everybody is killed by a giant, probably nuclear explosion. The message of ‘Playthings’ is crystal clear, but the short is too one-dimensional to make a lasting impression.
Watch ‘Playthings’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Playthings’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Anthology of Polish Animated Film’
Director: Denis Do
Release date: June 11, 2018
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Funan’ is a film by Denis Do, a French film maker of Cambodian descent, and the film is partly based on the memories of his own mother.
‘Funan’ means ‘the new people’ in the Khmer language, and this is an apt description of the radical ideology of the Khmer Rouge, an extreme communist movement that took power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, only to plunge the nation in one of the severest mass killings in human history, with the ultimate goal to rise as a ‘new nation’ of autarkic, non-intellectual people.
‘Funan’ thus tells about Cambodia’s darkest years, and does so by following one family from Phnom Penh, which almost immediately falls apart, and which succumbs one by one to various aspects of the terror, be it brutal murder, forced labor, famine or rape. We especially follow a couple, Chou and Khuon, and their son Sovanh, who gets separated from his parents near the start of the film.
Luckily, the film eschews gross images, keeping the watch tolerable, but strangely enough, this also means one feels the hardship and sorrow less than one should. The film’s rather episodic nature certainly doesn’t help, and one has a little trouble relating to these people, perhaps because they aren’t introduced very well (the happy bliss of pre-Khmer rouge existence is shown all too shortly), and because the film is told in a plethora of very short scenes, instead of a few well-chosen longer ones. Especially Sovanh’s story is too fragmentary to follow, and his experiences are only hinted at, although it’s clear that the young boy sees a lot of cruelty and death.
The 2D animation is fair, with the human character designs rooted in the French ligne claire tradition, while the background is painted and lineless. Both coloring and lighting are clearly digitally done, and to be frank, rather uninteresting.
I suspect the film could be more daring and more idiosyncratic in its designs and storytelling, especially when compared to Elsa Duhamel’s similar, but far more interesting short ‘Bach-Hong’, which tells of the coming of the communists to Saigon, Vietnam. Duhamel cleverly sticks to a single story, illustrating the regime’s cruelty by one, ostensibly minor detail in the nation’s history.
Do, on the other hand, seems to want to tell everything, and indeed he succeeds in painting a picture of these black years, but I suspect he had better chosen less scenes, and less characters, for now, unfortunately, the film remains at an emotional distance, and that can hardly be the film maker’s purpose. Yet, I am glad personal films like this are being made, for films like ‘Funan’ save tragedies like that of Cambodia from oblivion, and remind us that peace and safety aren’t guaranteed, at all.
Watch the trailer for ‘Funan’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Funan’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Mari Okada
Release date: February 24, 2018
Rating: ★★★
Review:
The Japanese animation industry apparently is so rich that new interesting films can pop up seemingly out of nowhere. For example, ‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ (from now on ‘Maquia’) is made by the P.A. Works studio, which since its founding in 2000 focused on television series, and which only made four feature films, the first being based on a video game, the second made for television, the third for training purposes, and the fourth based on a television series.
So, their fifth feature film to be a completely original story, not based on a video game, television series or even a manga, comes as a surprise. It seems that ‘Maquia’ was the pet project by its director Mari Okada, who wrote the story herself. Okada, apparently is somewhat of a modern legend as she has written for over fifty television series since 2001, and is called by Wikipedia “one of the most prolific writers currently working in the anime industry”. She’s one of the brains behind ‘Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day’ (2011), one of only two anime television series I have watched, and it comes to no surprise to me that the ‘Maquia’s’ story style has something in common with that series. Both series and film have a strong focus on human drama, with emotions reigning uncontrolled, and tears flowing frequently. In fact, despite the high fantasy setting, ‘Maquia’ has a strong element of melodrama, and the rather forced emotions, so different from the more restrained style in studio Ghibli, or the films by Yasujirō Ozu for that matter, actually made it harder for me to relate with these people.
‘Maquia’ is a fantasy film, set in a rather Middle Earth-like world, and starts with the depiction of a society of near-immortals called Lorphs, whose surroundings are particularly like the depictions of elven kingdoms in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. These Lorphs write their memories by weaving cloths and live far away from more mortal men. One of these, a young girl called Maquia (from which the English film title takes its name) rather out of nowhere complaints she is so alone. Shortly after this scene of distress the eternal city is attacked by an army of men, and Maquia soon finds herself in the outside world, where she adopts a baby, whose mother is killed.
From then on, the film takes an episodic nature, showing us various stages of the mother-son relationship until the son, whom Maquia calls Ariel, has matured, while his mother, in contrast, has retained the same teen appearance she had in the beginning.
