Springtime (1929 Film)
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''Springtime'' is a ''
Silly Symphonies ''Silly Symphony'' is an American animation, animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the ''Silly Symphonies'' were originally inte ...
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animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...
Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
. It was released in 1929. It was the third Silly Symphonies film to be produced, just five days before the
1929 Stock Market Crash The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
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Flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...
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centipede Centipedes (from New Latin , "hundred", and Latin , " foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', lip, and New Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, an ...
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bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
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frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...
s dance (and devour each other) in time to the usual blend of themes from the light classics. The music used in the film includes "
Morning Mood "Morning Mood" ( no, Morgenstemning i ørkenen, translation=Morning mood in the desert, link=no, italic=no) is part of Edvard Grieg's ''Peer Gynt'', Op. 23, written in 1875 as incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play of the same name, and was al ...
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Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the foremost Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of ...
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Peer Gynt ''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five- act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1876. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed ''Per Gynt'', the Norwegian fairy tale on wh ...
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Franz von Blon Franz von Blon (July 16, 1861 – October 21, 1945) was a German composer and bandmaster best known for his concert marches, operettas, and the serenade ''Sizilietta''. He was born in Berlin on July 16, 1861 and attended Stern's Conservatory of ...
's " Whispering Flowers",
Amilcare Ponchielli Amilcare Ponchielli (, ; 31 August 1834 – 16 January 1886) was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera ''La Gioconda''. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla. Life and work Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchiell ...
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Dance of the Hours ''Dance of the Hours'' (Italian: ') is a short ballet and is the act 3 finale of the opera '' La Gioconda'' composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. It depicts the hours of the day through solo and ensemble dances. The opera was first performed in 187 ...
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Jacques Offenbach Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera '' ...
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Gaîté Parisienne ''Gaîté Parisienne'' (literally, "Parisian Gaiety") is a 1938 ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine (1896-1979) to music by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) arranged and orchestrated many decades later by Manuel Rosenthal (1904-2003) in collabo ...
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Reception

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Motion Picture News The ''Motion Picture News'' was an American film industry trade paper published from 1913 to 1930. History The publication was created through the 1913 merger of the ''Moving Picture News'' founded in 1908 and ''The Exhibitors' Times'', founded ...
'' (November 2, 1929): "A Panic. Another contribution to the entertainment of the nation. Walt Disney has been hitting an extremely high average with his various cartoon series. This one is well worth whatever praise this reporter may bestow upon it. The basis of the amusing antics is the line which ruminates about springtime, love and levity. Everything turns terpsichore: flowers, spiders, cranes, frogs. The routines they pass through are guaranteed to make any audience laugh." ''
The Film Daily ''The Film Daily'' was a daily publication that existed from 1918 to 1970 in the United States. It was the first daily newspaper published solely for the film industry. It covered the latest trade news, film reviews, financial updates, informatio ...
'' (November 3, 1929): "This is called a Disney ''Silly Symphony'', and it is a corker. The cartoon work is about the best that has ever been seen in the animated field, the expressions and general antics of the animals being unusually clever as well as true to life. A series of frogs graduating in size are swallowed by each other in turn, till only the last big frog is left. This one in turn is swallowed by a long-legged bird, who is so weighted down that he flops in a pond and is drowned. The clever conceit is a fine satire on the survival of the fittest in the animal world. The synchronized music accompanying the dancing music of the frogs adds greatly to the laughs, which come easily." ''
Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' (February 12, 1930): "Another amusing, ingeniously made cartoon comedy drawn by Walt Disney. Oke for any theatre. In ''Springtime'' Disney has sought to express that vernal feeling of animated insect, animal and flower characters in novel dance routines set to intriguing musical numbers. Timing of the dances, the accompanying taps, etc., is so perfect that the rhythm alone imparts rare entertainment value to this new one in the ''Silly Symphony'' series. Every opportunity to inject comedy for laughs has also been seized. Some repetition in the nature of the dance routines but not serious."


Home media

The short was released on December 19, 2006, on '' Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies, Volume Two''.


In popular culture

The cartoon also makes an appearance in the 1961 animated film ''
One Hundred and One Dalmatians ''One Hundred and One Dalmatians'' (also simply known as ''101 Dalmatians'') is a 1961 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the 1956 novel ''The Hundred and One Dalmatians'' by Dodie Smith. The ...
'' (also made by Disney), when the puppies are watching TV with Horace and Jasper. Similarly, one of the music piece from the latter half of the short would later be reused for the full "Dance of the Hours" segment in
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
's 1940 film, ''
Fantasia Fantasia International Film Festival (also known as Fantasia-fest, FanTasia, and Fant-Asia) is a film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. Regularly held in July of each year, it is valued by both hardcore ...
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References


External links

* {{Silly Symphonies 1929 films 1929 short films 1929 animated films 1920s Disney animated short films Silly Symphonies Films directed by Walt Disney Films produced by Walt Disney American black-and-white films Animated films without speech Columbia Pictures animated short films Columbia Pictures short films 1920s American films