A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
A malignant old witch tricks the BABES IN THE WOODS into entering her house of horrors. Only their new friends, the little woodland dwarfs, can save them now...
A lot of colorful action is packed into this cartoon, which includes elements of stories from the Brothers Grimm. Charming opening, in which the story begins as a sung lullaby. The wicked witch, though now all but forgotten, is the first of Disney's great villainesses.
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.