The film apparently tries to say something about how to love is to lose and to let go, how to find beauty in the short lives we have, and how relationships form the most important part of life, but the film’s messages get deluded in a rather complex story, in which we do not only follow Maquia, but also her childhood friend Leilia, who is forced to become a queen by her abductors, the captain who destroyed the Lorph city in the first place and one Lang, a boy/man with whom Maquia spent her first years in the mortal world. The bigger story, and all its subplots are far less interesting than Maquia’s relationship to her adopted son, and both prolong and distract the film unnecessarily.
Apart from being unfocused and very, very emotional, ‘Maquia’ is also hampered by an overblown score by Kenji Kawai, all too forcefully guiding the viewer in which emotion to feel. Even worse, are the rather lazy and utterly generic human designs, which nowhere transcend your average anime television series. The animation, too, is fair, but not outstanding. There’s also a small dose of computer animation that is used sparingly and effectively. No, the film’s highlights are not the story, music, character designs or the animation, but the background art and the lighting, which are both no less than magnificent, and which both give ‘Maquia’ a splendor that make the film a delight to watch, even when the characters and events themselves don’t.
I like ‘Maquia’ being an original story, and its theme of what it means to be (im)mortal is interesting, but the film is too long, too episodic, too meandering and too dramatic to entertain, and I am pretty sure in the end I will not remember either the film’s story or its characters, but the beautiful background art and superb lighting, which the make the film a standout, after all.
Watch the trailer for ‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ is avaiable on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Trey Parker
Release date: June 30, 1999
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
The South Park television series was only midway in its third season when its first (and only!) theatrical feature film was released. Thus, the film contains many of the quirks so typical of the earliest seasons but long since forgotten, like Kenny’s obligatory death, Kyle performing the act of ‘kick the baby’ with his little brother Ike or Stan compulsory vomiting on meeting Wendy.
Also prominent are characters that years ago have disappeared from the sitcom like Chef and Mr. Hat. Moreover, Cartman’s personality as a complete and pretty evil ass is not yet defined here, and although he’s already a jerk, he’s just one of the gang here.
The animation, too, retains much more of its cut-out origins than later seasons, although in the feature film the all too primitive animation is juxtaposed to a swirling 3D computer animation, especially in the hell scenes, which gives the film extra grandeur, but which would become more of a style element in later seasons of the series.
The South Park series always was at its best in social commentary, and it that respect, ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ delivers big time. The film painfully clearly shows America’s obsession to prevent their children to experience anything subversive, except gun violence (incidentally by now the major death cause of American youth). It’s best not to reveal the plot, but it’s enough to know that when the kids go see the new Philip and Terrance movie ‘Asses on Fire’, things quickly go out of hand.
The film also introduces the idea that Terrance and Philip are Canadian, and that all Canadians have disjointed heads and square hands, so the difference between the designs of the main characters and that of their favorite television show turns out not be one of style, but one of ‘nature’. This ridiculous idea is played out well, and was continued in the television series, too.
Kenny dies, of course, but for the first time we see what happens to him after his death, and quite a bit of the action takes place in hell, where Satan and Saddam Hussein get involved in the plot. Now, the Iraqi dictator was very much alive back then, and the film is a testimony of the US’ frustration they didn’t remove the villain from the office in the first Gulf War (1990-1991).
Because of Hussein Iraq was included in George Bush jr.’s nonsensical ‘Axis of evil’ (together with its arch enemy Iran), which ultimately lead to the misguided and very questionable invasion of Iraq in 2003. In ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ Saddam Hussein is shown as being even more evil than Satan himself, dominating the prince of darkness in a toxic relationship. Of course, the inclusion of Saddam Hussein ages the film more than necessary, as do other references to real people, like Brian Boitano (whom I as a non-American had never heard of).
Yet, the biggest surprise of ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ is not its high level of satire, nor its excellent plot, nor the introduction of elements that would become more familiar later on in the series. No, the biggest surprise of the film is that it is in fact, a musical, and a very good one at that, too. The film literally bursts with songs (there are fourteen of them), all ranging from good to excellent.
It seems Trey Parker knew exactly how to write a musical song: yes, practically all his songs are parodies of musical tropes, but his own creatures have such beautiful and memorable melodies they perfectly stand on their own. Absolutely top are ‘What would Brian Boitano do?’ and Satan’s Jesus Christ Superstar-like ‘Up there’. And then there’s a great musical moment when the Les misérables-like song ‘La résistance’ suddenly gets intermixed by four other songs, including a new one sung by soldiers, and the outstanding ‘Blame Canada’. This latter song, which was introduced much earlier in the film, is the undisputed highlight of the feature and was nominated for an academy award for best original song (which it unjustly lost to the bland ‘You’ll Be in My Heart’ Phil Collins composed for Disney’s ‘Tarzan’).
