Le vilain petit canard

For ten years, Walt Disney's talented animators pumped out cartoon after cartoon for his 'Silly Symphonies.' Walt decided it was time to shut down one of animation's most successful series. The final film of the 'Silly Symphonies' was April 1939's "The Ugly Duckling." The series went out with a bang, with the duck short winning the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoon), the 'Silly Symphonies' eighth Oscar win. The 75-cartoon series proved to be an invaluable testing ground for Disney to create and test new techniques and technologies, resulting in Walt's first feature film, 1938's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Disney's animators, led by Jack Cutting and Ham Luske, had completed Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale cartoon the year before. But Walt elected to hold off its release until he secured a Radio City Music Hall premier during the Easter Week which happened to front-end Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle." The 1939 version of "The Ugly Duckling" was his second telling of the 1843 Andersen story about a newly hatched white duckling who clearly didn't belong to the brood of baby mallard ducks the mother had just delivered. The most recent version was much sadder than its 1931 black-and-white predecessor, which played up the humorous aspects of the tale. But the Oscar-winning 1939 cartoon's ending was more in line with the written Andersen work than the earlier one.

"The Ugly Duckling" of 1939 concluded the 'Silly Symphonies'' storied series beginning in 1929 with "The Skeleton Dance." The string of successive cartoons was intended to be a platform for mainly musically-based animations with very little yapping. Over the course of its ten-year lifespan, the symphonies introduced a variety of innovations in animation, including the first three-strip Technicolor cartoon in 1932's "Flowers and Trees," special effects, more realistic human and animal movements, the multi-plane camera, and on and on. Only the cartoon series 'Tom and Jerry' would achieve the number of Academy Award wins as the 'Silly Symphonies.' After the overwhelming success of "Snow White," Walt decided to concentrate on his ambitious full-length films and his Mickey Mouse shorts. Some say the spirit of the series was carried on by his all-musical animated feature film, 1941's "Fantasia."

The last of the "Silly Symphonies","The Ugly Duckling" demonstrates the heights that Walt Disney and his artists had reached by the late 1930s and early 1940s. In just eight or nine minutes, and without a word of dialogue, we are presented with Hans Andersen's wistful fairy-tale. Exquisite drawings by animators including Milt Kahl and Eric Larson (both of whom would provide major contributions to the feature-length "Bambi")and lush watercolour layouts by David Hilberman combine with elegant camera movement and a lilting score by Albert Hay Malotte to create a miniature jewel of animation. The scene where the little duckling plays affectionately with the wooden decoy duck because it is the only thing in the world not to reject it, is one of the saddest in all cinema. The great Warner Bros animator Chuck Jones acclaimed "The Ugly Duckling" as one of the greatest short subjects ever made - and indeed, it is.

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! :-)

Disney's track record for adaptations of works of literature is decidedly mixed. This version of Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Ugly Duckling" is one of the most successful ones and quite deservedly won another Oscar for Uncle Walt. It's a beautiful short on all counts-animation, backgrounds, artwork, scoring, eveything-Disney at it's best. When Disney was at their best, no one could touch them. This short does justice to one of the most well-known fairy tales of all time and almost makes up for what they did to Felix Salten's "Bambi". Almost. This one should be in-print and runs on The Ink and Paint Club. An absolute masterpiece and anyone who loves animation has got to see this one! Recommended.

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.