Flowers and Trees (1932) - Eight minutes of color and jealous stumps

You should absolutely watch Flowers and Trees tonight, especially since it only takes eight minutes of your life. It is perfect for anyone who loves classic animation history or just wants to see plants behaving like emotional teenagers, though people who need hyperactive CGI will probably find it incredibly boring. 🌲

The whole thing is basically a silent melodrama but with leaves. We have two young, attractive trees who are totally in love, and then this gnarly old hollow stump who is super jealous of their happiness.

Honestly, the stump is the best part of the whole thing. He looks like he has had a bad day for about eighty years, and his face is just wonderfully mean.

He decides if he cannot have the lady tree, nobody can. So he literally rubs some sticks together to start a forest fire, which feels like A Bit of Kindling getting way out of hand.

This fire scene is actually kind of intense. The little fire spirits are these bouncy red demons that just eat up the background and look like they are having way too much fun.

It is wild how much personality the animators got into these things without any dialogue. There is just a lot of squeaks, groans, and classical music doing the heavy lifting.

Sometimes the music matches the movement so perfectly it is almost hypnotic. Other times, the constant chirping gets a bit loud.

Odd things I noticed while watching:

• One little bird character looks completely lost during the fire and just flies in a circle three times before disappearing. 🐦
• The way the trees use their branches as arms is both clever and slightly creepy, especially during the hugging scenes.
• The fire actually burns the suspenders off a cartoon caterpillar.

The ending comes fast. Rain comes, the stump gets burned to a crisp (which feels a bit harsh but hey, karma), and they have a forest wedding.

The wedding scene has flowers doing a little dance that goes on just a slad too long. Yes, I think I made up that word, but you know what I mean.

But man, the colors are still so bright after all these years. This was the first cartoon in full Technicolor, and you can tell the artists were just flexing what they could do.

They put color on everything they could find. It is like a rainbow threw up on a forest, but in a really charming, nostalgic way.

If you want a quick hit of pure, old-school creativity, give it a spin. Just do not expect some massive, complicated plot.