In fact, ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ is so good at being a musical that it can easily be counted among the best animated musicals ever. Main composer Trey Parker, at least got on a new career as a musical writer. No, there were no other South Park movies to come, but not only did more and more songs creep into the South Park series itself, but Parker made another musical with the bizarre puppet movie ‘Team America: World Police’ (2004) and even hit Broadway with the stage musical ‘The Book of Mormon’ (2011).
In all, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ is great satire, it’s a great musical, and it’s a great proof that feature films based on television series could (and should) be an improvement on the original series.
Watch the trailer for ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Nora Twomey
Release date: September 8, 2017
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
2017 was a good year for the animated feature film: Warner Bros., Dreamworks and the French Polivari and Panique studios gave us great laughs with ‘The Lego Batman Movie’, ‘Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie’, and ‘ Le grand méchant renard et autres contes…’ (The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales), respectively; Pixar amazed us with the magnificent ‘Coco’, and the Japanese Science Saru studio made quite an impression with the mind-blowing film‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’.
However, the most important and most moving animated feature film was the Irish-Canadian-Luxembourgian co-production ‘The Breadwinner’. This was the third feature by the Irish Cartoon Saloon studio, which can be regarded as the most welcome and most original studio additions to the animated feature field of the 21st century, thus far. The Breadwinner’ shares with their previous two films, ‘The Secret of Kells’ (2009) and ‘The ‘Song of the Sea’ (2014) a very charming traditional animation style, and a surprisingly graphic overall design, although the latter is rather toned down in ‘The Breadwinner‘ when compared to the earlier two movies. But unlike the other two, ‘The Breadwinner’ completely lacks the Irish flavor, being set in, of all places, Afghanistan.
Based on the book by Deborah Ellis from 2000 ‘The Breadwinner’ is set in Kabul, the unfortunate country’s capital during the first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (better known as the Taliban regime, 1996-2001). By the time the film was made, this extremely oppressive regime was a ghost of the past, at least in Kabul (the Taliban never fully disappeared from the country), but sadly, since August 2021 this misogynist, backward movement is in full charge of the country, once again.
‘The Breadwinner’ makes no mistake how hard it is to live in such a violent, insecure country, where arbitrariness prevails, and where women have no rights, at all, whatsoever. The film follows the eleven-year-old Afghan girl Parvana, who lives with her disabled father, her mother, elder sister Soraya, and a baby brother called Zaki in a tiny house in Kabul. When the father gets arrested and thrown into a prison far outside town, the family quickly get into way more problems than they already had: as women cannot do anything outside without a man, their means to even obtain food completely come to a standstill. At this point Parvana takes an important decision to save her family’s life…
‘The Breadwinner’ is a very believable story, much more subtle than almost anything coming out of the United States. For example, the Afghan people are portrayed as real people, with a rich an ancient culture. Added to the sense of authenticity is the use of Afghan voices (except for the brabbling Zaki), while Mychael and Jeff Danna’s score clearly borrows from the Afghan musical tradition. Thus, the film’s Afghanistan is a convincing one, not a caricature seen through Western eyes. Moreover, although the film makes no mistake about the oppressive and misogynist nature of the Taliban regime, there are many shades of gray between the heroes and villains. Even the villain that causes Parvana’s family’s demise is shown in one last shot as not only evil, but insecure and afraid, too. Moreover, Parvana remains a relatable character, throughout. Despite her courage and adult responsibility, she remains a child, and is shown delighting in childish behavior, especially with her friend Shauzia.
Contrasted with Parvana’s dire circumstances are the images of a story she tells her beloved (her first audience is her baby brother, but she also tells the tale to others, and others even blend in, altering the direction of the story while doing so. These images are rendered in the most colorful, storybook illustration-like, faux cut-out animation, and tell about a boy who goes on a quest to retrieve his village’s seeds from an evil elephant king. This fantastical tale is picked up several times during the movie, and often reflects the events depicted in real life. Especially in the finale, in which the two seem to come together, this dual story telling comes to a harrowing conclusion.
As said, the film’s design is less graphic than that of Cartoon Saloon’s Celtic features. The background art is semi-realistic, with depressing greys, browns and yellows depicting the seemingly treeless town of Kabul. The character design is more graphic, with especially Zaki being an echo of the character designs from the earlier films. Noteworthy is the background art of a rather surreal scene in which Parvana and Shauzia are seen in a field full of abandoned tanks. The traditional animation is a delight, not only the very moving animation of the main characters, but also the cartoony quasi-cut-out animation of Parvana’s story. There’s only a little computer animation present, mostly for crowd scenes.
