Flowers and Trees

Walt Disney made his first animated short, Little Red Riding Hood in 1922, and his first synchronized-sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, in 1928. Always looking for new audience-pleasing techniques, he started experimenting with two-strip color in 1931. The following year he halted production on a black-and-white Silly Symphony cartoon called Flowers and Trees and started it over again using Technicolor, the three-strip process that promptly became the industry standard for vivid hues on the silver screen. Flowers and Trees wasn't just the first Technicolor animation, it was the first Technicolor film of any kind. It also won the Academy Award for best cartoon, a category that didn't exist until that moment. Disney immediately struck a deal for exclusive rights to the Technicolor process, shutting out his competitors and revitalizing the Silly Symphony line, which had not been thriving lately. Every cartoon in that series was in glorious Technicolor from then until the end of the 1930s, when the Silly Symphonies sounded their last note. No fewer than 19 animators worked on Flowers and Trees, which tells a typical Disney tale. The setting is a woodland scene where trees wake up with yawns and stretches, flowers exercise their stems with calisthenics, and a caterpillar bathes in the morning dew. When a lovely female tree dances to music made by a handsome male tree, a nastier male - withered and decayed, with a snake for a tongue and vultures perched on his desiccated boughs - tries to abduct her. The good tree fends him off by tickling his belly, but the bad one retaliates by starting a forest fire. Birds save the day by releasing rain from the clouds, and the two good trees get married, with the curled-up caterpillar for a wedding ring. All this is accompanied by the classical music that gave the Silly Symphonies their name, spiced with bits of Schubert and Wagner that will sound familiar to just about everyone. And since Technicolor keeps its original richness when properly stored, Flowers and Trees bedazzles the eye to this day. Director: Burt Gillett Producer: Walt Disney Animation: Les Clark, David Hand, Tom Palmer Music: Bert Lewis, Frank Churchill Technicolor-8m. by David Sterritt