Night

Disney brings us a symphony at nighttime. We see the creatures of the night, from owls, to mosquitos, to frogs doing their respective things. The animation is nicely coordinated with sound and the black and white is dazzling. We are taken on a ride that might later be made into live action nature films by the Disney company.

This is an entry in the Silly Symphonies series released by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:

The pairing of music and animation in this short is excellent and some of the gags are quite funny. The moon at the beginning struck me as less a Disney touch and more like what would be done with the bouncing ball in sing-along cartoons, It's the biggest misfire in this short. It truly doesn't fit in very well.

Various insects dance around to appropriate music. The short is basically bookended by a tale of two courtships, with mixed results. An owl seeks to court a lady owl, starting out well, until he goes a touch too far and blows his chances. The short closes with frogs, with a frog courting his sweetie and a chorus of frogs "singing". The courting frogs go dancing off on lily pads. The end is good, if predictable.

This short is available on the Disney Treasures More Silly Symphonies DVD set. This short and the set are worth tracking down. Recommended.

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

A jolly moon announces the beginning of NIGHT. Owls, mosquitoes, fireflies & frogs all join in the evening's romantic, tuneful frolics.

A humorous black & white cartoon. The Symphonies reliance on music to motivate action is clearly seen (and heard) here, with `The Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz,' `Glow-Worm,' `The Mosquito Parade,' `Rock-a-bye Baby,' & `Go To Sleep, My Baby' all heard on the soundtrack in rapid succession.

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.

This is yet another black & white short cartoon from the "More Silly Symphonies" collection from Disney. These consist of early cartoons that feature characters dancing about to music instead of the more familiar characters like Mickey and Minnie. At the time, they were quite popular and often imitated--and rival studios began naming their products with very similar sounding names such as "Merry Melodies" and "Happy Harmonies"--and having very similar sorts of stories--though the animation and overall quality just wasn't quite as good.

"Night" features night creatures such as fireflies as well as the moon and other non-anamorphic things cavorting about to the music. In general, the animation quality of this one didn't seem quite as good as most of the other films in the series. In particular, the frogs looked a bit...cheesy and poorly drawn. Also, there really is no discernible plot--none. These make "Night" one of the poorest entries in the series.

I have made it obvious many times before that I do love the Disney Silly Symphonies. But I don't consider Night one of their best. It does have luscious shading and lovely background art, with the standouts being the opening scene and with the lightning bugs, and the music itself, mainly the use of Strauss' On the Beautiful Blue Danube, is full of beauty and energy. The gags are more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny but good all the same. The characters are cute too. However, Night, in a similar vein to the Silly Symphonies Four Seasons quartet, is virtually plot-less with not much interesting happening in the story other than to introduce the characters, music and such, and the scene with the buck-tooth moon(who intentionally sings terribly) I felt took away from the basic tone of the cartoon, which is quite simple and sweet but this scene juxtaposed too much coming across as silly. Most of the characters were well animated, but the frogs weren't quite on the same level coming across as stiff at times. Overall it is good, quite charming and interesting but it lacks something. 7/10 Bethany Cox