Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)

HUMOROUS PHASES OF FUNNY FACES (1906)
Article 4220 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-5-2013
Directed by J. Stuart Blackton
Featuring J. Stuart Blackton
Country: USA
What it is: Early animation

An artist draws several figures on a blackboard which come to life.

Here’s another example of early animation, with chalk and blackboard being used to animate several images. It’s a simple but fun little trick film. We see him draw the first character, but from then on the characters appear seemingly without human involvement. My favorite sequence uses backwards film, as two partially erased faces come back to vivid clarity, only to vanish into the chalk of the artist. It lacks the stream-of-consciousness feel of Emile Cohl, but it’s well-conceived and well-rendered. This one is a lot of fun.

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Hasher’s Delirium (1910)

HASHER’S DELIRIUM (1910)
aka Le songe d’un garcon de cafe
Article 4219 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-4-2013
Directed by Emile Cohl
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Animated weirdness

A man sees the food on his plate turn into abstract images before he begins to mutate himself.

I found this listed in the Walt Lee guide, where it is given the year of 1906. The fact that it is also listed as being from Gaumont and being animated made me decide that the year is wrong, and that this movie from four years later is the one in question. It’s typical Cohl; it’s basically abstract shapes morphing into scary faces and other things, all designed to baffle the “hasher”; I assume that’s who the observer is supposed to be. It’s only about two minutes long, so it serves as a decent introduction to his work.

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A Very Honorable Guy (1934)

A VERY HONORABLE GUY (1934)
Article 4218 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-3-2013
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Featuring Joe E. Brown, Alice White, Robert Barrat
Country: USA
What it is: Runyonesque comedy

Due to a run of bad luck, a well-intentioned but unlucky man of integrity loses everything and finds himself owing a debt to a loan shark that he won’t be able to pay. He decides to sell his body to science with the hope that the money will help him pay off his debts and allow his last month on Earth to be comfortable. Then he suddenly becomes lucky…

This is a fairly amusing comedy based on a Damon Runyon story and is filled with the type of characters and ambiance that you would expect from a Damon Runyon story. If there’s any one thing I really got out of this one, it was that Joe E. Brown was actually a very good actor. Yes, he was playing a certain stock character most of the time, and he was always a bit upstaged by that memorable face of his, but he did tap into the feel of the movies he did and made sure his character fit into the general mood of the picture; here, for example, he comes across as quite Runyonesque, which wasn’t the case in the other movies I’ve seen of his. Overall, I was quite entertained by this one, though there are times where the plot contrivances are a little too forced.

However, there is a secondary issue here as far as the fantastic content goes. The Don Willis guide mentions a plot element about a scientist experimenting with rejuvenation, which would qualify the movie by making it at least marginally a piece of science fiction. The Walt Lee guide consigns it to the Exclusions list; it lists the same fantastic content, but places a question mark after it. In this case, the Walt Lee guide had the correct instincts. There is one doctor in the story (the one who purchases Joe E. Brown’s body), but he never mentions anything about experiments with rejuvenation, and only seems interested in Brown because of the shape of his head. The closest the movie comes as far as any fantastic content goes is that one of the characters is revealed to be quite mad, and since this is demonstrated in a comic rather than horrific way, it’s really too marginal to consider. Therefore, this is another of the false alarms, and really doesn’t qualify.

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My Boy Johnny (1944)

MY BOY JOHNNY (1944)
Article 4217 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-2-2013
Directed by Eddie Donnelly
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Terrytoons wartime cartoon

This short takes a hopeful look at the time when the boys come back from the war, and the type of world that will follow in its wake.

Despite the racial stereotypes and propaganda so common to the era, there is something quite fascinating about the wartime cartoons that were produced in the early forties; they capture the spirit of the era in a way that is rather engaging. This one taps into what was no doubt one of the most resonant themes of the era; it deals with that giddy sense of anticipation of the day the war is over and the boys return home. Because of the subject matter, I found myself wondering if there was really going to be much in the way of fantastic content, but there’s actually plenty; some of the returning soldiers are anthropomorphic animals, and about half of the cartoon envisions the technological advances that will follow in its wake (including a “house of the future” segment). It does idealize things quite a bit, but that was probably very much in the spirit of the time. The short was an Academy Award nominee for best animated short subject, and I actually felt a little sad to see that it didn’t have enough votes on IMDB to generate a rating, meaning that the cartoon seems to be largely forgotten. Actually, I think it’s one of the better Terrytoon cartoons I’ve seen.

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A Moonlight Serenade, or A Miser Punished (1904)

A MOONLIGHT SERENADE, OR A MISER PUNISHED (1904)
aka Au clair de la lune ou Pierror malheureux
Article 4216 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-30-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Strange drama

A starving clown is not allowed to sing for his supper by a stingy miser, but fortunately the moon comes to his rescue.

The comeuppance of a villain (in this case, the miser) is a fairly common theme, but this one is pretty bizarre variation on the subject. This is no doubt due to Melies’s affection for strange visual effects, and the strangest one here (in which the moon turns into a closeup of an eyeball) is pretty jarring. It’s probably not surprising that the plot is a little obscure at times, but the short’s biggest problem is its rather slow beginning; for a while it looks like there will be no special effects at all. This is one of Melies’s oddest works.

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Molly Moo-Cow and Rip Van Winkle (1935)

MOLLY MOO-COW AND RIP VAN WINKLE (1935)
aka Molly Moo-Cow and Rip Van Wrinkle
Article 4215 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-28-2013
Directed by Burt Gillett and Tom Palmer
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Cartoon

Molly Moo-Cow encounters a group of dwarfs playing tenpins while she is grazing, and she sees the sleeping Rip Van Winkle. She then decides to try out the dwarf’s ale…

This is the best cartoon about a drunk cow bowling that I’ve ever seen, but that’s admittedly a very small universe, and when you get down to it, this cartoon is pretty lame. Molly Moo-Cow appears to have been a very minor repeating character for Van Beuren studios during the thirties; I saw the name listed in only four cartoons during a two-year period. From what I can see here, I suspect the character had some gender issues; the name certainly implies a female, but she is udderless and talks with a decidedly masculine voice. The gags mostly consist of Molly fighting with her guardian angel (who doesn’t want her to touch the ale) and bowling while drunk. This one is not a high point in the history of animation.

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Mr. Hurry-Up of New York (1907)

MR. HURRY-UP OF NEW YORK (1907)
Article 4214 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-27-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Trick short

Mr. Hurry-up is in a rush to get dressed and eat breakfast so he can get to work and then go to the dentist. Then he goes to a bar and has a little too much to drink…

The title made me expect we were going to have an experiment with early fast-motion photography; I had visions of the title character moving through the world with super-human speed to get everything done, and I still think the opening scenes would have been a lot more amusing had they done that. What I got was a character who, though he is moving as quick as humanly possible, is still moving at speeds that are humanly possible, which was somewhat disappointing. Still, the movie does have fantastic content in the second half, in which the title character gets drunk and undergoes a variation of THE DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND; in his inebriated state, keyholes shift around the door, a circular staircase rotates as he tries to climb it, and when he tries to sleep, his bed hops all around the room. The best scene is with the staircase, largely because it’s the most striking visual moment in the short. Nevertheless, I find this one somewhat disappointing, largely because of the missed opportunities.

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