A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
The denizens of the North Pole are engaged in ARCTIC ANTICS. The penguins, seals, polar bear, and even a large walrus are marching about, jumping & dancing & slapping their bottoms an amazing number of times...
This black & white cartoon has an invisible plot and is basically an exercise in action/reaction animation. The Disney animators seem to know a curiously large number of posterior gags. Notice that the face of the polar bear cub enjoys a remarkable resemblance to that of Mickey Mouse.
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.