In all, ‘The Breadwinner’ is one of the best, most adult and most moving animation films to come out of any animation studio, and should be considered a modern classic.
According to director Nora Twomey ‘The Breadwinner’ may be set in Afghanistan but tells a universal story of all children growing up in oppressive countries, everywhere. Yet, we are still waiting for the animated depictions of their stories, while Afghanistan has been the subject of no less than three other animated feature films since then: ‘The Swallows of Kabul’ from 2019 and ‘My Sunny Maad’ and ‘Flee’ from 2021. Surely, the people of say North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, or Yemen deserve better.
Watch the trailer for ‘The Breadwinner’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Breadwinner’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Witold Giersz
Release date: 1970
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘The Wonderful March’ is a traditional animation film, which retells the story ‘The Marvelous March of Jean François’ (1965) by John Raymond.
Jean François is a drummer boy in Napoleon’s army, who’s told to march ever onward. Following this direction rather obsessively, Jean François travels the world, using his drum e.g. as a boat and as a basket for a balloon, only to return to Napoleon in the end, right in the battle of Waterloo.
The film’s conclusion is a bit puzzling and rather disappointing. Nevertheless, ‘The Wonderful March’ can boast very pleasant images, full of painted animation, and charming music by Polish composer Kazimierz Serocki.
Watch ‘The Wonderful March’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Wonderful March’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Anthology of Polish Children’s Animation’
Director: Gorō Miyazaki
Release date: July 17, 2011
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Like ‘Ocean Waves’ (1993) and ‘Whisper of the Heart‘ (1995) ‘From Up on Poppy Hill’ is one of those Ghibli films that could do well without animation. There’s no fantasy or metamorphosis around. Instead, the film is a modest little human drama. In fact, the film has much in common with the two earlier Ghibli features. Like ‘Whisper of the Heart’ ‘From Upon Poppy Hill’ has a female teenager star, and like ‘Ocean Waves’ there’s a strong air of nostalgia pervading the movie, especially in the gorgeous and evocative background art.
‘From Upon Poppy Hill’ takes place in harbor town Yokohama, somewhere between 1961 and 1963, before the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and after the release of the melancholic song ‘I Look Up as I Walk’ by Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto, which is heard several times during the movie, and which even became famous in the West back then, with the silly and out-of-place title ‘the Sukiyaki song’.
‘From Upon Poppy Hill’ focuses on teenager Umi Matsuzaki who lives with her grandmother and little brother at a boarding house with five female boarders, for whom Umi cooks breakfast and dinner. Umi’s mother is a professor, who’s abroad most of the time, while her father, a seafarer, has died in the Korean war (1950-1953). Each day Umi raises some signal flags in remembrance of her father. These are seen by Shun Kazama, a schoolmate who works at a tugboat. Both Umi and Shun thus are hard working children, so typical for the Ghibli studio.
The story focuses on the love that grows between Umi and Shun, and some unforeseen complications it raises. But there’s also an important subplot in which Shun and his fellow students try to protect their old club house called ‘The Latin Quarter’ against demolishing. Only when Umi starts to help, leading an army of female students, the protest gains momentum. The clubhouse scenes provide some comic relief in an otherwise emotional deep and heart-breaking story of friendship, love, and loss.
It’s impressive how the film makers show the emotions in the subtlest of ways. For example, at one point Shun evades Umi’s presence, but we see her reaction to this neglect only sparingly on her face, and with the slightest of actions. Thus, when Umi finally lets her emotions flow, it hits the viewer all the harder.
Hayao Miyazaki’s son Gorō Miyazaki does an excellent job as a director, and the animation is top notch, especially on the main characters. There are a few flashback scenes and there’s a short dream sequence, but otherwise there’s a strong unity of time and place, with all the action taking place in only a few settings and in a limited time frame. The film thus stays focused all the time, even when showing minor deviations from the main plot, like one of the boarders leaving the house.
In all, ‘From Upon Poppy Hill’ may be a modest film, in its emotional depth it’s in no way less impressive than the studio’s more outlandish masterpieces like ‘Spirited Away’ (2001) or ‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’ (2008). Highly recommended.
Watch the trailer for ‘From Up on Poppy Hill’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘From Up on Poppy Hill’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Eric Khoo
Release Date: May 17, 2011
Rating: ★★★
Review:
The film ‘Tatsumi’ celebrates the work of Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi (1935-2015). Tatsumi is the inventor of the gegika manga style, a grittier, more alternative form of manga for adults. The film re-tells five of Tatsumi’s short stories in this this style, all from 1970-1972. These stories are bridged by excerpts from his drawn autobiography ‘A Drifting Life’ from 2008.
