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The Spider and the Fly

A Silly Symphony

Release Date : October 23, 1931

Running Time : 7:12

Synopsis

The loves of the common house fly are briefly explored before a villainous black spider wearing Mickey Mouse gloves makes his presence felt. Soon the swarm must unite in military fashion to drive the intruder out--all to the strains of the familiar "Light Cavalry Overture."

Credits

Video

United States

Cartoon Classics : First Series : Volume 14 : Animal Tales

Laserdiscs

Cartoon Classics : Animal Tales

DVD

Disney Treasures : More Silly Symphonies

Television

The Ink and Paint Club: Episode 38: Infested Silly Symphonies

The Mickey Mouse Club : February 22, 1956

Technical Specification

Color Type: Black & White

Animation Type: Standard animation

Sound Mix: Mono

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Negative Format: 35mm

Print Format: 35mm

Cinematographic Process: Spherical

Original Language: English

Released by Columbia Pictures, Inc.

Comments

- Announced release: October 16, 1931
- Copyright date: October 19, 1931
- Los Angeles opening: October 15, 1931
- New York opening: January 29, 1932

From Ryan Kilpatrick at The Disney Film Project : One of the things I’ve often said is lacking in the Silly Symphonies so far has been a clear protagonist/antagonist conflict. Most of the time we have an introduction to a situation, where we get some dancing, playful gags, etc. But in The Spider and The Fly, we have a fantastic example of clear conflict.

As you can imagine, the conflict is between a villainous spider and a fly, but in truth, it’s more about the community of flies attacking the spider. We start out in an unoccupied house, where the flies have taken over. It’s much like scenes from Alice Rattled By Rats or When The Cat’s Away, only substituting flies for the rats in those earlier shorts.

The fun part of this opening is that we start on a tight shot of a fly dancing, then widen out to see that he’s upside down on the ceiling. The shot shows the entire room upside down and the flies right side up, then rotates around to the opposite way. It’s a very effective way of literally turning the viewers’ expectations upside down.

From there, we single out a small fly and his female companion, who head outside to cavort together. The evil spider shows up, though, showing obvious menace from his first appearance. This is a great example of good design, as the spider is an obvious villain, which acclimates the viewer to how things will go in the rest of the short.

The real action begins, though, when the spider traps the female fly. At that point, the male rallies his brothers, and all out war is declared on the spider. The flies conduct a military style campaign to attack the spider and release the female fly, and their methods are both effective and hilarious.

From the obvious puns of the flies riding horseflies to attack, to the bombing of the spider with pepper sacks dropped from dragonflies, this is some of the most inventive pieces of work I have seen from the Disney animators in the 1931 shorts. It’s just really good, funny stuff.

Again, though, we see a war motif here, like we have seen in some of the other shorts. Walt definitely drew on his experiences from World War I in his work, and it obviously influenced his thinking later as World War II hit the studio hard. It’s fun to see here, but will be a different tone in the wartime shorts.

The finale comes when the flies burn the web, and the spider flies off into a section of fly paper. It’s a fun ending to a fun time. The quality of the flies and their companions is not good in the animation, but it doesn’t matter. Similar to The Fox Hunt, the point is not the characters but their movements together, so there doesn’t have to be a ton of detail added to each individual. They are more than the sum of their parts, and that makes The Spider and The Fly as good as it is.

From Mac : I think it's a shame that very little of the spirit of Mary Howitt's original poem, "The Spider and the Fly" made it into this cartoon. The poem (easily found on many websites) is a cautionary tale of a spider trying to tempt a fly into his web, eventually succeeding through flattery. There is great potential for a much creepier cartoon and villain than what is found here.

It is cool how the spider evilly attracts the female fly by playing the web like a harp, but she just falls into it so easily with much less cunning and conning from the villain. Instead it's another Rally-to-the- Rescue short, like you say (much like the climax to Birds of a Feather). The mob vastly outnumbers the spider and will stop at nothing to rescue the fly. In fact, once the spider was caught on the flypaper, I was half expecting the flies to set it alight with the flaming cobweb and watch him burn.

It's a fun little short nonetheless. I'm sure the scenes of the spider menacingly walking across the web inspired one of the bosses in the old Mega Drive game "World of Illusion: Starring Mickey and Donald" – the movement and character is extremely similar. I also get a laugh out of how detailed the knackered old horse is drawn. It looks really disgusting and grotesque. Maybe the artists wanted a horse that really looked like the kind that would attract plenty of flies. They certainly succeeded!

From Jerry Edwards : While Disney does its best to make the spider into a villain, it just doesn't work for me - since I HATE FLIES. The opening scene is nicely done, showing flies dancing around a kitchen, only the picture is flipped to show that they are really on the ceiling. A spider plays his web like a harp to catch a female fly in his web. The flies enlist horseflies to ride on and dragonflies as bombers to battle the spider. Centipedes are shown as the "track" of "army boot" tanks. After the flies set the spider web on fire, the spider is captured on fly paper. At the end of the battle, the boy fly saves the captured girl fly. This short was supposedly colorized but I've never seen the color version.

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The Spider and the Fly

A Silly Symphony

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