''Flowers and Trees'' is a '' Silly Symphonies''

animated Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

produced by

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...

, directed by

Burt Gillett Burton F. Gillett (October 15, 1891 – December 28, 1971) was a Film director, director of animation, animated films. He is noted for his Silly Symphonies work for Walt Disney Pictures, Disney, particularly the 1932 short film ''Flowers and Tree ...

, and released to theatres by

United Artists United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...

on July 30, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip

Technicolor Technicolor is a family of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black-and ...

process after several years of two-color Technicolor films. The film was a commercial and critical success, winning the first Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation (library and archival science), preservation, each selected for its cultural, historical, and aestheti ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

During Spring, the flowers, mushrooms and trees do their calisthenics. Some trees play a tune, using vines for harp strings and a chorus of robins. A fight breaks out between a waspish-looking hollow tree and a younger, healthier tree for the attention of a female tree. The young tree emerges victorious, but the hollow tree retaliates by starting a fire. The plants and animals try to extinguish or evade the blaze. By poking holes in clouds and making it rain, the birds manage to put out the fire, although the hollow tree perishes in the flames after getting caught up in them himself. The young tree then proposes to the female tree, with a caterpillar serving as a ring, and they embrace as a 12-color rainbow forms behind them.

Production

In May 1932, the first three-strip

camera was completed. Herbert Kalmus wanted to test it in the animation field, giving the company time to build enough cameras to offer the whole movie industry, but couldn't find any interested animators. Finally,

agreed to try it as an experiment on ''Flowers and Trees'', which was already in production in black-and-white, and ordered the cartoon redone in color. The color animation caused the production to run over budget, potentially ruining Disney financially, but the cartoon proved so popular that the profits made up for the budget overage.

Impact

As a result of the success of ''Flowers and Trees'', all future ''Silly Symphonies'' cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor. The added novelty of color helped to boost the series' previously disappointing returns. Disney's other cartoon series, the ''

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white ...

'' shorts, were deemed successful enough not to need the extra boost of color, remaining in black-and-white until '' The Band Concert'' (1935). Disney's exclusive contract with Technicolor, in effect until the end of 1935, forced other animation producers such as

Ub Iwerks Ubbe Ert "Ub" Iwerks ( ; March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971), was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, Invention, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and f ...

(Disney's former head animator and close friend) and

Max Fleischer Max Fleischer (born Majer Fleischer ; July 19, 1883 – September 11, 1972) was an American animator and studio owner. Born in Kraków, in Austrian Poland, Fleischer immigrated to the United States where he became a pioneer in the development ...

to use Technicolor's inferior two-color process or a competing two-color system such as

Cinecolor Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel an ...

Accolades

''Flowers and Trees'' was the first animated film to win an Academy award at the fifth Academy Awards in 1932. It won best "Short Subjects, Cartoons", a category first introduced that year.

Home media

The short was released on December 4, 2001 on '' Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies – The Historic Musical Animated Classics''. The short was included in bonus on the Diamond Edition blu-ray of 2009 of ''

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "Snow White" is a German fairy tale, first written down in the early 19th century. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', numbered as Tale 53. The original title was ''Sneewittch ...

''. It made its streaming debut on

Disney+ The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

in 2021.

References

External links

*
Flowers and Trees
i
The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts
' * {{AcademyAwardBestAnimatedShortFilm 1932–1940 1932 films 1930s color films 1932 comedy films Best Animated Short Academy Award winners 1930s Disney animated short films Silly Symphonies Films directed by Burt Gillett Films produced by Walt Disney Films about trees Anthropomorphic trees Animated films without speech United States National Film Registry films 1930s English-language films 1930s American films Animated films about plants English-language short films 1932 animated short films Anthropomorphic plants