10/10
Disney Visits Penguin Island
22 October 2000
A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

Peter & Polly, a couple of PECULIAR PENGUINS, share a romance of frigid delights on Antarctica's Penguin Island. Their happiness is soon threatened, however, by the arrival of a ferocious shark...

A pleasant cartoon with cute characters, but no great significance. This was the type of animation which, by this time, the Disney artists could do in their sleep.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. 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.
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