Le vilain petit canard

Genre: Disney short, based on Hans Christian Anderson tale.

Main characters: The ugly duckling, the duck and the swan.

What happens: A father duck has managed to "dig" a ditch by walking around impatiently, waiting for his ducklings to hatch out of their eggs. Finally, this happens, but an unexpected egg also hatches, one with an "ugly duckling"…

Message: Often differences can be good.

My thoughts: Growing up with this short, this is a very cute Silly Symphony, one of many that Walt Disney created. This particular one I love dearly, as I do with most of the ones I have watched. It is very lovable and also very emotional (at points I nearly cry). You will understand this sadness whether you know the Hans Christian Anderson tale or not, it melts your heart (well mine anyway). I cannot understand people who are at least SLIGHTLY moved by something in this short. I like the character of the ugly duckling, he is lovable at first sight. If a family is watching this (and the children are between 0 and 7) you may want to be a little cautious so as not to upset the youngest. I was certainly upset when I was little, but thankfully that has changed, as sadness has also turned into love for this cartoon. I hope you are as warmed just as much as I was.

Recommended to: Children who like cartoons and adults who like cartoons. Enjoy! :-)

There is something really quite touching about this Disneyfication of the timeless Hans Christian Andersen story. We start with the expectant parents awaiting their fifth chick. It's born but clearly isn't the same as the others and it's promptly rejected. Abandoned to fend for itself, it tries to make friends but everything is new and unfamiliar. Then, fortune smiles and ... Andersen's fables always did have a valid moral underpinning them and this one seems all the more ripe for a sensitively scored and delicately drawn version that has, mercifully, been spared the traditional singing accompaniment. It's surprisingly effective, this.

The only reason I give this film a 9 and not a 10 is that it's actually a remake of a film this same studio made eight years earlier. I tend to be a little tougher on remakes plus it just doesn't take nearly as much effort to remake a film instead of do one from scratch. However, despite this concern, I can see why this film received the Oscar for Best Animated Short. It is simply wonderful from start to finish.

First, the animation is exactly what you'd expect from Disney from this era. In the 1930s, no other studio came close in quality of animation and music. The whole package was simply terrific and could not be beat. I particularly loved the wonderful backgrounds as well as the great use of colors--nicely muted and soft.

Second, the story, while very familiar to most, is wonderful. I am not ashamed to admit that by the end of the film, my eyes were very misty--it is a lovely and sentimental film. A joy to watch from start to finish.

A great short animation offering to Hans Christian Andersen text new touches, significances and nuances.

A remake , seductive for colors but especially for the echo in contemporary crisis , from social exclusion to need of love and the apparences, selfishness, migrants and the truth more significant than the misery of previews details.

So, I saw it after good decades and I saw it from different perspective , first in context of its time, then in the context of our time , dizzy , confuse and looking for sense.

So, easy to define it as loving and just precious. So, the ugly duckling and the steps to find its happiness.

'Ugly Duckling (1939)' was the final film in Disney's "Silly Symphonies" series, and was also their only remake of a previous Symphony. Wilfred Jackson's 'The Ugly Duckling (1931)' was a rather primitive black-and-white adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's famous tale, which drastically altered the original story to make (at least in my interpretation) a rather touching plea for racial tolerance. Jack Cutting's 1939 film is considerably more polished, animated in vivid Technicolor that speaks to the extraordinary degree of prestige that Walt Disney's company enjoyed throughout the 1930s. It is also considerably more faithful to Anderson's story, following the "ugly duckling" around the pond as he attempts to find his place in society. Unlike the 1931 duckling, which was somewhat grotesquely, Cutting's version is cute and likable, if a bit gawky compared to his ostensible siblings. Nevertheless, either bird, however handsomely they are drawn, will immediately capture your heart with their wide-eyed innocence, amplified tenfold by the persecution that they much endure for simply being "different."

The duckling's hatching causes much consternation at the adult ducks' nest, with the father understandably anxious that his wife has apparently given birth to a youngster that quite obviously didn't inherit his genes. After being unceremoniously banished from the duck family, the "ugly duckling" strikes out alone, desperate to find somewhere where he can be accepted for who he is. Glancing down into his reflection on the pond surface, in one of the short's most touching moments, the duckling sees his own reflection, hideously distorted by the water ripples, and breaks into tears. Fortunately, a happy ending is just around the corner, and the duckling's lonely honks of despair are answered in kind by a family of swans, who immediately take our hero under their wing, so to speak. Unfaultable in terms of animation, music and characterisation, 'Ugly Duckling' is a touching celebration of accepting and savouring one's own differences, and was justly awarded with an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, Disney's seventh Silly Symphony to do so.