A popular testing ground
The "Silly Symphonies" are short animated films produced, and sometimes even directed by Walt Disney. Created to take advantage of the craze for the talking film technique, which was new at the time, this series of films was able to renew itself by inaugurating the Technicolor trichrome process and served as a testing ground for its creator to perfect the technique of his films.
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| Corporate advertisement dated December 23, 1933 in La cinématographie française |
Nowadays, we remember that these films have been broadcast on television several times, and are available on video for anyone who wants to see them. We also know that the most famous ones, like The Three Little Pigs, were successful in France in the 1930s. But what about the first black and white productions? Did France wait for the recent DVDs to know them? While Walt Disney had not yet released any films under his contract with United Artists signed at the end of December 1930, and was still releasing his films through Columbia in the USA, who was in charge of distributing his films in France?
The arrival in France
In Ciné-Journal of April 3, 1931, a corporate advertisement tells us that the producers Marcel Delac & Charles Vandal were in charge of these cartoons. Besides that, we can see that they were then called "Les folles symphonies", well before the term "Symphonies folâtres" that we will find 3 years later in the cartoon adaptations published in the first issue of the famous "Journal de Mickey". However, this translation was never used in the films themselves until proven otherwise.
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| Ciné-Journal of April 3, 1931 |
The Ciné-Journal ad also states that 12 cartoons are already available. Among the characters highlighted are the protagonist of "Playful Pan", as well as the frog and the bird from "Springtime" (unless it is a frog from "Night"), and finally the fox.
However, Playful Pan is the 15th Silly Symphony released in the United States, which would tend to indicate that all the cartoons produced up to that point were not part of the Delac & Vandal catalog. But are they really the distributors of the films themselves?
A Story of Frogs
On the subject of frogs, it should be noted that the same Delac & Vandal are responsible for the same number of films of the now rival of Disney, and yet creators of Mickey, with the Flip the Frog films. There are frogs in 3 places in the ad, including one halfway through the mention of Flip and the Symphonies. It could be Flip all over the place.But then, a few pages later, a full page ad touts Flip as a "Vandal and Delac production". Surprisingly, the clearly identified distributor is Gaumont-Franco-Film-Aubert. It is as if Delac & Vandal had indeed produced these cartoons in France (that's what the advertisement implies, by speaking of "French production") and had entrusted them to Gaumont for theatrical distribution. However, we know that this is not the case: these are American productions by Ub Iwerks. At most, they potentialy made a French adaptation of the credits. Delac & Vandal would thus act here as a kind of wholesaler, an intermediary between Disney, Iwerks, Columbia and Gaumont, which seems to be the actual distributor of the films (of Iwerks, at least).
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| "Flip la grenouille" |
In any case, it is the February 20, 1931 issue of Ciné-Journal that tells us that Playful Pan, under the title of La flûte de Pan, was shown in France before the feature film The Dawn Patrol with Richard Barthelmess, in its original English version. Lucienne Chapeau, who wrote the review, considers it "one of the best little films of its kind I've ever seen."
A first adventure in Marseille
The first films were announced with the semi-English term "Silly Symphonie" in the newspaper Le petit Marseillais, and it seems that it was only in exclusivity at the Capitole Theater of Marseille. La danse macabre (The Skeleton Dance) was thus announced on December 20, 1929 with La Route est belle. On January 16, 1930, with this same feature film, we present El Terrible Toreador, originally translated Le terrible toréador and then renamed the next day Intrépide Toréador. Then it was the turn of the short Les cloches de l'enfer (Hell's Bells), presented on February 7, 1930 with Innocents Paris starring Maurice Chevalier. The Merry Dwarfs is the complementary attraction of The Mystery of the Pink Villa on March 2, 1930 (the feature film has been in theaters since February 28 but the cartoon is announced only on March 2).
From March 8, it is the Eldorado Theater in Marseille that takes over the program Danse macabre - Le Route est belle. But the first exclusivities continue at the Capitole. On March 28, Voilà l'été (Summer), announced the day before as "Voici l'été", is released at the Capitole with Show Boat.
On June 13, Voilà le printemps (Spring) was announced, still at the Capitole in Marseille, screened before Le talion (West of Zanzibar) starring Lon Chaney. On July 4, La nuit (Night) is played, before La cave sanglante (Ned McCobb's Daughter) with Irene Rich. The extraordinary thing about this screening is that Night had not yet had its general release in the USA! The film was completed on April 18, shown to the American press on April 28, had its exclusive premiere on June 12 in New York, but was not released in other theaters in the country until July 31. By then, the French had already seen the film in Marseille!
Then came Autumn and Venus with Constance Talmadge on August 1, 1930. The theme of the seasons ends with the release of C'est l'hiver (Winter), accompanied by the film David Golder starring Harry Baur, on February 27, 1931. It is with the prestigious film Les lumières de la ville (City Lights) that Poissons folichons (Frolicking Fish) is released on April 10, 1931.
Conquering the whole of France
It was not until early May 1930 that Comoedia announced the presentation of "Silly Symphonies" to the Parisian press, without giving their titles. Lucien Wahl in L'œuvre of May 16, 1930 identifies two of them: Danse macabre and L'irrésistible Toréador which, let us note in passing, has once again changed its title.
With a wider distribution comes the dissatisfied. It is under the pen of Paul Gilson on October 17, 1930 that we find a first criticism of "Silly Symphonies by Ub Iwerks" which "seem to submit the images too much to the rhythm of the music." Notice the importance of Ub Iwerks in the press while he is no longer part of the Walt Disney studio, which is not even mentioned.
We find mention of the "folles symphonies" in French for the first time on May 18, 1930 in an article of "L'Information financière, économique et politique" where we can read "It is sometimes admirable and it is always extremely pretty." It is only on January 1, 1931 that Delac and Vanal are identified by Comoedia as the "concessionaires for France, the colonies and various countries" of Les folles symphonies and Flip la Grenouille.
Charles Jouet regrets in Le Populaire of July 24, 1931 that these short films "of astonishing grace and gaiety" are not even advertised in front of the theaters that show them, while "talking nonsense continues to clutter the screens under the pretext that everything is good when it's noise." Fanny Clair in Le Soir of October 15, 1931 finds them even superior to "Mickey". J.O. reports in Ouest Éclair of January 9, 1932 specifically that "La Nuit" ("Night") is shown with Pas sur la bouche by Nicolas Rimsky. It seems that the French term does not appear after 1932. And that of "Silly Symphonies" remains: on July 15, 1931 at the Trianon de Monceau, one finds La Mère l'Oie (Mother Goose Melodies) in the program, on December 14, 1931 it is Tempête chez les castors (Busy Beavers) that one can see at L'Alhambra Cinéma in Avignon. According to Lucien Wahl in Pour vous of October 13, 1932, it seems that Flowers and Trees was called during its first French screening, on October 21, 1932, La symphonie matinale, a title indeed found later everywhere in the press, perhaps to recall the title of the series. King Neptune will become Au Royaume de Neptune and Santa's Workshop, L'atelier du Père Noël.
A funny detail: in the Echo d'Alger of June 21, 1934, the release of the cartoon Three Little Pigs at the Colisée was greeted by a reproduction of the drawing of Practical Pig. The caption under the picture tells us that at the time, he was called "Tommy" when today, the character is known as "Nouf-Nouf".
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| Cover of the French score of the 3 little pigs song |
If you want to know more about the Silly Symphonies, I recommend the excellent book by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman. We learn in particular that French versions (both image inserts and soundtracks) began to be made with Three Little Pigs, and that a complete copy of the original French version of the film The Tortoise and the Hare still exists in the archives, a version which, to this day, is not available to the public, the current DVD version being the image of the American version with a recent dubbing by actor Roger Carel. If you want to watch the shorts, there is a French DVD box set with a few French versions, some from the original releases, but most of the first films mentioned here are only available in the second box set, only available in the United States.
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That's all for today folks! See you soon !