Farmyard Symphony

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

The FARMYARD SYMPHONY signals the start of another day for the farm animals. Baby colts & calves frolic & scamper, the rooster plights his noisy troth to a svelte hen, and a young pig searches for more food.

Set to an amalgam of classic music, this cartoon is short on plot & long on charm. The animals are all well rendered; in fact, it's fascinating to compare this film to earlier entries in the Symphonies and see just how far the Disney animators had progressed in depicting lifelike farm fauna. It sounds like Clarence Nash & Florence Gill are vocalizing for the ducks & chickens.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.