While some may find their cartoons thin on plot, cloying and too sugary sweet, to me Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.
'The Song of the Birds' is not quite one of their best, but it still has a lot of what makes Fleischer's cartoons work for me and many others in the first season. It was "re-made" in 1949 as a Little Audrey cartoon with the same title, that cartoon is one of the best and most different Little Audrey cartoons and every bit as good as this, perhaps even better due to being more elaborate and even more moving.
Even in the weaker Fleischer cartoons, the animation was always very good (often even more than that) and actually saved lesser cartoons from faring worse. It is rich and colourful, with very meticulous and beautifully drawn backgrounds and well-rendered character designs that don't look too stiff. The music is courtesy of Sammy Timberg and, like with Winston Sharples in the Little Audrey cartoon, it is hard not to love the lusciousness of the orchestration here and how characterful, atmospherically dark and whimsical the music was without going overboard in either, even better was how well it fitted in the cartoon and how it merged with the action.
For Fleischer, 'The Song of the Birds' is a dark and mournful cartoon, and often heart-wrenching. Instead of being too over-sentimental and over-didactic, it's powerful stuff with its messaging conveyed simply and effectively with no trivialising.
The boy is charming enough and actually looks like he's learnt from his mistakes, as well as affected by them, at the end, while the birds break the heart. Structurally the story is thin but the atmosphere and emotions are incredibly rich.
In conclusion, very moving and wonderful cartoon. 9/10 Bethany Cox
