Rhythm in the Ranks

With the Oscars coming up a few days from now, I thought I'd review some animated shorts that were nominated for that award for the year 1941 culminating in the winner. This was the first George Pal Puppetoon to get the nod. In this one, there are toy soldiers in formation of which one of them is in charge of bringing the cannon for a drill. That one soldier gets distracted by a girl figure skating while pulling his arsenal so they spend some time together. There's a few more things that go on but I'll just say that I liked most of it especially with the choice of music playing throughout. There's actually more than the usual five that were listed among the nominees for the Academy Award so I'll try to get to all of them before the ceremony begins next Sunday...

There is something quite Christmassy about this charming little stop-motion animation. A soldier gets distracted from dragging a great big cannon by an ice skater and so he goes to join her for some fun. Realising that he was now late for parade, he hurries back to his barracks but he forgets the gun! Dismissed in disgrace, he is reduced to painting everything he can get his brush to with camouflage paint. That's just as well, because the screwball army have just declared war, and they look like they are going to wipe the floor with his erstwhile colleagues. Can he save the day and maybe even get the gal? I quite enjoyed this, especially the quite cleverly crafted ice dance routine and some of the action scenes at the end are skilfully put together, too. If you like a bit of Hans Christian Anderson set to music with mischief, then you might quite like this.

A toy soldier charged with towing out the cannon is distracted by a Dutch doll ice skating between trees. Instead of doing his duty, he joins her. He finds himself stuck defending alone after the invading army has routed the rest of his forces.

George Pal's first Oscar-nominated short is filled with good gags -- a few of which might have upset the Hays Office, if they ever paid attention to such trifles. George Pal's fine stop-motion short is not just well made. It is a throwback to earlier techniques, the "synchronized animation" that was used when sound first invaded cartoons, but before they had figured out how to animate mouths.

But don't worry about stuff like that. Enjoy.