Cousin de campagne

Walt Disney's October 1936 "The Country Cousin" won the 9th Academy Awards Best Animated Short Film for the year. As part of Disney's 'Silly Symphony' series, the nine-minute film, directed by Wilfred Jackson, concerns the hick-from-the-sticks mouse Podunk, who pays a visit to his sophisticated cousin Abner living in the city. His lack of refinement is visible when Abner shows him a normal human food dining table display in the household he's living in. Like an uncivilized barbarian, Podunk attacks the food while finishing it off with Champagne. The mouse gets drunk and ends up in all sorts of trouble.

The entire narrative takes place without a word heard between the two mice. "The characters are developed through body language," notes film reviewer Dave Sindelar, "and with a bit of help from the musical score." Years later, Disneyland Records recreated an audio version of "The Country Cousins" with actor Sterling Holloway narrating a 30-minute story wrapped around the 1936 cartoon. The 1961 vinyl LP record was issued as part of a record label subsidiary Walt's older brother Roy convince him to establish in 1956.

When his cousin from the sticks decides not to be an hick and come to the slickness of the city to stay with his cousin, "Abner" arrives and is immediately causing chaos as he's let loose on a grand dining table where he quickly discovers that mustard and champagne don't mix! Terrified that he is going to wreck the place, "Monty" tries to reign him in and that just introduces him to a very hungry cat who, as it turns out, isn't immune to large voltages! It's end-to-end stuff with loads of cheekily detailed animation whizzing along and though perhaps it plays a little too much to the country bumpkin stereotype, there's still plenty of enjoyable mischief on display here.

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.

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.