La Veillée de Noël

The Night Before Christmas (1941)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

One of the best of the early Tom and Jerry cartoon shorts. It's Christmas night and Jerry is under the tree play with the various gifts left by Santa. Soon he starts jumping on Tom thinking he's a gift and soon the two are back to their fighting ways. The third short in the series has all the classic chases that you'd expect from the series but it also has a bit more heart since this was released around the holidays. The animation is really what stands out here and especially how colorful it was. The scene under the tree are especially beautiful looking and we also get some nice laughs once the fighting starts. The ending is quite nice as the two make up and play nice for once.

This cartoon, from early on in the evolution of Tom and Jerry, isn't quite as polished as later efforts, but it's definitely one of my favourite episodes, thanks to the fact that the BBC showed it practically every Christmas Eve as I was growing up.

It's the night before Christmas, and Jerry sneaks out of his hole to play with the presents under the tree. Tom, awakened by the cheeky rodent's fun and games, tries to stop him and chaos ensues.

Perfect Xmas entertainment for the whole family, this one is full of seasonal spirit and goodwill and ends up with the cat and mouse reconciling their differences for Christmas.

I saw it after decades. And the emotion of childhood was the same, fresh, gentle, rich in joy tones.

A lovely portrait of Christmas Eve in fair - sweet colors, offering the spirit of a pure unique holliday from perspective of early ages.

Run, cruel steps of war , a young Tom and the same Jerry and the comfortable, emotional final , offering exactly the state of Christmas with family, friends , in the womb of peace and tender happiness - parts of Christmas as special moment , honorating the birth of son of God.

This detais are sources of seduction of this episode , not only nice - amusing but profound useful in profound measure.

It is the night before Christmas and Tom and Jerry have their usual fight. After a while Jerry goes outside and Tom makes sure that Jerry can't get back in. After a while Tom feels guilty and with the spirit of Christmas he lets Jerry back in. This is a cute short with Tom and Jerry with the heart on the right place. The start is also pretty funny.

Cartoon about a cat and a mouse fighting each other on Christmas Eve. I personally never liked Tom & Jerry. I found their cartoons way too violent and mean-spirited to enjoy. Also I'm a cat lover and seeing the poor cat constantly being tortured was not fun. I realize these are just cartoon characters but still...

However I DID like this. It was in bright beautiful colors (in the TCM print at least) and the violence was toned down. Also the two of them do call a truce at the end. Short, colorful and a little sweet. What surprised me is that this was supervised by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. This is a lot better than the truly awful animation they did on "The Flintstones".