Mickey, o Maestro

In this, first color, Mickey Mouse short, he stars as a music conductor at a country fair. His band are playing, in the most average way, The William Tell overture. It gets worse though when Donald (playing a loudmouth ice-cream vendor) comes along and muscles in on the band with his flute, playing a bizarre alternate take on the music and causing the band to stray off course.

Mickey gets mad (I like it when Mickey isn't always the clean-cut good guy) and tries his best to silence Donald. Once that's out the way a bee torments each and every band member, causing further collapse of Mickey's conducting. Once Mickey turns the page on his music script a rather difficult segment of music (called 'The Storm') is revealed. How appropriate, at that very moment a twister tears thru the countryside. The band are so lost in their performance that they don't even realize they're sucked up inside a tornado. It's the highlight of the cartoon, with some truly inventive animation and technically brilliant for it's day.

Mickey doesn't actually say anything in this one but his facial expression do all the acting. Like I said, I like it when Mickey isn't always the opposite of Donald (IE not moody and easily frustrated) and this is their pairing here in this cartoon.

All budding animators should see this one. It is one of the all time great cartoons. The scene when the twister lifts the band up is transcendent. It still awes after all these years. The cartoon starts off in a light way, with donald duck interfering with the band,playing turkey in the straw against their william tell overture. The action is guided by the music, and vice versa-when mickey tries to swat a bee by waving his arms, the band play his instructions,when he gets ice cream down his pants and tries to shake it off, they play some belly dance music. There's great attention to detail in the cartoon, the music script follows the band as they fly about in the storm, when mickey is flying about and passes through a window frame the blind shuts after him. And the music is great and complements the animation perfectly. They shoulda sent this cartoon into space with the other stuff on voyager.

This short is the first one that Disney made starring Mickey in color and what a glorious way to bring the Mouse into color! This is one of the best animated shorts of all time. Often imitated, but never duplicated. Disney was at the top of the mountain as far as animation was concerned and this one is justifiably considered a classic. Well worth looking for. Most highly recommended.

A beautifully simple Disney short about Mickey Mouse trying to conduct an outdoor concert while constantly being interrupted by, among other things, Donald Duck. This was Mickey's first color cartoon and it's a fun one, despite Mickey never speaking and most of the funny bits going to Donald. What really sells the short is the absolutely stunning Technicolor, particularly for the time in which it was made. I can't say enough about how gorgeous it is. Also the animation itself is really excellent. The characters and backgrounds are all well-drawn and the action scenes are terrific. The music is also enjoyable and, of course, the humor is great. Donald was probably the funniest of the Disney characters and here that's on full display. Lots of fun for Disney fans with some jaw-dropping Technicolor that one can't help but appreciate.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

THE BAND CONCERT which Mickey is conducting in the City Park becomes a titanic contest of wills & determination as the Mouse lets absolutely nothing stop his little group from completing their performance.

Mickey Mouse made his Technicolor debut & Donald Duck became a full-fledged cinematic star in this truly classic cartoon. It is easy to read so many things into this little film - Mickey as the standard bearer for stubborn authority & Donald as the leader of the coming revolution, for example - but perhaps it's safer to leave the philosophizing to the greybeards. Walt Disney and his animators wanted nothing more than to entertain an audience for a few minutes before the main picture began. What we now recognize as one of animation's seminal moments didn't even earn an Oscar nomination at the time. It is with hindsight that true appreciation grows.

Perfection can be found in the details: Mickey's look of fierce resolve as he struggles to conduct in his oversized uniform jacket; Donald's insouciant legerdemain as he produces an endless supply of fifes; the naughty little bee which causes musical mayhem; the absorption with which Clarabelle Cow (flute), Horace Horsecollar (percussion) & Goofy (clarinet) relentlessly continue their performances; the tornado, perfectly cued to the band's music, frightening away not only the audience, but their park benches as well; Mickey, perched on his box, being swept through the storm's debris (including the detritus of a destructed home's living room) without ever missing a measure of the music. Any of these moments would have been the pride of a lesser film;here, they are simply individual gems strung together to create a stunning whole.

It is worth noting that Donald was originally slated to appear as the band's saxophonist, but Walt wanted his part expanded. The rest is history and the Duck (his unique voice supplied by Clarence Nash) never looked back. For the record, the music heard during the opening credits is from the 1831 opera Zampa, by the Frenchman Louis-Joseph-Ferdinand Herold (1791-1833). Mickey's main offering, of course, is the Overture to the 1829 opera William Tell, by the Italian Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868). 'Turkey In The Straw' is the triumphant tune played by the Duck.

THE BAND CONCERT is the perfect short subject to watch before viewing either FANTASIA (1940) or FANTASIA 2000 (1999).

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work will always pay off.