jimderrick

I found this a very enjoyable early crime drama. Students of the genre will want to compare this to "Little Caesar" and/or "The Front Page". Transitions within scenes and from one scene to another flow better in "The Racket" than in many other silent films.

I agree with earlier comments about the new scoring. There is too much brass and too much forte.

The film itself is about 83 minutes long, much longer than we thought during the 76 years that it was out of circulation. The restoration job on the film is one of the best that I have seen, especially for a film as old as this one is. I hope it is released soon on DVD.

This short film won an Academy Award for best animated short. It consists of a series of animated reproductions of major art works, primarily from the 20th century, and has an unusual technique for moving from one picture to another. I have been to most of the world's major art galleries. While I am certainly not an art historian, I was able to recognize a majority of the artists and the works portrayed. I was not able to recognize all of them, and I wish they had been labeled.

I recommend this film to anyone studying art or art history for a different twist on the subject matter. The movie is available on VHS from pyramid media, and it is overpriced.

Animation changed greatly after the major studios (Warner Brothers, Disney, MGM, etc.) stopped producing their own animated works. This 30 minute short is one of the best of the period since the major studios regularly produced animated shorts based on cels.

This 30 minute, Oscar-winning production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is an animated portrayal of a French "Johnny Appleseed", who did his work among the turmoil of World War I. Both men, Johnny Appleseed and Elzear Bouffier, the subject of this film, were real men who appreciated the importance of trees on the land.

This film is not widely available. Videotapes can be ordered from Direct Cinema in Harriman, New York.