10/10
Disney Gives Us A Bizet Burlesque
1 November 2000
A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

A vile officer takes liberties with a barmaid, who is the girlfriend of EL TERRIBLE TOREADOR. The bullfighter then proceeds to proudly show-off his skills in the bullring.

An interesting & somewhat violent little black & white cartoon, with a great many of Disney's obligatory posterior gags. Most of the music, appropriately, is from Bizet's Carmen. The surprisingly gynandrous bull could almost be seen as a precursor of the celebrated Ferdinand.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. 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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