La nota ubriaca

In one of the occasional instances where they took a break from using their normal cast, the crowd behind the Looney Tunes cartoons made "High Note", about music notes assembling themselves for "The Blue Danube", only to have one note get drunk, leading the conductor note to chase him all over the sheet.

It's one of their many shorts introducing children to high culture (at the very least, it seems that they were doing that). It also shows that cartoons don't need words to be great; in fact, it makes them more comprehensible to other cultures if they consist of only images. Whether it's just quick entertainment or something else, this is a cartoon for the ages. I definitely recommend it.

A quarter note attempts to put together the score of The Blue Danube. It is creative for most of the feature. The various notations come to life, including bending sticks to become a time signature and unfolding sharps like lawn chairs. The music is important but the strength is in the method. Well worth the time.

This short, nominated for an Oscar, is one of Chuck Jones's best. You'll never hear The Blue Danube in the same way again. Extremely creative joining of animation and music. One slight correction of another comment on this short: I know I saw this short on television prior to 1977, because I saw it for the first time before I turned 18. In any case, Cartoon Network has aired this fairly recently and if I recall correctly, showed it one New Years Eve, as part of a special broadcast. I think it was in 1999 as part of the "Miloony-um" special. Most highly recommended.

Some reviews have noted on this site that this particular Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon was not shown on TV. I certainly don't remember seeing it then so I'm guessing this was truly my first time of wacthing this which I just did on the DVD of Cash McCall. It depicts the musical sheet of "The Blue Danube" and the various musical notes moving about trying to assemble on the scales to have the note conductor conduct. But when that note conductor does, he finds out that one of the notes is missing, in fact, he's in the "Little Brown Jug" sheet getting drunk (which you can tell because the head is colored red...) What I just described is enough to tell you that this was a more unusual cartoon, even from Chuck Jones, than what one is used to from Warner Bros., that's for sure! But it's quite funny and creative and it deserved its Oscar nomination. So that's a high recommendation for High Note.

I had the pleasure of seeing this as well as other great Chuck Jones' cartoons on the big screen. Linda Jones Clough, Chuck Jones' daughter, introduced each film with a memory that related to the film. Interesting trivia: Linda stated that High Note has never been shown on TV because it involves drunk notes that censors felt where not suitable for children.