Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Swing You Sinners (1930)



I just learned how to embed a YouTube video, so I figured why not take a moment to showcase some classic animation? This is a Fleischer short from before the more famed days of Bettie Boop and Popeye. It features a bopping jazz soundtrack, great visual gags, and lots of surreal animation—all the elements Fleischer Studios is best known for. Be sure to watch it to the very end, as there is a really bizarre finale. The Animation Archive offers a Quicktime version with less compression: view it here. They also have this to say about it:

One of the films preserved with the assistance of ASIFA-Hollywood was the classic Fleischer Talkartoon, Swing, You Sinners. Animated by Ted Sears and Willard Bowsky, with an eye-popping surreal ending by Grim Natwick and Bowsky, this film was the first of many Fleischer cartoons that mixed surrealism, cartoony ghosts & goblins, and hot jazz. While other studios built their cartoons around fairy tale stories or topical gags, the Fleischers constructed cartoons in the same way jazz music was constructed... statement of the theme, a series of variations and a big finish.

1 comment:

DB Dowd said...

Thanks for posting this--what a blast. Plastic morbidity in cartoon-world!