Swing You Sinners! (1930)
I wasn't expecting something this great right away, but I loved watching this film. It has that same rhythm and motion I expect from Fleischer, and really it's almost like Fleischer just directed the greatest music video of seen... eat your heart out Childish Gambino, but this film is more creative and just as dark, even if it goes for more slapsticky stuff (btw I still haven't seen that music video that everyone was spraying out to, I just thought it would be fun to talk some sh*t) I don't know if our main character was executed and then went to hell or if he was just freaking out or if any of that matters, but we get some top notch creepy, animated, hellish imagery that makes great use of the black and white limitations. One thing I noticed was how Fleischer would animate both background and foreground very well, with the background sometimes being the focal point such as when the main character and the bird tussle at the beginning and we get a dizzying effect from the background being twisted and spun around to reveal a mashup of the two characters that is pretty much lighthearted stuff with an undertone of discomfort that would set the tone for things to get darker and darker with the progression of the film. Eventually they make it to the graveyard or hell or whatever it's supposed to be and at times the background would almost feel like it was melting or quivering or something like that and just felt uneasy. And of course there are a lot of ghastly figures popping up from graves and descending onto the main character, all of most of which had rounded shapes which just added to the weird vibes like something Dali would paint if he decide to do a graveyard cartoon instead of melting clocks. I'm probably overrating this because it's the first time I saw it and I didn't know what to expect, but first impression, I'd give it a full
I wasn't expecting something this great right away, but I loved watching this film. It has that same rhythm and motion I expect from Fleischer, and really it's almost like Fleischer just directed the greatest music video of seen... eat your heart out Childish Gambino, but this film is more creative and just as dark, even if it goes for more slapsticky stuff (btw I still haven't seen that music video that everyone was spraying out to, I just thought it would be fun to talk some sh*t) I don't know if our main character was executed and then went to hell or if he was just freaking out or if any of that matters, but we get some top notch creepy, animated, hellish imagery that makes great use of the black and white limitations. One thing I noticed was how Fleischer would animate both background and foreground very well, with the background sometimes being the focal point such as when the main character and the bird tussle at the beginning and we get a dizzying effect from the background being twisted and spun around to reveal a mashup of the two characters that is pretty much lighthearted stuff with an undertone of discomfort that would set the tone for things to get darker and darker with the progression of the film. Eventually they make it to the graveyard or hell or whatever it's supposed to be and at times the background would almost feel like it was melting or quivering or something like that and just felt uneasy. And of course there are a lot of ghastly figures popping up from graves and descending onto the main character, all of most of which had rounded shapes which just added to the weird vibes like something Dali would paint if he decide to do a graveyard cartoon instead of melting clocks. I'm probably overrating this because it's the first time I saw it and I didn't know what to expect, but first impression, I'd give it a full
I just finished watching Swing You Sinners!. I thought it started off kind of slow, until it got to the cemetery part. That's where it gets spooky, but in a fun way. It's interesting that you compared it something that Dali might paint because I thought parts of it reminded me of Dali, but some of the ways that the characters were twisting reminded me of Escher too.
I thought the music enhanced the spookiness of the cemetery at the beginning of that part, but as it went on, the music became a bit more upbeat, and it started to work against the images. It made me expect the short to end as a dream, rather than something that might actually be happening to the main character.
But I like Fleischer's style. The way he makes the characters kind of "bop" around when they move gives them a little bit of a fun feel to them, even while this nightmarish stuff is going on around them.