Flowers and Trees (1932)

Disney's first Silly Symphonies cartoon made with three-strip Technicolor is a trippy bit of business that won the first Oscar for animated short. Basically the plot to the cartoon is that the trees, flowers, mushrooms, and forest creatures are all exercising and dancing and whatever when a fight breaks out between two male trees over a female tree. Yeah I just typed that. From there things get even weirder as we get arson, bird rainmakers, and a character burning to death! It's bizarre but in an awesome way. The animation is excellent for its time. The Technicolor pops as much today as I would imagine it did when it was first released. Disney has really done a marvelous job at maintaining and restoring their old cartoons. The music is upbeat and cheerful. It's a charming old short that's just offbeat enough to appeal even to today's audiences, I think. By the way, early in the short when the mushrooms first pop up through the ground, take notice of what they look like and tell me the animators didn't slide a little dirty joke in there.

A bunch of sentient trees, who you might sort of recognize from Toontown, and some flowers awaken on a sunny meadow and begin their daily ritual. As with most Silly Symphonies is all set to the timing of the music, but as an animation showcase it is still rather impressive by modern standards. The world the plants inhabit is very pretty and bright, and the characterization is amusing.I was hoping that the fire effects might lead to something like the Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia but it never really gets that far. Still one of the better Silly Symphonies and notable for a bizarre scene in which two trees get married (they fade out before the tree love-making).

Wow, this is the first cartoon ever to be in colour and the first to get an Oscar. What a great landmark in animation history. I can definitely see why it earned such an award, I thought every moment was wonderful. I love this Silly Symphony. To me, certain earlier entries in the series such as the black and white Springtime and some of the more vibrant entries of the seasons themed shorts, while all having their good points, were very poor and severely hampered by the lack of colour. To me it's like they took what was best about all those somewhat failures and put it all together to make this beauty. It never bored me. I know exactly what Silly Symphonies I've found to be terrible and dated and this one definitely does not rank among them. I can see that they must have reused some of the ideas of the living flowers to much better effect later on with Alice in Wonderland. The only thing I didn't really like was the romance part of it. I felt that the whole damsel in distress thing was old.(maybe not then!) I thought that the alluring burlesque girl tree's "hair" made her look a bit like the Bride of Frankenstein! Anyway, I thought living trees were quite interesting and special enough on their own without needing any lovey- dovey stuff thrown in. But at eight minutes I guess there had to something for the tale to center on. Upon seeing the trees I immediately thought of the apple-tossing meanies from The Wizard of Oz! There's only one baddie in this though. Sometimes with these shorts, while most of them not directly being fairy tales, they do have themes and elements of classic fairy tales in them, and some of this one reminded me a little bit of the Brave Little Tin Soldier-with the evil jealous dead tree in place of the jack in the box. Hey, with ferns like that, who needs anemones!(ha-ha) I actually felt a bit sorry for the one bad tree, I thought it was mildly shocking when he lies dead at the end, killed by his own hubris as it were! Goodness, Disney sure played hardball way back in those more "innocent" times didn't they! I thought a much nicer and more memorable way to go would have been if the character would have been cured of his wickedness somehow, and made to look like the rest of the trees. But that's probably just me. I thought the owl that acted as a fire siren looked just like the same stupid owl from The Skeleton Dance. I like animated features that are all about nature, and I thought the whole theme of nature and of having it as the main star was a concept that they executed just beautifully. May it be evergreen forever. P.S. If you loved this I highly recommend a Merry Melody called The Blue Danube.

This is one of many so-called "Silly Symphonies" that Walt Disney Pictures made in the 30s and they were very, very popular. Given how much cartoons have changed, this film wouldn't play nearly as well today as it did then. Cartoons in the 30s tended to be rather schmaltzy and lacked the insane humor and pacing of classic cartoons of the 40s and 50s. Remember that at the time this film was made, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry (the MGM ones--not the earlier series by the same name) and Tex Avery's shenanigans were still in the future. So, while audiences in later years might have been a bit put off by the style of film that FLOWERS AND TREES represent, in its time it was big...real big. Big enough to earn an Oscar as Best Animated Short.The film consists of classical style music accompanying scenes of anthropomorphic (people-like) trees and flowers dancing, frolicking and eventually being attacked by the dreaded fire. As I said, most of it very sappy but I did like the adorable mushrooms (Disney seemed to have a knack for this--see FANTASIA for more great mushrooms). However, the artwork is tops for the time and it is diverting. It's also the first three-color Technicolor short to win the Oscar--but it's also very old fashioned and will probably bore many viewers.