10/10
Academy Award Winner For Disney
30 September 2000
A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

THREE ORPHAN KITTENS, abandoned on a stormy Winter's night, make their way into a cozy, well-appointed home, where they proceed to create havoc...

This is a very cute little film and was the winner of the Oscar for Best Cartoon Short Subject for 1935. Some of the scenes use a technique called a `moving vanishing point' by animators; this gives an added depth of perception & was considered an innovation at the time. Some viewers may perceive a little racism in the character of Mammy Twoshoes. The kittens, by the way, were named Fluffy, Muffy & Tuffy by the Studio, and would return in 1936 in MORE KITTENS.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.
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