El Danubio Azul

Beautifully done! No credit to the singer?? Anyone know who she was?

This is a 7 minute MGM cartoon. Various woodland beings work to harvest blue from different sources to add to the Danube river turning it blue. It's all being done while The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss is played in the background. It's very classical. It probably needs a lead character of some sort although I don't see this continuing with different songs. I guess the river fairy is the lead. Maybe she can work on other rivers.

The plot is something about faries and elves or whatever making the Danube blue to the tune of the Strauss waltz of the same name. Yada yada yada. The real story is the naked (and I mean NAKED) rotoscoped girl at the beginning and the end of this one. The first time I saw this one I flipped and I still flip whenever I see it. Amazing.

Generally speaking, I'm not usually as impressed by M-G-M's 'Happy Harmony' shorts as much as the other shorts that they turned out during their era. Although they were beautifully illustrated & animated, and made full use of the Technicolor of the time, the plot lines were predictable & pedestrian (how many times do you want to see cute little forest creatures being terrorized by a bear or a wolf?). 'The Blue Danube',from 1939 is the exception to the rule. Like the H.H. shorts, it is a feast for both the visual & auditory senses. The artwork is beautiful to look at,the animation is smooth,the use of colour is to die for. The plot is how the Danube came to be as blue as the title suggests. The music is (no big surprise)Straus's 'The Blue Danube Waltz'. This short was produced nearly a year before Disney's 'Fantasia' (1940)incorporated animation with classical music (a medium that was,and would be used for years to come). Seek this short out,if you consider animation to be an art form.

One of the earliest animation-set-to-classical-music cartoons(pre-Fantasia) and also to me one of the finest. One where the animation, music and mood of the cartoon is so brilliantly done that one can ignore the lack of plot and originality(both of which The Blue Danube was never about in the first place).

What immediately stuck out as particularly great with The Blue Danube is the animation, The Blue Danube has to be one of the most beautiful-looking 30s(and perhaps even ever) non-Disney cartoons, and some of in the second half of the cartoon shows some good visual imagination. Particularly striking about the animation is the most exquisite use of colour I've ever seen in a cartoon and the effortlessly graceful movements on the Fairy, the rotoscoped design blending with the traditionally drawn backgrounds without jarring a jot. The colourful and meticulously drawn background art cannot be overlooked either.

Also outstanding is the music. The music, which for the entirety of the cartoon is the On the Beautiful Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss II(aka. The Waltz King), is one of those cases where one runs out of superlatives describing how good it is. It is a wonderful piece of music, one of the composer's most famous works for good reason, and has been used to iconic effect before in animation(i.e. A Corny Concerto) and in films(i.e. 2001: A Space Odyssey), it is also used brilliantly here and merges with the visuals without fault.

The animation and music are what make The Blue Danube, but the cartoon's sense of mood and the feeling one gets out of it are wonderfully done too. As said before, one shouldn't expect much from the story structurally, structurally the cartoon is pretty thin(one of those cases here though where that is not a bad thing) and not much new. That's completely forgivable though because the cartoon is never dull, it has a very natural flow and there is a real sense of harmony throughout.

The Blue Danube is also very high in charm and imagination(loved the idea of how the Danube turned blue, imaginative and didn't dissolve into silliness), the characters are among early animation's most adorable(without being too cutesy or sickly sweet), there's some cool imaginative animation with the dam and one's left grinning from ear to ear and in a good mood throughout the whole seven minutes(that's how happy The Blue Danube makes you feel during and after watching). There's no dialogue, meaning that the animation and music have more room to shine, and shine they certainly do.

In conclusion, one of the most beautiful cartoons ever made. 10/10 Bethany Cox