A Silly Symphony Of Rats In Revue
Disney Tells The Pied Piper (1933) in Technicolor
A Disney Silly Symphony with human characters
and rats, rats, rats. The latter are abundant as to reflect over-hours
animators spent getting them drawn, crowd scenes, be they rodent or
whatever, evidence of production value in cartoons, and no one delivered
in that respect like Disney. Animals were a bulwark for those who drew, people
another matter. Mastering the human form was tough even unto Snow White, a
four-years-later sticking point at which Disney had reached artistry's summit
otherwise. I've never quite understood what makes a person so much tougher to
animate than a dog or a duck, that just showing how little I know. Are our
features so much more complex than that of animals? I know cats who are lots
more expressive than some people I know. Nice how Disney didn't flinch from
grim aspects of fairy tales: In this instance, the Piper makes off with village
children and doesn't bring them back. The Symphonies must have startled
then-audiences with bursts of three-color preceding B/W features. Disney was
exclusive using improved Technicolor for cartoons at this point and we can but
imagine impact it had.
Donald Benson explores what happened to those kids The Pied Piper led away ...
ReplyDeleteNote the careful storytelling: Disney's version makes clear the kids are being used as cheap labor; when the Piper leads them away the townfolk are not so much distraught as just annoyed. And he even cures the little lame boy before he enters the land of ice cream.
For a different take entirely, see Walter Lantz's "Pied Piper of Basin Street", where a trombonist lures the local teens with swing music. It's wildly uneven, even for a simple gag cartoon. It's on one of the DVD sets.
For the record, the original poem explains where the kids ended up:
And I must not omit to say
That, in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
To the outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbors lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterranean prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why they don't understand.