Thus, the film is completely drawn (only in the end we see the real Yoshihiro Tatsumi), but to keep the manga style intact the film was animated with Toon Boom Software, specialized in ‘animatics’, which brings story boards to life. Thus, full animation, although present, is rare, and most of the motion is rather basic, often lacking any realism of movement. The animation is enhanced by limited digital effects, and the first and last story are digitally manipulated to make the images look older.
The complete film thus is little more than slightly enhanced comic strips. One wonders if this is the best way to present Tatsumi’s work, as most probably his stories work better in their original manga form, but of course the movie is a great introduction to his work, which without doubt is fascinating and original.
Tatsumi’s manga style clearly deviates from his example, the great Osamu Tezaku. Tatsumi’s style is more raw, sketchier and knows nothing of the big eyes so common in manga. All but one story use a voice over narrator. And all but one are in the first person. The stories themselves are gritty, dark, depressing and bleak. The second story, ‘Beloved Monkey’, in which a factory worker falls in love with a girl at a zoo, is particularly bitter. The outer two take place just after the end of World War II and show the effects of Japan’s traumatic loss. All are about the losers in life, struggling at the bottom of society. As Tatsumi himself says near the end of the movie:
“The Japanese economy grew at a rapid pace. Part of the Japanese population enjoyed the new prosperity. The people had a great time. I couldn’t bear to watch it. I did not share in the wealth, and neither did the common people around me. My anger at this condition accumulated within me into a menacing black mass that I vomited into my stories.”
Surprisingly, the protagonists of all first-person stories, including the autobiography, all look more or less the same, as if Tatsumi couldn’t create more than one type of hero. Only the third story, ‘Just a Man’, the only one to use a third person narrator, stars a different and older man, while the last story, the utterly depressing ‘Good-bye’, is the only one to have a female protagonist. Tatsumi’s own life story is told in full color which contrasts with his short stories, which are mostly in black and white. Tatsumi’s autobiography is less compelling than his story work but adds to the understanding of the artist and his work.
Surprisingly, for such a Japanese film ‘Tatsumi’ was made in Singapore and animated in Indonesia. According to Wikipedia Singaporean director Eric Khoo was first introduced to the works of Yoshihiro Tatsumi during his military service, and immediately was stricken by his stories. When ‘A Drifting Life’ was published in Singapore in 2009, Khoo realized that Tatsumi still was alive and wanted to pay tribute to him. Tatsumi himself was greatly involved in the film and narrates his own life story. The movie is a great tribute to one of the more original voices in Japanese manga, and well worth watching, if you can tolerate a dose of sex and violence.
Watch the trailer for ‘Tatsumi’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Tatsumi’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Peter Lord
Release Date: April 10, 1996
Rating: ★★
Review:
Aardman founder Peter Lord penned and directed this medieval story for children about two royal twin brothers who get separated. One remains royal, the other becomes an ordinary peasant. But when their country is threatened by an enemy, the tables are turned, or not?
This film features silent comedy, with very little dialogue (only ‘me?’ and ‘hello?’ are uttered). More interesting is the returning use of a split screen. The animation and sets are both of a high quality, but Lord’s story is as rambling as it is boring, and completely fails to fulfil its promise. The film ends rather sudden and inconclusive, leaving us with Andy Price’s attractive quasi-medieval music. In fact, I’m surprised the film even got an Academy Award nomination.
Watch ‘Wat’s Pig’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Wat’s Pig’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Gil Alkabetz
Release Date: October 1992
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
With ‘Swamp’ Gil Alkabetz showed to be a strong new voice in the animation world.
Made at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart in Germany, Alkabetz uses a deceptively simple setting of only two dimensions, with no background whatsoever. In this world two armies of knights on horses, armed with giant balloons and giant scissors are fighting a senseless war over a swamp.
The film is a strong allegory on the folly of war. The film’s power is greatly enhanced by its simple yet very clear designs (all knights are drawn in black ink, the balloons in bright ecoline reds and blues) and by its great sound design. But most of all, the short shows Alkabetz’s strong sense of comic timing. ‘Swamp’ is one of the best student films of all time, and deserves to be shown over and over again.
Watch ‘Swamp’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Swamp’ is available on the DVD box set ‘The Animation Show of Shows Box Set 2’
Director: George Pal
Release Date: December 26, 1941
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ the action already starts during the opening titles, when we watch a package unwrap itself. The package reveals to contain a battalion of toy soldiers, who quickly come to life.
Our hero is ‘Little Jim’, a toy soldier who has to carry a large cannon. When he meets a skating girl in Dutch costume, he forgets the cannon. He gets punished, having to paint the barracks, which he does with invisibility paint, anticipating the Donald Duck short ‘The Vanishing Private‘ (1942), which uses the same story idea.
