Walt Disney created a series of short animated films in the 1930s called Silly Symphonies: in them, different things from the “inert” world move, interact, behave, and gesticulate. They experience situations and even face moral dramas. Things as diverse as watches, bones, houses, chandeliers, mushrooms, and toys, are endowed with a pair of eyes, opposable thumbs, and human faces. They smile, cry, or sing; they feel emotions such as jealousy, envy, or pity. One of these clips, Flowers and Trees, takes place in a corner of the woods, at dawn. The trees wake up and greet the sun stretching their branches like arms, yawning with a face located right under the green leafy hair of the foliage. Stunningly standing on legs, the flowers do gymnastic feats while the mushrooms smile with their gleaming heads. All things sing in unison and dance, encircled by birds depicted as little chirping children. In the middle of this crowd celebrating the daybreak, the trees socialize, they take up roles and postures, facing the dilemmas of amorous courtship, rivalry, and reconciliation. In the feud for the love of a slender and think-leafed kapok, a story unfolds were good and evil wage war, as if such story took place in a realm more human than vegetal. [...]
Anima
in ENCYCLOPEDIA