The Cats Bah

Sometimes when I watch movies or cartoons, I feel a little bit like I'm spying on the characters. In "The Cats Bah", they put sort of a spin on that idea, as Pepe Le Pew starts out by speaking to the camera. While the Looney Tunes do that fairly often, Pepe hands the viewer champagne and a cigarette and an unidentified person - we don't even see the person's hand, though the person smokes and drinks - accepts them. After this, he goes into the story of how he chased American cat Penelope (whom he believed to be a belle femme skunk) through the casbah in what was probably Morocco. There were plenty of gags along the way.

So, it's a pretty entertaining cartoon. And that cigarette really made Pepe seem more French than ever. I mean, isn't it our stereotype of French men as foul-smelling lovers who smoke a lot? Worth seeing.

Yeah, camels do need to be ready for just about anything.

This one, like all the best Pepe Le Pew cartoons, depends principally on verbal humor rather than sight gags for most of the laughs (though the last gag is a sight gag that ends this one perfectly) and some of the jokes are obvious, while a few are subtle word play, such as the "ze bonds of slavery" line, when Pepe "frees" Penelope, to her horror. Pepe, like a great many folks throughout time, deludes himself. His delusion, charmingly enough, is that he is "ze great lover". That he continues his efforts in spite of his massive lack of success is either a tribute to perseverance or an indication of greater psychological trauma and detachment. I prefer the former theory. After all, to paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon." Good to excellent jokes make this a must see. Recommended.

Specifically, "The Cat's Bah" bears more than a passing resemblance to "The Continental," a television series of that era in which an actor named Renzo Cesana played an amorous type who offers champagne and cigarettes (and says supposedly-romantic things) to an unseen woman in his apartment, represented by the camera. That is essentially the setup for this cartoon. While funny enough, perhaps the ultimate Pepe cartoon, it is somewhat dated, not only in the presence of cigarettes but his overall treatment of females (in this case, a cat). It is perhaps no wonder that the cartoon has been so chopped up for television airing.

"The Cat's Bah" is another cartoon favorite starring Pepe le Pew after watching the 1938 movie "Algiers," which gave some inspiration for Pepe's character. Also I had wondered what the Casbah is in the phrase "Come with me to the Casbah."

This cartoon is basically Pepe being interview about "the greatest love" of his life, and as his story unfolds we see him meet Penelope Pussycat as a pet of an American tourist; then white paint splats on her back from a ship painter's brush. This cartoon was also the first one in which Penelope's name was mention, and was officially given the name ever since.

As I had said before: I do not have one particular scene I like because I love this cartoon from beginning to end.

I do like Pepe LePew, though I do think he is the sort of character that you appreciate more as an adult. The Cats Bah is one of his best, I'd say second only to For Scent-imental Reasons(my personal favourite). Pepe is just wonderful here, I love how out there and self-ironic he is and if you do as well you'll be more than satisfied. If you are familiar with Pepe's cartoons, you know where it is going to go from the start most of the time but they are always entertaining. When it comes to the animation, it is one of Pepe's most stylish and charmingly elegant and the colours are beautiful. The music also works perfectly, there's the unmistakable Looney Tunes musical wit but also a French amorous flavour which sets the tone beautifully. This is true for most Pepe cartoons actually. The Cat's Bah relies more on verbal humour than gags, though the gags especially the ending are imaginative. But the dialogue is deliciously witty and really fabulously written, you're also left impressed at how risqué it sounds sometimes as well. All in all, very, very good and one of Pepe's best. 9/10 Bethany Cox