Disney's 1937 Oscar Playlist is Weirdly Comforting

If you have 40 minutes and want to see how Disney became Disney, yes, this is absolutely worth your time. Animation nerds and people who miss the smell of old paper will love this. If you get bored by old-timey classical music and characters bouncing to the beat, you will probably hate it. 🦆

Basically, this is a 1937 playlist. Walt Disney wanted to hype up people for his first big movie, so he threw five of his Oscar-winning shorts into theaters together.

There is no new footage here. It is just the shorts played back-to-back with some fancy title cards.

Honestly, the whole thing feels like a victory lap. But you can't really blame him because these shorts are still incredibly charming.

First up is Flowers and Trees. The colors in this are so bright they almost hurt your eyes.

I noticed this one tree that looks like a grumpy old man. When the forest fire starts, the way the trees panic is actually kind of scary.

Then we get Three Little Pigs. We all know the song, but seeing the wolf blow down those houses is still satisfying.

The wolf has this weirdly floppy face. It looks like he is made of wet clay. 🐷

If you want to see what else Disney was doing around this time, check out Modern Inventions from the same year. That one has Donald Duck dealing with crazy robot butler things, which feels a lot more modern than these fairy tales.

My favorite part of this whole mix is Three Orphan Kittens. The scene where the little orange kitten steps on the piano keys is just perfect.

You can almost feel the weight of the keys when they press down. The sound design is so heavy and clicky.

Some of the animation is a bit rough around the edges, though. In The Country Cousin, there is a shot where the mouse's ears change size for like three frames.

It is the kind of mistake you only see if you are looking too close. I love finding those little human errors.

Also, the music in The Tortoise and the Hare gets incredibly repetitive. It is just the same brassy tune over and over.

By the third time the hare shows off, you kind of want the tortoise to kick him.

Is it a masterpiece? Not really, because it is just a repackaged collection.

But it is a really neat time capsule. It shows a studio right on the edge of changing the movie world forever.