Le pingouin à sang-froid

A Walt Disney Cartoon

Pablo, THE COLD-BLOODED PENGUIN, yearns to escape from Antarctica's frigid climes to bask in the tropic zones of South America.

This little extract from the feature film THE THREE CABALLEROS (1945) is humorous, with unhappy Pablo a slightly winsome character. Sterling Holloway is the perfect narrator for this material.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

'The Cold Blooded Penguin' isn't quite among my favourites of the numerous Disney shorts (and only really because there are so many gems, most of which that resonated and were more familiar to me since childhood, whereas 'The Cold Blooded Penguin' was a relatively recent discovery).

However, it is undeservedly underseen and is very easy to love. The animation is beautifully done, the colours are bright and sumptuous, the backgrounds are full of detail (Antarctica having a lot of atmosphere and other parts quite exotic) with every frame showing no choppiness or lack of fluidity and the character design shows a lot of care and love, the standout being the cute without being too cutesy one for the main character Pablo.

Also present is a lushly but also cleverly orchestrated and characterful music score, that is also dynamic and perfectly synced with what's happening in the action and animation. Sterling Holloway's narration is another plus, narration can either drive the story forward and say a lot without giving too much away or it can be over-explanatory and distracting where more show less tell is more welcome. The narration luckily is an example of the former, and Holloway delivers it with zest and empathy.

While the story is slight, it is sweet and never dull with its fair share of amusing (like Pablo's methods of travelling like with the bathroom tub and the shower) and emotional moments. Pablo (no bias intended, considering my lifelong adoration for penguins, ever since growing up with 'Pingu' as a child) is simply adorable and is - as well as his situation- very easy to feel sympathy for, without it being shoved down our throats, being manipulative or too sentimental.

Overall, while not among the best of the Disney shorts 'The Cold Blooded Penguin' does deserve to be seen much more than it is. It is practically obscure outside of its inclusion in 'The Three Caballeros' and it does deserve much better than that. 10/10 Bethany Cox