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Playful Pan

A Silly Symphony

Release Date : December 27, 1930

Running Time : 6:56

Synopsis

The God Pan flits through the fields, coaxing music and dance out of the flora and fauna, who cooperate well. Maybe too well when a dancing thundercloud bumps together, producing a lightning strike that threatens to burn everything down. Fortunately, Pan's musical charms are able to lure the flames into a nearby pond where they are safely extinguished.

Characters

Pan

Credits

Video

United States

Cartoon Classics : First Series : Volume 13 : Fanciful Fables

Laserdiscs

Cartoon Classics : Fanciful Fables

DVD

Disney Treasures : More Silly Symphonies

France

Peter Pan

Television

The Ink and Paint Club: Episode 13: Silly Symphonies Get Wet

The Mickey Mouse Club : November 18, 1955

Technical Specification

Color Type: Black & White

Animation Type: Standard animation

Sound Mix: Mono : Cinephone

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Negative Format: 35mm

Print Format: 35mm

Cinematographic Process: Spherical

Original Language: English

Released by Columbia Pictures, Inc.

Comments

Copyright Date : January 2, 1931

New York Opening : December 20, 1930

Los Angeles Opening : December 11, 1930
Very similar to the later award-winner Flowers and Trees.

From Ryan Kilpatrick at The Disney Film Project : Playful Pan embodies the spirit of the Silly Symphonies and the evolution that we have seen, where story serves as the driver for the musical numbers. It’s a very well done short with an overarching storyline and some great animation.

The main thing about this short that is notable to me is that the title character of Pan plays only a minor role in the chaos that ensues throughout. Pan opens the short by leading a pair of fish on a silly trail through a small lake, but disappears about midway through. While that makes sense in the story, it is still kind of odd.

The storyline has Pan making his presence known in the forest, doing the aforementioned dance with the fish, and then going off screen as a lightning bolt strikes a tree, literally sawing it in half. A fire ensues, and the fire takes on personality, jumping on trees, spanking animals, and pursuing others throughout the forest.

Of course, the animals then go to Pan to help. Pan is able to coerce the fire to follow him, by playing his flute, then leading the little animated firelings to water. After dealing with a particularly reluctant flame, he manages to get all of the fire to douse itself, and saves the forest.

The animation of the fire was really the standout of the short in my opinion. The fire has so much personality that it becomes a character, with little flames with legs marching off of one tree and jumping to another as just one example. There are plenty more, such as the flames pursuing yet another Mickey bear up a tree and grabbing it.

To digress briefly, I remember the first time I saw a Mickey teddy bear at Once Upon a Toy at Downtown Disney. I flipped out. How could they do such a thing? Mickey is a mouse, not a bear, etc., etc. The more I see these Mickey-esque bears, the more I laugh at myself.

Other than the fire, there is not much of Playful Pan that really stands out. The music is mediocre, at least to me, and there’s not a great deal of stand out animation, again, other than the fire. What I did like to see was the squirrels, my favorite characters from Autumn, had returned here, evacuating their tree. For some reason, those characters appeal to me.

Playful Pan is the last of the Silly Symphonies from 1930, so it is interesting to notice the change that has occurred. Other than the throwback of Winter, the latter half of the year had Silly Symphonies that focused on story first, and music second, something that was not the case when the series started. In this short, the music is really an afterthought, which is quite the departure from the original concept.

From B. D. : Perhaps the shift in focus from music to story in the Silly Symphonies has something to do with Carl Stalling's departure? According to Russell Merrit and J. B. Kauffman's book on the subject, Stalling was the one who initially had the idea of a series focusing on music first and animation second. And according to Wikipedia, he left the studio at the same time as Ub. Without the series' creator on board, Disney and his animators might have felt they had more freedom to take it in the direction they wanted. Or they might have just been playing to their strengths, downplaying great compositions now that they'd lost their great composer.

From Mac : The thing I like about this short is all the supporting characters – and there's A LOT of them. We've got some familiar faces in the crowd with the woodland animals. As Ryan says, there's the squirrels from Autumn again, but also the frog from Night and a bunch of extras like the ones we've seen in other woodland cartoons. There seems to be some repeated animation again – the moose in the water seems to be reused from Winter and when it comes to the Mickey-bear being tickled and chased by the flames, it seems to have been traced from a similar scene with Mickey himself from The Fire Fighters.

In addition to the critters we've seen from the past, there's some new supporting characters we'll see again. Most notable are the little flames (I'll always think of them as "Firelings" now!) who'll pop up throughout the 30's. We'll also see that caterpillar with the detachable body again (I think we might have seen him before, but can't quite remember).

Plus this cartoon boast some unique plant-life designs. There are two plant characters with weedy bodies and two big flowers for eyes – a really quirky and cool design. The trees-with-faces characters look great two – one of whom we get to see burn and die, the other a nice weird design who runs on four leg roots!

Personally, the music doesn't feel like an afterthought to me. There's more of a shift towards story now, but they're still set-up for lots of musical sequences with synchronized animation. The studio lost a fantastic talent in Stalling, but I think this change in emphasis has as much to do with Disney's desire to keep the series fresh and interesting, trying new things rather than constantly repeating themselves. Bert Lewis has been doing the scores on the Symphonies since Stalling left. If anyone hasn't been enjoying his musical selections they may be pleased to know that Frank Churchill will be joining the staff soon.

From Tom Wilkins : This cartoon can easily be considered one of the more "transitional" ones in Disney's history. Although the first and second halves of the cartoon were of total contrast, Disney probably did not realize back then that "Playful Pan" would have an incredible impact on the cartoon industry.

Many gags were used in later cartoons. The climatic action scene (the fire in the woods) was replicated in Flowers and Trees only two years later; the instrument playing and subsequent subliminal music were replicated in the Mother Goose era of the Silly Symphony in The Pied Piper only a year after that. The "Playful Pan" himself was replicated by MGM in "Tale Of The Vienna Woods (1934)."

The first half of the cartoon provided very little interest but a lot of silliness from Playful Pan's music and the outside creatures. It was a little intriguing for him to go from flutist to conductor of the percussion ensemble. Once the lightning sawed the tree and started the forest ablaze, all the animals prayed for Smokey The Bear's arrival. (He should have talked to the clouds since they provided the sparks.) A raccoon finally awakens the Playful Pan from his slumber and goes back to work, doing a great job leading the personified fire into the lake, except for one stubborn flame, who gets extinguished by blowing water through his flute with pinpoint accuracy.

This was certainly a fine cartoon, but I still wonder ... how can fire tickle and not burn?

From Jerry Edwards : One of my favorite Silly Symphony cartoons. Excellent descriptions are already listed, so I won't repeat a description here. The scene in which the animals swim to the safety of a tiny island is similar to the later scene in the 1942 Bambi. A bear cub fleeing the flames looks and sounds almost exactly like Mickey Mouse. This is one of 47 shorts that Disney colorized. Although I don't care for colorization, the color did add a great deal to this short, especially during the fire scenes.

From Per Nilsson : This is one of the better shorts of early silly symphonies. This cartoon has at least some sort of plot, not only dancing rhythmically to music.

At first you think this will be another boring affair like Springtime, but then it betters itself. I like the bellydancing worm, and how the lightning strikes the tree. (It cuts like a saw slicing the tree in half) I don't remember seeing that joke reused later on. Otherwise you have to say it's rather similar to Flowers and Trees. Or the other way around since this cartoon came before Flowers and Trees.