Vintage Cartoon Night Line-up

Here to offer you a little background information to the fantastic cartoons that will be screened next Wednesday! 7 films from 7 different studios. The running time will be approximately an hour, plus a short intermission for refreshments.

Puss Gets the Boot (1940) [MGM]

The Oscar-nominated first instalment in MGM’s original series of 161 Tom and Jerry shorts, then named Jasper and Jinx. This cartoon is presented unedited in its original historical context; famously, the series depicts racial stereotypes that are unacceptable today. You may notice the short has a more painterly quality and the character designs are more detailed than the rest of the series.

The Band Concert (1935) [Disney]

Always among film historians’ top picks for greatest ever cartoons, The Band Concert was the first Mickey Mouse film produced in colour. It notably features an early appearance of Donald Duck who didn’t get his own series until years later.

Bimbo’s Initiation (1931) [Fleischer Studios]

The earliest film on our list and the only one in monochrome, this anarchic short seems characteristic of the era. Surprisingly experimental, it marks the invention of cartoon tropes that return time and time again throughout animation history (such as the door behind door behind door trope). Look out for another early appearance of a popular cartoon character.

Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950) [UPA]

This Academy Award winning short based on a story by Dr Seuss was a deliberate breakaway from Disney-style cartoon realism. It has a very 50s look: gorgeously stylized and minimalistic. It changed the critical opinion of “limited animation” that would become the basis of the TV shows we grew up watching, proving the genre’s artistic merit.

Winny-Puh (1969) [Soyuzmultifilm, SOV]

This adorable soviet adaptation of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories is as much-loved as the Disney adaptation is to western audiences. Based almost word-for-word on the Russian translation of the books, many critics have argued the characterization more faithfully resembles Milne’s original creations. A glimpse at the popular soviet drawing style that begs the question how such a heavy-handed regime can produce such loving-crafted animation.

Creature Comforts (1989) [Aardman, UK]

Nick Park’s seminal stop-motion short ingeniously creates lovable characters from real-life interviews. Bagging the Academy Award for best animated short, Aardman’s (thoroughly British) nuanced style would find further success with Wallace and Gromit, making Bristol the world-capital of stop-motion animation.

What’s Opera, Doc? (1957) [Warner Bros.]

This is the big one. We’re reserving judgment, but it is almost universally agreed by animation historians that this is the greatest cartoon ever produced. A Bugs Bunny parody of Wagner’s operas, it is definitely the epic magnum opus of Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes career. You will almost certainly leave the screening shouting, “Kill the wabbit!”

/ Frederick