Foreverisacastironmess123 Review of Flowers and Trees

Flowers and Trees (1932)

A beautiful animated vision of harmonious nature working together. Just lovely.

[8/10 · 10 October 2012]

Wow, this is the first cartoon ever to be in colour and the first to get an Oscar. What a great landmark in animation history. I can definitely see why it earned such an award, I thought every moment was wonderful. I love this Silly Symphony. To me, certain earlier entries in the series such as the black and white Springtime and some of the more vibrant entries of the seasons themed shorts, while all having their good points, were very poor and severely hampered by the lack of colour. To me it's like they took what was best about all those somewhat failures and put it all together to make this beauty. It never bored me. I know exactly what Silly Symphonies I've found to be terrible and dated and this one definitely does not rank among them. I can see that they must have reused some of the ideas of the living flowers to much better effect later on with Alice in Wonderland. The only thing I didn't really like was the romance part of it. I felt that the whole damsel in distress thing was old.(maybe not then!) I thought that the alluring burlesque girl tree's "hair" made her look a bit like the Bride of Frankenstein! Anyway, I thought living trees were quite interesting and special enough on their own without needing any lovey- dovey stuff thrown in. But at eight minutes I guess there had to something for the tale to center on. Upon seeing the trees I immediately thought of the apple-tossing meanies from The Wizard of Oz! There's only one baddie in this though. Sometimes with these shorts, while most of them not directly being fairy tales, they do have themes and elements of classic fairy tales in them, and some of this one reminded me a little bit of the Brave Little Tin Soldier-with the evil jealous dead tree in place of the jack in the box. Hey, with ferns like that, who needs anemones!(ha-ha) I actually felt a bit sorry for the one bad tree, I thought it was mildly shocking when he lies dead at the end, killed by his own hubris as it were! Goodness, Disney sure played hardball way back in those more "innocent" times didn't they! I thought a much nicer and more memorable way to go would have been if the character would have been cured of his wickedness somehow, and made to look like the rest of the trees. But that's probably just me. I thought the owl that acted as a fire siren looked just like the same stupid owl from The Skeleton Dance. I like animated features that are all about nature, and I thought the whole theme of nature and of having it as the main star was a concept that they executed just beautifully. May it be evergreen forever. P.S. If you loved this I highly recommend a Merry Melody called The Blue Danube.