Both the vanishing paint and the cannon come in handy, when an evil army invades the countryside, although it remains pretty unclear how our hero conquers the foreign troops. Nevertheless, in the end he’s decorated and earns a kiss from the Dutch girl.
‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ is a charming, but uneven cartoon that suffers from an erratic story. The models, colors and staging, on the other hand, are top notch, as always in Pal’s works. The trickery used to make things becoming invisible is very well done.
The evil army of mindless robots, which invade the toy countryside reflect the war era. Yet, Pal’s film never becomes really topical, sticking to the fairy tale world of wonder. ‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ makes great use of two Raymond Scott compositions: ‘Toy Trumpet’ for the marching soldiers, and ‘Powerhouse’ to accompany the evil army.
‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Puppetoon Movie’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: November 14, 1941
Stars: Popeye
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘The Mighty Navy’ Popeye follows Porky Pig (‘Meet John Doughboy‘) and Barney Bear (‘The Rookie Bear’) and joins the army.
As a sailor, he naturally chooses the navy. Thus, at the start of the cartoon, we find him on a training ship. However, being a navy sailor turns out to be quite different, and most of the humor comes from Popeye’s inapt ways of being a navy sailor. “Do I wants to be a sailor? I AM a sailor! I’m Popeye the sailor! I was born a sailor“, Popeye exclaims at one point. But despite his lifelong experience, Popeye’s ways of hoisting an anchor, aiming the guns and flying a dive bomber in no way convince his superior, so he’s sent to the kitchen to peel onions. Yet, when the training ship is under attack, Popeye saves the day.
‘The Mighty Navy’ was released only thirteen days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and thus the enemy is neither named nor seen in this cartoon. The enemy’s fleet flag bears ‘The Enemy (Name Your Own)’, and when Popeye disposes of its fleet, no victim can be seen. This in sharp contrast to the post-Pearl Harbor Popeye cartoons by the Famous studios: now the Japanese were clearly identified, and racial stereotypes roamed wildly. None of that in this cartoon, making it much more fun to watch.
‘The Mighty Navy’ seems to be a tribute cartoon to the navy. Apart from Popeye, all sailors look like Superman, and the navy itself isn’t ridiculed at all. Instead, the cartoon looks like a celebration of the navy’s choice to make Popeye the official insignia for its own bomber squad. In the insignia, which is presented to the character himself at the end of the cartoon, Popeye looks like his older self, but in ‘The Mighty Navy’ Popeye’s clothes have changed into navy white. I don’t think that this was meant to be a permanent change of dress. Indeed, in Popeye’s next cartoon, ‘Nix on Hypnotricks’ Popeye wears his old clothes again. Yet, in most of his following cartoons, he would be dressed in navy white, and it’s in this dress he would be seen the rest of his theatrical career.
Watch ‘The Mighty Navy’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qa2jk
This Popeye film No. 100
To the previous Popeye film: I’ll Never Crow Again
To the next Popeye film: Nix on Hypnotricks
‘The Mighty Navy’ is available on the DVD set ‘Popeye the Sailor 1941-1943’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: May 9, 1942
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In 1942 Chuck Jones found his own voice as a director. Gone were the Disneyesque characters and settings. Instead, Jones put forward his own recognizable character designs, a very original animation approach based on strong poses, and an unprecedented emphasis on facial expressions.
Gone, too, were the cute, childish subjects, now replaced by wild, mature and gag rich stories. Suddenly Jones became one of the most recognizable directors in the field, equaled only by Bob Clampett. The most obvious example of this change is ‘The Dover Boys‘ from September 1942, but the new style is already very present in the Conrad Cat cartoons from January/February (‘The Bird Came C.O.D.’, ‘Conrad the Sailor‘ and ‘Porky’s Cafe’ ).
‘The Draft Horse’, from May, is also a nice example of Jones’s new self-assurance. The short features a plow horse who, after reading a billboard saying ‘Horses wanted for US Army’ plows all the way to the next army training camp to get himself enlisted. His race is depicted marvelously: we don’t see the horse himself, but we watch several images of the countryside wrecked by his plow, accompanied by a frantic rendering of Gioacchino Rossini’s William Tell overture.
Besides an example of Jones’s new style, ‘The Draft Horse’ was also the first Warner Bros. cartoon penned by Tedd Pierce, after his return from his move to the Max Fleischer studios. Highlight of the cartoon is the horse acting out a complete war scene for the eyes of a bewildered colonel. This scene, animated by Ken Harris, can match the much praised scene from ‘Brave Little Tailor’ (1938, animated by Frank Thomas), in which Mickey Mouse tells his story of how he beat seven [flies] in one blow. In this scene the horse looks like a forerunner of Charlie Dog, who does an equally hilarious performance in ‘Often an Orphan‘ (1949).
