Cartoon of the Month: "Joe Glow, the Firefly"
This month you can enjoy the 1941 Chuck Jones cartoon "Joe Glow, the Firefly". It's one of the Jones shorts that fall under the cute, Disney-inspired category, prevalent in his early directorial works. While the plot isn't anything particularly funny, this is a visually stunning cartoon, where Chuck used the limitations of black and white as an advantage, with a wonderful artistic result. A cartoon like this in color just wouldn't be the same.
If you haven't already seen this little masterpiece, then this is your chance to do it!
posted by mmm...donuts at 2:59 pm
15 Comments:
Thanks for posting this! The artwork and animation were stellar ... and you're right, it wouldn't have looked as good in color.
12:00 am
Great cartoon! I've watched it 3 times now!
So it's not really funny (although the last and online line is pretty clever)...doesn't have to be. Saying all cartoons have to be funny to be good is like saying the only live action films worth seeing are comedies.
It may not be funny but it's charming, inventive, wonderfully animated, has fantastic backgrounds and "camera angles"...and on and on.
Most people put down early Jones as cheap Disney knockoff stuff...inferior to the original. This isn't, it could stand right there with some of Disney's best stuff in my opinion.
6:32 am
Nate, of course I didn't mean that since the cartoon is not particularly funny is not a good one. It wasn't given much attention to creating a particularly funny or complex plot beacause that wasn't the intention behind that cartoon. In fact, I love it just as much as you do, and I think it's one of Chuck's most underrated cartoons.
10:24 am
There's a saying that states "the original cinematographers for the black & white films were the REAL cinematographers". This cartoon (and Frank Tashlin's Puss 'n' Booty) prove it further.
The guy sleeping kind of looks like Ben Washam to me. I wonder if this scenario really happened to him at some point.
10:25 am
Where did you get the print of this cartoon? It looks better than those PD prints I heard a lot about.
9:49 pm
That´s Fantastic Folks !!!
Congratulations !!!
Nando
Argentina
2:41 am
Nic, the print comes from one of those "Cartoon Craze" PD DVDs. I must admit their releases are usually pretty good, considering they're PD videos.
10:33 am
That little lightning bug is so cute! LOL
2:19 am
thank you! yow!
1:36 am
hi--can't seem to find how to email you so.... i saw where you said you had all the popeyes. i saw one many years ago on one of those afternoon popeye shows, and i've been wanting to see it again ever since.
the big fight that popeye and bluto have is dance! who does the better waltz.... who does the better samba.... (with olive oyl, of course)
any chance you have it and can put it up?
thanks
lily
1:44 am
Lily, unfortunately I can't answer your question, since the Popeye cartoons are owned by the other blogging fellow here, Duck Dodgers, and he's currently away, so you'll have to wait until September.
10:25 am
It's a very nice cartoon. It seems to me like it's more of an exploratory piece ("what would a firefly's perspective be like?") than aiming at being funny or having some specific storytelling.
Beautiful, and well done!
1:34 am
Showing our world from the perspective of a tiny character was a sort of recurring theme in these early Chuck Jones cartoons. Just look at the Sniffles cartoons or "Porky's Ant" to find other examples.
8:02 pm
I read somewhere that Bird Flu is expected to arrive in the USA or Canada this fall.
It said it killed almost 60% of those who got infected.
Is it true ?
What can we do to avoid it ?
9:47 am
This was Chuck Jones' first cartoon as director in black & white after doing nothing but color cartoons for over two years, and you can tell he's trying to use the medium to its full advantage (and some of the detailed images really have to be seen on a theater screen to appreciate how much work went into the design of this cartoon).
2:42 am
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