Why so much hype?
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
View MoreThis is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
View MoreThe acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
View Moreyes I saw this one in the Film Museum of Brussels. it was a bit silly, I thought, but it fit right in the context: a lesson about communism in Hollywood. this cartoon contains of two parts: the first one was about how the situation was in those years of war and the second one was to ridicule it with lots of satire and parodies of existing political figures. the cartoon left me a bit unsatisfied, because I wondered the whole if Hitler would have seen this (because the 'main' character is a satire on him)? they couldn't tell me in the Film Museum, what was a pity. I do realize why this cartoon was banned (or should be banned at the time): it contains too much propaganda for political systems.
View MoreThis was the second of three Warner Brothers, anti-Hitler cartoons that were broadcast yesterday on the Turner Classic Film Network's "Cartoon Alley".Hitler is upset that all attempts to bomb Moscow have met with disaster, so he announces at the start that he will fly a special plane to hit the city. He announces that the flight will be by the greatest Nazi superman in history. When he is asked if will be flown by him, he answers "Mm, COULD BE!!", which was a radio comedy catchphrase of the day (I think from Jack Benny's program).So he sets off, and for most of the cartoon we just watch him flying. But we see these cartoon gremlins (who this thread explains were caricatures of Fritz Freleng, Chuck Jones, and others, and they proceed to destroy the airplane (while singing a song to the tune of OY CHICHOINYA" - "We're all gremlins, from the Kremlin"). In the end they cause Hitler to crash, and he is so confused by the whole adventure he turns into a caricature of Lew Lehr, who did comic travelogues for the movies. His catch phrase was "Monkeys is the Cwaziest peoples." The cartoon is funny, and one can see some past influences, When the gremlins are trying a variety of things to do to Hitler, the cartoonist orchestrates them to just miss hitting each other. A cartoon about the building of the world's tallest skyscraper had a sequence when about five or six different construction workers tried to hammer nails in different corners of the structure as planned, but all fail to notice that their nails, if driven up , down, or sideways, will end up nailing some co-worker in his rear.This was also the second Warner's cartoon where the fictitious "Gremlins" popped up to destroy aircraft - the other was a Bugs Bunny cartoon where he is outsmarted by the Gremlins who are trying to destroy the U.S. Air Force plane Bugs is on. That cartoon only had one Gremlin on it, and it also had a joke at the end dealing with gasoline rationing.One of the highlights here was the mask of Joseph Stalin, used to frighten Hitler who was trying to kill some of the Russian Gremlins before that. Stalin also appears in the last of the three Warner cartoons I saw this morning, "Herr Meets HARE", but was rarely in any of the Warner cartoons made after the "Cold War" began to heat up in the late 1940s.
View MoreHitler is concerned about his aeroplanes towards Moskou, as they all somehow seem to be missing. He decides to go on the mission himself (as he's apparently the best pilot), but in the air he has to do battle with some strange small creatures, who call themselves 'The Gremlins From The Kremlin'.This short animation story is really silly and not that fun either. It's even pretty boring. I've seen so many better propaganda films from that era; you can stop your efforts to track this one down if you'd ask me: go for a movie like 'Education For Death' instead.4/10.
View MoreThat's one of the shtick jokes from this wartime jewel. I gave it an 8 out of ten for its one flaw, a screw-up in continuity.Basically, it's a vehicle for silly slapstick at Hitler's physical expense. Some of the gremlins bear striking resemblances to the gang at Termite Terrace. And where else would you hear "Volga Boatmen" at 8-to-the-bar?I said there was one flaw, in continuity. There was another flaw - a social one. See, there was one bit at the end I found eye-brow-raising by 1999 standards where Hitler, dazed from his plane crashing on top of him, looks Oriental - read Japanese. You can say, "yeah, it was racist, but it was the 1940s, it was WWII, everyone was like that, &c." But the casual, remorseless, didn't-think-twice-about-it attitude of the joke struck me from beyond the film-frames of this cartoon.
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