Now You See It

I have marveled in past reviews of the Pete Smith shorts how it is that MGM made so many and a couple of them received Oscars since the narration by producer Pete Smith is so incredibly annoying. Listening to him is like listening to some vain relative who insists on boring you with their stale old jokes...and Smith's are indeed stale. What is unusual, however, is that this short is in color--the only one I've ever seen in color.

Although I'll quickly admit that I hated "Now You See It" whenever Smith spoke, there still is quite a bit to recommend this film. It's all about the use of micro and macro photography and is downright interesting when you see various ordinary things up very, very close. I loved seeing how incredibly tiny the hummingbird baby was but my favorite (wow!) was seeing a cat's tongue. Truly fascinating. Well worth seeing even if Smith was a very annoying host.

A Smith called Pete narrates this Oscar-Nominated short subject about microcinematography. As he notes, that's a mouthful, so let's break it down into shorter words: it's a film that shows off films of small things. Those are not only shorter, they're words of one syllable each. My, my!

It falls into the category of Smith's informative shorts. He doesn't stint himself of his trademark snark, even the stuff directed at himself. Even almost 80 years later, these color images are still interesting. They include growing mosquitos, a cat's tongue, and similar stuff. Although, thanks to things like x-ray photography, we can now photograph atoms, this is still and interesting short subject.

Now You See It (1947)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated, Pete Smith short takes a look at microphotography as well as macrophotography. The earliest definition of this camera format was describe as centering the entire 35mm frame on one small part of an object, which in return would allow you to see that small object up close and unlike previous photography. In this short we see a wide range of objects ranging from a baby hummingbird to insects and even a huge item, which turns out to be a small wristwatch. There's nothing overly special about this short but it does make for a good way to kill 9-minutes as Smith does a good job with his narration and the subject itself is fairly interesting. I think the highlight of the film was seeing perhaps the ugliest thing ever created only to then learn it was a close up view of a cat's tongue!! The film closes with us getting to view a mosquito sucking the blood out of a human and filling it's stomach up.

This color short accents the use of micro and macro-photography, so that we can see what a powerful microscope sees when looking at certain plants, animals and insects.

It spends most of the time inspecting the insect world of colorful flowers and how some of them trap the bugs feeding on them. We get a close inspection of a cat's tongue as it washes itself, see a caterpillar maneuvering on a tree branch and later becoming a butterfly, all with close-ups shot in good color.

It's not as fascinating as it sounds and only entertains because the narration is full of fresh perspectives of a humorous kind. Otherwise, it's an easy one to skip.