El Taller de Santa

It's crazy to think that this short is from the early '30s. Like a lot of Silly Symphony shorts, unless you are big into Disney, you wouldn't automatically assume this was a Disney production. Once you take a closer look at the film and the jokes within it, you can see the quality of production and, if you're like me, find it hard to believe that the film was created in the 1930s. The gags are funny, the animation is good, and this image of Santa is used quite a bit, even today within the Disney world.

This is a very good short and the animation is the quality you expect from Disney in this time-period. But it isn't one of the best Disney did in the 1930s, which should give you an idea just how great Disney was in the 1930s. No one else could consistently even come close to them until about 1938 or 1939. Other studios were doing good work, but until Disney started focusing more on features, they were all but alone at the top in terms of animated shorts. Well worth tracking down. Recommended.

In 1932 Disney became producing shorts in colour thanks to the three-striped colour process (beginning with FLOWER AND TREES). Among the few other colour shorts from 1932 we have the first of the two Silly Symphonies about Santa Claus (the other being THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 1933).

This short gives us a close look on what happens in the North Pole the day before Christmas. The dwarvs are cleaning the sleigh and feed the reindeers, and while Santa checks the list of who is naughty and who is nice, they work on the toys for the children of all world.

With a simple plot, nice colours and catchy music, this is among the best Disney shorts of its era and it's perfect to watch during the Christmas period.

As the 1932 Christmas holiday was approaching, Walt Disney provided his fans with the first all-color cartoon of Santa Claus. In December 1932's "Santa's Workshop," the Silly Symphony short became an annual tradition in the nation's theaters during the holiday season. The cartoon was later incorporated into a Disney Production anthology television Christmas 1958 special, 'From All of Us to All of You,' a feature film that is especially embraced by Sweden and Norway, and shown annually in both countries each Christmas Eve.

"Santa's Workshop" shows Santa and his elves preparing for the big night where the gifts in the old man's will be carried by his reindeer to be delivered to all the boys and girls throughout the world. Disney's Santa is a micromanager, taking interest in the quality of all the elves' work, testing them out to make sure everything works properly. As one of cinema's first marketing campaigns, Disney allowed downtown merchants throughout the nation to set up window displays with screenshots from "Santa's Workshop," enticing holiday shoppers to buy Disney toys. A sequel the following year, 1933's 'The Night Before Christmas,' another 'Silly Symphony' installment, gave Disney a one-two punch by expanding the joys of the holiday season to movie goers by having the theaters show back-to-back stunning Christmas-themed Technicolor cartoons.

This is the sort of Disney film that played very, very well back in the day but today it would certainly not be received so warmly. This short is a snippet of the North Pole and Santa's workshop. It has little in the way of actual plot and mostly consists of singing and cuteness. Today, it would probably be seen as very saccharine and bland. Additionally, there are some unnecessary but typical racial stereotypes that will offend today but were considered perfectly normal back in the day. So, with all this going against it, why do I give this a 9? Well, the animation is simply gorgeous and it's in full Technicolor-- and nothing from any of the rival studios of the day came close when it came to quality. It simply looks great. Worth seeing even today but not up to the standards of many of the other Disney shorts of the day in regard to story.