A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
The MERBABIES are frolicking beneath the salt waves - swimming & playing with various sea creatures. An elaborate underwater circus parade & performances fill much of their day, culminating in a rise to the surface in the expelled breath of a whale at sunset.
While the plot is virtually invisible in this little film, there's much to fill the eye as the colorful images cavort about the screen. The real significance of this cartoon is that it gave the folks in Disney Animation some excellent experience in working with the particular aspects of underwater scenes (bubble movement, light & shadow) which would be so important in the under seas sequence in PINOCCHIO.
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. 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.