Unfortunately, the rest of the cartoon doesn’t live up to the high standards set here. Tedd Pierce’s story is too loosely jointed to engage the viewer, falling back on spot gags. Soon the horse ends in a war exercise, and he flees home with equal speed. In the end we watch him knitting V-sweaters as part of the ‘Bundles for Blue Jackets’ program, in which local ladies knitted sweaters for navy men.
‘The Draft Horse’ mocks the over-zealous response after the United States had entered World War II. At the same time, it shows that every citizen can do his part, even when he is not in the army itself. The horse is designed interestingly, remaining halfway anthropomorphization. For example, he retains his hoofs, and remains on all fours half of the time.
Watch ‘The Draft Horse’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5pce36
‘The Draft Horse’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six’
Director: Bob Clampett
Release Date: July 5, 1941
Stars: Porky Pig
Rating: ★★½
Review:
On September 26 1940 the Selective Training and Service Act came into effect. This was the first peace time conscription in the history of the United States.
By 1941 the draft was in full effect, as is reflected by cartoons like ‘Hysterical Highspots in American History‘, ‘Meet John Doughboy’, ‘Rookie Revue’ and ‘The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B‘. Of the real draftee cartoons ‘Meet John Doughboy’ is probably the first. The short stars Porky Pig, who can boast to be the first major cartoon star to join the army. In November Porky was followed by Barney Bear (‘The Rookie Bear’) and Popeye (‘The Mighty Navy‘), while other stars only joined the war effort after the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
Unfortunately, ‘Meet John Doughboy’ is not about Porky’s tribulations as a draftee. Instead Porky introduces a movie newsreel “chock full of military secrets, so if there are any Fifth Columnists in the audience, please leave the theater right now.”. This is immediately the best gag of the short, which is a rather trite spot gag cartoon.
‘Meet John Doughboy’ is mostly of historical interest. The film features some stark images of weaponry, in beautiful black and white contrasts. The cartoon even depicts a possible invasion by air, luckily easily dispelled by the Statue of Liberty with some use of inspect spray. Otherwise, it remains a rather uninteresting spot gag cartoon. Three months later, Friz Freleng made a color cartoon covering similar grounds in the even less funnier ‘Rookie Revue‘.
Watch ‘Meet John Doughboy’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Porky Pig cartoon no. 88
To the previous Porky Pig cartoon: Porky’s Prize Pony
To the next Porky Pig cartoon: We, the Animals, Squeak
‘Meet John Doughboy’ is available on the DVD-sets ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six’ and ‘Porky Pig 101’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: January 18, 1941
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘The Fighting 69 1/2th’ opens with peaceful scenes of a picnic in a forest. Soon a red ant and a black ant argue about an olive. When the red ant smothers the black ant with it, he exclaims, Groucho Marx style: ‘Of course you know this means war!’.
Soon the picnic cloth is encircled by trenches, with several ants trying to obtain the food on it, until a lady comes to clear it all away. When only a cake is left behind, the generals try to make peace, which is thwarted by a discussion on how to cut the cake.
‘The Fighting 69 1/2th’ is a rather somber war film, in the tradition of e.g. ‘Bosko the Doughboy’ (1931), ‘There’s Something about a Soldier’ (1934), ‘What Price Porky’ (1938), and ‘Ants in the Plants‘ (1940) and arguably the last to show war as it looked like in World War I. Eleven months later war would come to the US itself, changing the looks of war cartoons forever.
‘The Fighting 69 1/2th’ is not really funny, but it boasts beautiful oil backgrounds, Silly Symphony-like production values like careful shading, and Freleng’s trademark musical timing. There’s even a ‘hold the onions’ gag, when several ants build a hamburger.
Watch ‘The Fighting 69 1/2th’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x119jer
‘The Fighting 69 1/2th’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: July 18, 1942
Rating:★
Review:
‘Foney Fables’ is a spot gag cartoon on fairy tales, very much in the vain of ‘A Gander at Mother Goose‘ (1940), sharing the realistic hand skipping pages of a storybook with the former cartoon.
‘A Gander at Mother Goose’ already was anything but classic, but ‘Foney Fables’ is even worse. Neither writer Michael Maltese nor director Friz Freleng seem inspired, and the often beautiful animation is wasted on all the lame spot gags. Even the running gag is trite and predictable.
The most interesting aspects of the cartoon are the war references: the grasshopper will survive winter, because he has bought war bonds, the wolf in sheep’s clothing is called ‘the fifth columnist of his day’, the goose that lays golden eggs lays normal eggs for national defense, and old mother Hubbard is being accused of hoarding food. These gags cannot rescue the cartoon, however, which remains uninteresting and forgettable.
