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Ugly Duckling (1939)
A little masterpiece
The last of the "Silly Symphonies","The Ugly Duckling" demonstrates the heights that Walt Disney and his artists had reached by the late 1930s and early 1940s. In just eight or nine minutes, and without a word of dialogue, we are presented with Hans Andersen's wistful fairy-tale. Exquisite drawings by animators including Milt Kahl and Eric Larson (both of whom would provide major contributions to the feature-length "Bambi")and lush watercolour layouts by David Hilberman combine with elegant camera movement and a lilting score by Albert Hay Malotte to create a miniature jewel of animation. The scene where the little duckling plays affectionately with the wooden decoy duck because it is the only thing in the world not to reject it, is one of the saddest in all cinema. The great Warner Bros animator Chuck Jones acclaimed "The Ugly Duckling" as one of the greatest short subjects ever made - and indeed, it is.
The Chinese Nightingale (1935)
Charming MGM cartoon.
A charming piece in the "Happy Harmonies" cartoon series made by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising for MGM. Loosely adapted from Hans Andersen's fairy-tale "The Emperor's Nightingale", it tells the story of a Chinese emperor and the little nightingale who sings to him each day. The two are inseparable until the emperor receives a music box containing a beautiful wind-up mechanical nightingale and becomes obsessed with it, to the neglect of his old friend. When the emperor nearly loses his old friend, he eventually comes to realise his love for her.
This short cartoon has the lavish look MGM gave to all their products in the 1930s, with charming scenery designed in a Hollywood "chinoiserie" manner; all pagodas, terracotta vases and cherry blossoms. The racial caricaturing of the emperor and his subjects (along with the three little geishas who narrate the tale) is of its time.