Wednesday, February 1, 2012

015 The Birdman



Title: The Bird Man
Studio: Columbia
Date: 02/01/35
Credits:
Story
Ben Harrison
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Manny Gould
Allen Rose
Harry Love
Series: Krazy Kat
Running time (of viewed version): 6:52
Commercial DVD Availability: -

Synopsis: Cat learns to fly, is slowly accepted by birds, and strikes head.
















Comments: Parrots were more important in '35 than '39. Santa had been trapped in the chimney, like in Gremlins (the '80s feature, not some cartoon)... Krazy is a generic '30s character, trapped in his (the animated one is male, right, not just a butch female with a girlfriend?) '30s barnyard milieu. Interesting subtext; a flying cat is likely to be very good at eating birds. Pleasing sectored shot of the mother bird on the phone. Krazy should be claiming to be a bird cat, not a bird man. Some young bird has a peg leg... Belly dancing worm and a fan dancing bird. The story moves hither and thither with abandon.

5 comments:

  1. Yay! Glad you're back. I think of all your cartoon blogs this one's my favorite. Krazy Kat is the bomb yo!

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  2. At this point the animated Krazy Kat was male. In 1936 there was the one-off effort, LI'L AINJIL, to do a Herriman type of story again—at which point Krazy is suddenly female for that one cartoon.

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  3. I have approximately no recollection of watching this cartoon. I wrote it up and screen capped it in late 2010, but I must have posted it in the last couple of months. It's kinda like watching someone else blog...

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  4. The oddest thing about THE BIRD MAN, I've just realized, is its visual design for Krazy. He's drawn in the Oswald-influenced style that Friz Freleng introduced in late 1929—which is a surprise, insofar as otherwise Columbia stopped using that design in 1934: a kind of Felix/Mickey crossbreed had replaced it in TRAPEZE ARTIST.

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  5. Wait, two kinds of cartoon cats in the same cartoon? Mind blown!

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