Jingles (1931)
aka Mendelssohn’s Spring Song
Article 6031 by Dave Sindelar
11-15-2021
Directed by Herman Roessle
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Odd but entrancing

Various insects cavort to the title tune.

The best moment comes early on when you find out that the object that appears to be a train turns out to be something else entirely. It’s a magical little moment, but it’s memorable enough that I decided at that moment that I really liked this cartoon. It’s a good thing it won me over early, though; it does have its problems, mostly in that they don’t know when to end certain sequences; the scene of the butterfly jumping from pole to pole gets old before it’s over. My copy is in black and white, but there are color versions, and the credits make a lot of noise about it, but it retains its charms even without the color. This one seems to hover somewhere in a world between your average theatrical cartoon and and some forms of abstract animations.