The Old Plantation

The beginning of this cartoon says it's in Technicolor and that surprised me. After all, full color Technicolor (using the three color strip technology) was only in use in cartoons by Disney because they signed an exclusive deal and the competitors needed to use alternate (and inferior) color processes such as Two Color Technicolor and Cinecolor. However, I checked and this cartoon was made just AFTER the Disney monopoly ended and as such it makes it one of the first non-Disney full color cartoons ever made. It's also hellishly awful!

So why is this such a terrible cartoon? Well imagine showing a cartoon to kids that is filled with 'happy darkies' living on the plantation in pre-Civil War days! It's just chock full of black characters in pickininny braids and enacting the sort of safe and disgusting characters the public embraced at that time. No maltreatment of the slaves in this film...they are like one giant happy family and the family needs a wise head...which, naturally, is the genial slave master!! All this is god-awful and filled with caricatures of the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" characters. Sadly, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a wonderful story and was never meant to be anything like this tripe.

Not surprisingly, you don't see this one on TV today...even if it's important historically due to its use of full color. If you are curious, it's on YouTube as well as many even more offensive cartoons which have been yanked from circulation due to their negative portrayals of blacks and Asians.

Although I usually don't like the Harman-Ising cartoons from MGM -- the combination of high production values made possible by their large budgets and inanely saccharine plots is very off-putting to me -- this one works: it puts you immediately into the imagination of a child to see her toys come alive in a simple plot in which the wind-up horse, 'Black beauty' must win a race against other toys in order to save the Old Plantation, a doll house.

Other people will object, no doubt, to the stereotype of the era. Harman and Ising did a lot of cartoons that today are considered to be too racist to show to easily influenced children -- or their parents who can't tell the difference between a cartoon from more than seventy years ago and real life today.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, Studio Ghibli and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. With significantly broader knowledge of different directors, animation styles and studios, actually appreciate and love it even more now.

Rudolf Ising made a lot of cartoons leaning towards the cute kind of cartoon rather than the laugh a minute kind, the latter being the one that a lot seem to prefer (understandably, though am hardly biased against the former). This approach has varied in cartoons. In some instances it has been very sweet and charming, in others it can be cloying and too cutesy. 'The Old Plantation' unfortunately falls in the latter category. Not one of Ising's very worst (though among the lesser ones) by all means, with obvious strengths but with a good deal of big drawbacks.

Starting with the good things, the animation is very well done. It is fluid in drawing, vibrant and atmospheric in colour and rich in meticulous detail. The music is even better and performed with gusto, it's full of energy and character and is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, adding to the action and enhancing it.

A few parts charm and the voices are solid.

On the other hand, the story is paper thin and full of old-fashioned melodrama that holds no surprises whatsoever. Too often the cartoon is too sugary sweet and the over-stretched feel of the story makes 'The Old Plantation' feel dull, very little energy here. This is further accentuated by the agreed overlong length, 'The Old Plantation' easily should have been three minutes shorter.

'The Old Plantation' is completely humourless and near-completely charmless, none of the content engages enough, while the characters are never interesting or even appealing. Am not one to get too offended at racial stereotyping, but the stereotypes here are excessive and are hard to take even when judging it for a product of its time.

In summation, nicely made but lacklustre and doesn't hold up well. 4/10 Bethany Cox