The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

No longer working at Warner Bros., Chuck Jones made this mystifying short about a drab delineation in love with a dot. He can't catch her attention until he realizes that he can make angles and all sorts of shapes.

Now that I've seen "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics", I would say that it's the sort of movie which I wish that I had seen in math classes. Directed by Jones, it's certainly a clever one. However, I wouldn't call it the greatest cartoon. All the stuff about the scruffy squiggle sounds a little bit like they were chastising young people for being independent; ironically, the whole cartoon seems kind of psychedelic! So, it may not be Chuck's masterpiece - in my view, "What's Opera, Doc?" easily gets that distinction - but still worth seeing. Narrator Robert Morley also starred in "The African Queen" and "Theater of Blood".

This opens with Cupid shooting at Dot and missing. Dot is not having Line who is way too straight. Dot is much more interested in having fun with Squiggle. The Line works to prove his worthiness. The big name here is legendary animator Chuck Jones who is the co-director. The narrator is noted actor Robert Morley. I think I remember seeing this some time in my childhood. It has the experimental style of the 60's. It's fun. I do have an idea for an extra scene. Line and Squiggle can have a shape-off. Like bodybuilders, they could pose into various shapes to entice Dot. That would be a great finale.

I truly have to admire the works of Chuck Jones. He made a name for himself directing Bugs Bunny shorts for Warner Brothers starting in the 1940's (although he directed many other animated shorts during that era,including animated training films for the U.S. government,some of which featured scripts written by Theodore S.Geisel,later to be known & loved by generations as Dr.Suess),moving on to creating The Road Runner in the 1950's,and moving on even further to working on directing animated programs for television in the 1960's,to animated feature fare in the 1970's. Every now & again, he would surprise us with something different & left of centre. 'The Dot And The Line:A Romance In Lower Mathematics',a short he directed for M-G-M in 1965 is a shining example of this. The story (read by veteran British actor,Robert Morley)is simple:a straight line is madly in love with a dot,who only cares for an abstract squiggle line. This causes the line to re-evaluate his position on things. The concept of abstract animation is by no means a new idea, but Jones (with assistance from co-director/co-writer Maurice Noble)manage to pull it off nicely (the idea for animating abstract images actually hearkens back to silent films in the 1920's,and later augmented by classical music in the 1930's & beyond). Well worth seeking out if you're idea of animation is something that is exclusively for children.

Experimental animators usually commit the mistake of thinking that experimentalism must be hermetical, non-objective, and abstract. Chuck Jones proves his point by making an animation film which brings characters and a storyline, but makes it look like a wild piece of experimental animation.

Without sound, the film would look like wild moving pieces. It's the narration and the soundtrack who do the trick. Weird non-objective mathematically abstract images who become human-like characters just with a little voice and music. Brilliant.

I'm personally impressed by this piece, since I saw it on TV as a kid, and instead of learning mathematics out of it, I decided to be an experimental animator. And I am one now :)

We don't always get the same narration so I rarely mention it, but here Robert Morley provides a lovely tone to his alliterative narration depicting this most unlikely of love stories. The straight line, dependable and steady, loves the dot. The dot, suitably dotty, fancies the innovative and lively squiggle. This neglect attracts the attention of his fellow lines, but try as they might to make him see sense, he remains wistfully obsessed. Now he just spends him time imagining himself as a much more active and noble creation, but in the end - a line, is a line, is a line... This self deception is no good. Maybe he might as well just admit defeat? He will never be squiggle. Maybe he can be an angle, though? A series of the things? Might dot like this new talent? Well he'd best practice til he can make an infinite number of shapes and even curves. This is all empty though - he needs dot to join in. Can he dazzle her? This is cheerily scored with the subject matter providing Chuck Jones with a veritable myriad of shapes, colours and sizes and though it's maybe a bit repetitive it's still quite a good fun watch and personally, had I'd be line or squiggle I'd have told the fickle dot to get lost!