Der Vetter vom Lande

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

Mouse Abner, THE COUNTRY COUSIN from Podunk, arrives in the big city to taste some of the high life enjoyed by his sophisticated cousin, Monty. Enjoying the viands of a banquet table - most especially the champagne - Abner is soon to encounter his first big city cat...

With the delightful Abner the center of attention, this fun, fast-paced cartoon spoof of Aesop's Fable easily became the 1936 Academy Award recipient.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

So what if this is, as another reviewer noted, the stuff of a hundred Tom and Jerry cartoons to come? The character animation is the real attraction here, and it's excellent. This is some of the best drunken mouse animation I've ever seen, and that's saying something.

It's true, they've turned the actual storyline into a goofy succession of tabletop gags with a chaotic climax tacked on (much like the one to appear at the end of the Pink Elephants sequence in Dumbo), and so the short as a whole is somewhat less satisfying than it could be, but the individual sequences are all nice - I particularly liked the bit with the sliced bread, and the mirror routine straight out of Duck Soup. Monty just sort of disappears at the end, doesn't he? Oh well, so maybe it's not the most memorable thing ever, but it's still a polished piece of cartoonery, to be sure.

This Disney short is well-executed visually (as you might expect from Disney in the 1930s) but isn't really all that memorable or impressive for all that. I'm frankly somewhat puzzled at its nomination for an Academy Award and more puzzled that it won. Perhaps it was more impressive in 1936 than it is today. It isn't a bad cartoon-there just isn't anything exceptional about it that struck me other than the visuals. It runs from time to time on the Ink and Paint Club.

This Walt Disney Silly Symphony cartoon won the Academy Award for 1936. Adopted from an Aesop Fables tale, The Country Cousin has the title character-a mouse-visiting his city counterpart at his 66 1/2 address. Then they go to a big buffet table where the country mouse gets in lots of his hunger and thirst in quick succession...Quite amusing if not hilarious though I did heartily laugh quite a bit. In other words, nothing too slapsticky but plenty of gently visual gags that made this quite entertaining in the usual Disney manner. It's probably a little rushed at the end but overall, The Country Cousin is still worth a look for anyone who loves all things animation and Disney.

For those wondering why this would win an Academy Award, consider the year and the level of action animation. The dinner table scene is excellent, with all the possibilities. The mice are really excellent personalities, each with their own beings. Yes, the plot is simple. It's one of those portrayals of the grass always being greener. It's the classic Aesop's Fable of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse.