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pasitheaThese days I generally feel somewhat reluctant to talk about how great buying something is, but this is definitely worth an exception.
I bought a deformed toothless old man and he is worth every penny. I'm not going to pretend I didn't already love Popeye or that the stories are exactly high-brow but we all have our vices and what he lacks in depth of character, he more than makes up for it in pure style.
A new collection of Popeye was just released a week or so ago. Cleaned up and uncut with the sound restored. You can understand every mutter and you can see all the detail and it is BEAUTIFUL. This volume is 1933-1938 in chronological order. The Fleischers really knew their stuff. Disney and Warner always get all the credit for making animation big and innovating everything while Fleischer is berated at the creator of rotoscope and the origins of cheap animation. There is no evidence of this unfair label here.
Popeye is magnificent. Look at him! Really really look at him! He hasn't got any teeth. I never realized this before. I just assumed they didn't draw teeth. The prints were so washed out and beat up you couldn't see it but in the restored ones you can. They didn't no-draw teeth. They drew empty gums. He's a broken down, bow-legged, leathery ancient toothless old man. Bluto has crows feet around his eyes. He's fat, he's ugly, he's exceedingly hairy. Olive has no boobs, no hips, and a voice that could cut glass. These are some UGLY people and yet they are beautiful! Segar's original characters are great but Fleischer's interpretation of them is even better. Popeye is perhaps the only character who's ever truly exceeded his original medium.
The real magic though is in how they move. Oh my God how they move! Motion capture will NEVER come close to this. There isn't a wasted moment in a Fleischer cartoon. Walking across the scene is different nearly every time and every character moves in their own weird way. Olive, gangly and unattractive though she is, moves with a strange unearthly grace stretching and coiling like a snake. Bluto moves though sheer force of muscle. His weight appears as much as a collapsed star but his ego holds it high and each step is deliberate and forceful as though the ground should quake beneath his step. And Popeye... Sometimes galloping like a horse, others walking in tune to a minuet only he can hear and always the rolling sea is beneath his feet. He sways and rolls in time to the ocean.
These cartoons are simply incredible. I really enjoy the Disney and Warner cartoons of the same era but they can't compete with Popeye at all. The motion, the timing, the sense of style. When a Fleischer character does something weird, they do something DAMN FUCKING WEIRD. I wish they'd release other old stuff like this. Betty Boop, Bosco, Foxy. I'd even be interested in seeing Fleischer's Superman if it were restored like this. Definitely the best $40 I've spent in a long time.
In addition to Popeye, the collection contains some great documentary stuff, a lot of 'Out of the Inkwell' stuff, a 1916 Mutt and Jeff short (which is FAR more likable than the 1950's attempt but still rather dull) A Colonel Heeza Liar short (which is incredibly awful and was made by a guy with a hate-on a mile long for Windsor McCay) A 1916 Krazy Kat short, and the 1919 short Feline Follies... The very first Felix the Cat film.
What I wouldn't give to see a cleaned up collection of Felix or McCay's films. In a way it's very sad to me to think of some of the really great stuff that's gotten lost, hidden behind the hype of Mickeymania.
At least, being out of copyright, they show up on Youtube.
1914: Gertie the Dinosaur
It's really regrettable that we'll never get to see the vaudeville act that went along with this.
Sinking of the Lusitania
Not my favorite McCay piece for several reasons but there's a cell from it at the cartoon art museum in San Francisco from just as the Lusitania is beginning to heel over and it's just stunning and magical in the way that old churches are. This film also manages to still be fairly moving a century after it was made.
Here's an episode of Felix the Cat made the same year as Steamboat Willie.
Felix the cat Woos Whoopee
Now compare and contrast with Disney's 1928 Steamboat Willie...
I guess it's alright... If you like udders... Actually, it's considerably better than several of the Mickey Mouse cartoons that followed immediately after it, but compared to Felix, it's downright dull.
I bought a deformed toothless old man and he is worth every penny. I'm not going to pretend I didn't already love Popeye or that the stories are exactly high-brow but we all have our vices and what he lacks in depth of character, he more than makes up for it in pure style.
A new collection of Popeye was just released a week or so ago. Cleaned up and uncut with the sound restored. You can understand every mutter and you can see all the detail and it is BEAUTIFUL. This volume is 1933-1938 in chronological order. The Fleischers really knew their stuff. Disney and Warner always get all the credit for making animation big and innovating everything while Fleischer is berated at the creator of rotoscope and the origins of cheap animation. There is no evidence of this unfair label here.
Popeye is magnificent. Look at him! Really really look at him! He hasn't got any teeth. I never realized this before. I just assumed they didn't draw teeth. The prints were so washed out and beat up you couldn't see it but in the restored ones you can. They didn't no-draw teeth. They drew empty gums. He's a broken down, bow-legged, leathery ancient toothless old man. Bluto has crows feet around his eyes. He's fat, he's ugly, he's exceedingly hairy. Olive has no boobs, no hips, and a voice that could cut glass. These are some UGLY people and yet they are beautiful! Segar's original characters are great but Fleischer's interpretation of them is even better. Popeye is perhaps the only character who's ever truly exceeded his original medium.
The real magic though is in how they move. Oh my God how they move! Motion capture will NEVER come close to this. There isn't a wasted moment in a Fleischer cartoon. Walking across the scene is different nearly every time and every character moves in their own weird way. Olive, gangly and unattractive though she is, moves with a strange unearthly grace stretching and coiling like a snake. Bluto moves though sheer force of muscle. His weight appears as much as a collapsed star but his ego holds it high and each step is deliberate and forceful as though the ground should quake beneath his step. And Popeye... Sometimes galloping like a horse, others walking in tune to a minuet only he can hear and always the rolling sea is beneath his feet. He sways and rolls in time to the ocean.
These cartoons are simply incredible. I really enjoy the Disney and Warner cartoons of the same era but they can't compete with Popeye at all. The motion, the timing, the sense of style. When a Fleischer character does something weird, they do something DAMN FUCKING WEIRD. I wish they'd release other old stuff like this. Betty Boop, Bosco, Foxy. I'd even be interested in seeing Fleischer's Superman if it were restored like this. Definitely the best $40 I've spent in a long time.
In addition to Popeye, the collection contains some great documentary stuff, a lot of 'Out of the Inkwell' stuff, a 1916 Mutt and Jeff short (which is FAR more likable than the 1950's attempt but still rather dull) A Colonel Heeza Liar short (which is incredibly awful and was made by a guy with a hate-on a mile long for Windsor McCay) A 1916 Krazy Kat short, and the 1919 short Feline Follies... The very first Felix the Cat film.
What I wouldn't give to see a cleaned up collection of Felix or McCay's films. In a way it's very sad to me to think of some of the really great stuff that's gotten lost, hidden behind the hype of Mickeymania.
At least, being out of copyright, they show up on Youtube.
1914: Gertie the Dinosaur
It's really regrettable that we'll never get to see the vaudeville act that went along with this.
Sinking of the Lusitania
Not my favorite McCay piece for several reasons but there's a cell from it at the cartoon art museum in San Francisco from just as the Lusitania is beginning to heel over and it's just stunning and magical in the way that old churches are. This film also manages to still be fairly moving a century after it was made.
Here's an episode of Felix the Cat made the same year as Steamboat Willie.
Felix the cat Woos Whoopee
Now compare and contrast with Disney's 1928 Steamboat Willie...
I guess it's alright... If you like udders... Actually, it's considerably better than several of the Mickey Mouse cartoons that followed immediately after it, but compared to Felix, it's downright dull.
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Date: 2007-08-07 07:41 pm (UTC)But in 1914? This is equivalent to all those chrome-balls-going-through-landscapes things in the '80s, where our generation looked at that stuff and went whoa we can do that now?.