Watch ‘Foney Fables’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Foney Fables’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 5’
Director: Yoshitaro Kataoka
Release Date: 1942
Rating: ★★½
Review:
With ‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ we’re clearly in propaganda area. The film’s motto says it all: “Protect our sky! The best defense is offense!”.
In the film the monkeys (Japan) are attacked by an air squadron of bears (Soviet Union). The monkeys shoot the bears out of the sky by the dozen, and win the day. But the film warns the audience: ‘There still are other enemies. We must protect our sky!”.
The film’s message, as if Japan were threatened by other nations and had to be aggressive out of defense, is sickening. When the film was released, in 1942, Japan was already the cruel occupier of most of South East Asia, an aggressor on a scale only matched by Nazi Germany.
‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ is a silent film, and the animation is poor and old-fashioned. In fact, the film looks like as if it had been made in 1929, not 1942. At least the short sheds a light on how the military government sold its actions to the Japanese public: with lies and seeds of fear. And while in 1945 the Soviet Union did declare war on Japan (on August 9, after the U.S. had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Japan was on the brink of collapse), the Soviet air attack never materialized.
Watch ‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ is available on the DVD-box set ‘Japanese Anime Classic Collection’
Director: Hugh Harman
Release Date: December 9, 1939
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Peace on Earth’ is a Christmas cartoon, but a highly unusual one.
With ‘Peace on Earth’ Hugh Harman daringly combines the world of cute animals to gloomy and surprisingly realistic images of war and devastation (which, incidentally have more in common with World War I than with World War II).
It’s Christmas time, and the short opens with scenes of a village of squirrels, whose houses are made of helmets. Grandpa squirrel tells his two grandchildren what men were, for they have disappeared from the Earth. His tale is one of war (oddly between meat-eaters and vegetarians) and extermination. This section contains the grimmest war images ever put into an animated cartoon. In Harman’s world cute animals shall inherit the earth, but the film’s message is clear. Released when World War II had been going on for three months, this message came none too soon. Unfortunately, much, much worse was still to come…
‘Peace on Earth’ is a surprisingly daring film for its time, with its clear pacifistic message and dark war imagery – no ordinary feat for a Hollywood cartoon! For today’s standards the animal scenes may be too saccharine, the staging too melodramatic, and the message too obvious, but the war images and the atmosphere of doom make ‘Peace on Earth’ a film that still impresses today. The short was rightfully nominated for an Academy Award.
Watch ‘Peace on Earth’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ekaww
‘Peace on Earth’ is available on the DVD ‘Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Award-Nominated Animation: Cinema Favorites’
Director: Hugh Harman
Release Date: October 17, 1931
Stars: Bosko
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In ‘Bosko the Doughboy’ Bosko is a soldier during World War one.
The cartoon opens spectacularly with several war scenes, including an enemy soldier firing his automatic gun at the audience. The cartoon is completely plotless, and Bosko actually only does three things:
- trying to cook a meal and kissing the picture of his sweetheart, before both are bombed (echoing the Oswald cartoon ‘Great Guns‘ from 1927 on which Hugh Harman had worked as an animator);
- helping an officer to get rid of his flees;
- saving a hippo, who has swallowed a bomb, by zipping its body open.
The cartoon is remarkably violent, and there’s a lot of killing going on. For example, we watch literally a dog being shot to pieces. Because all the animals involved still have mechanical bodies (a legacy of Harman and Ising’s work on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit), pain is never suggested, and the violence remains cartoony. For example, the dog, after being shot, just walks away much shorter, while a bird with a hole in his body only collapses because he’s supposed to, not because he’s in pain.
Nevertheless, there’s little to enjoy in Bosko’s World War I cartoon, and even when fought out by practically invulnerable animals, it remains a disturbing event.
Watch ‘Bosko the Doughboy’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Bosko the Doughboy’ is available on the DVD ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: March 13, 1942
Stars: Popeye
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Fleets of Stren’th’ is the third in a series of cartoons in which Popeye has joined the American navy.
In this cartoon Popeye still is a lousy sailor, but when the battle cruiser is under attack, he once again shows what he’s able to do (see also ‘Blunder Below‘). This time the battle cruiser is attacked by a squad of Japanese dive bombers. It takes some time before Popeye is able to eat his spinach, but when he does, he turns into a plane himself, defeating the complete enemy fleet.
In this process we see only one pilot, the other planes are subtly dehumanized. In this way we’ll never think of the fate of the Japanese pilots, at all. This was a clever device used in many war propaganda films of the time.
Watch ‘Fleets of Stren’th’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This Popeye film No. 104
To the previous Popeye film: Blunder Below
To the next Popeye film: Pip-Eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 