From a story by the great Frank Tashlin, who would go on to make live action cartoons with the likes of Jerry Lewis, this is one of the best of the early bugs Bunnies. A parody of, ooh, everything from FANTASIA, BAMBI, the patronising populising of high culture, to an expression of genuine wartime anxieties, it proves how animation can offer truths more 'serious' films cannot.
THe film is framed as one of those light classics concerts in which an inept conductor tries to explain the evening's programme, but is persistantly defeated by his cheap tux. His battle with his suit is slapstick fun, but also points to the ossification and impoverishment of music etc. by bourgeois respectability.
Like FANTASIA in miniature, the short offers two pieces of animation, choreographed to classical music (both Strauss waltzes, nothing too heavy). THe first, Tales of the Vienna Woods, is the usual Bugs fiasco, where he is chased in a forest by Elmer and a big dog. THis is always fun, but is given added piquancy by the recreation of the forest, which has all the living richness of fairy tale illustrations, and by the film's movement, which is choreographed to the music's rhythm, and reaches delirious heights of hysteria.
THe second, superior segment, The Blue Danube, features the young Daffy Duck, a lonely orphan bird who is rejected by a snooty family of swans. When the young chicks (or whatever) are abducted by a vulture, Daffy comes to the rescue, and is welcomed, if problematically, into the family.
THese segments work on a number of levels. The pieces of music chosen are very famous sentimental impressions of nature - the cartoons reveal a vicious dog-eat-dog (or pig and dog eat rabbit) world of violence and terror. The vulture scenes are as chilling as anything in BAMBI.
To say that nature is a self-generating abbatoir still lets us off the hook. But we must remember the year of the film's production, 1943. THe waltzes of Strauss might be among the most beloved fruits of the Teutonic imagination, but that imagination was currently engaged in the destruction of civilisation and nature across the continent. The scenes with the vulture rounding up the chicks have a very disturbing resonance.
BUt when Daffy rescues them, he turns terrifyingly into a being half shark, half fighter airplane. Contemporary US propaganda films showed the belated war effort as a noble and necessary calling; the questioning films only came when it was safe. BUt here was a cartoon tacitly admitting that the defence of civilisation involves a certain loss of that civilisation, a descent into the barbarity it seeks to exterminate. It is a brief moment, and there is a happy ending, but Daffy's reintergration at the end is not complete - this brilliant cartoon is unerringly prescient.
THe film is framed as one of those light classics concerts in which an inept conductor tries to explain the evening's programme, but is persistantly defeated by his cheap tux. His battle with his suit is slapstick fun, but also points to the ossification and impoverishment of music etc. by bourgeois respectability.
Like FANTASIA in miniature, the short offers two pieces of animation, choreographed to classical music (both Strauss waltzes, nothing too heavy). THe first, Tales of the Vienna Woods, is the usual Bugs fiasco, where he is chased in a forest by Elmer and a big dog. THis is always fun, but is given added piquancy by the recreation of the forest, which has all the living richness of fairy tale illustrations, and by the film's movement, which is choreographed to the music's rhythm, and reaches delirious heights of hysteria.
THe second, superior segment, The Blue Danube, features the young Daffy Duck, a lonely orphan bird who is rejected by a snooty family of swans. When the young chicks (or whatever) are abducted by a vulture, Daffy comes to the rescue, and is welcomed, if problematically, into the family.
THese segments work on a number of levels. The pieces of music chosen are very famous sentimental impressions of nature - the cartoons reveal a vicious dog-eat-dog (or pig and dog eat rabbit) world of violence and terror. The vulture scenes are as chilling as anything in BAMBI.
To say that nature is a self-generating abbatoir still lets us off the hook. But we must remember the year of the film's production, 1943. THe waltzes of Strauss might be among the most beloved fruits of the Teutonic imagination, but that imagination was currently engaged in the destruction of civilisation and nature across the continent. The scenes with the vulture rounding up the chicks have a very disturbing resonance.
BUt when Daffy rescues them, he turns terrifyingly into a being half shark, half fighter airplane. Contemporary US propaganda films showed the belated war effort as a noble and necessary calling; the questioning films only came when it was safe. BUt here was a cartoon tacitly admitting that the defence of civilisation involves a certain loss of that civilisation, a descent into the barbarity it seeks to exterminate. It is a brief moment, and there is a happy ending, but Daffy's reintergration at the end is not complete - this brilliant cartoon is unerringly prescient.
