A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
Hamelin Town is beset with an infestation of rats and the harried Mayor is only too glad to offer THE PIED PIPER a bag of gold to rid them of the plague. But once the rodents are removed, the Mayor reneges on his promise, leaving the Piper to take a most effective revenge...
This cartoon offers a good interpretation of the story from the famous Robert Browning poem. Notice how some of the elements of the original have been altered by Disney: the rats no longer drown, they are simply made to vanish into thin air; and the Hamelin children are shown to be used almost as slave labor by their parents, making their removal by the Piper more like a rescue.
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.
