Motion picture visuals worldwide underwent a transformation with the emergence of the popular styles of Art Deco and Art Moderne. Art Deco held sway during the 1920s and early 1930s; its appearance relying on the bold shape, suggesting the luxurious and ‘chic’. Art Moderne (the mid 1930s to the early 1940s) represented the ‘streamlined’ look, less organic and suggesting a mechanized yet elegant future. The styles are similar and the terms are often used interchangeably. Both styles changed the look of live action musicals, melodramas and comedies, and the occasional cartoon.
LA JOIE DE VIVRE (1934)
The financial half of the team was Hector Hoppin, from the US; the artistic half, Anthony Gross (1905-1984), an English painter settled in Paris. Together, they formed the small studio Animat in 1932, and had produced two films before getting to this one. LA JOIE DE VIVRE was based on a series of etchings by Gross, and was called a “cine-ballet” in some promotions; an exercise in wedding the arts of dance and animation. The film is an odyssey in high Art Moderne style, a tribute to a glorious Tomorrowland, with angular electrical wires and curvy streamlined trains serving as visual motifs.
The film became a favorite in “art houses” that normally shunned mere “cartoons”. Even though it was misunderstood by some American animators as “crude” (as cited by Shamus Culhane), Gross saw effects in Disney’s FANTASIA as influenced by this film, and I’d be the last to doubt that.
THE FOX HUNT (1936)
Hoppin and Gross’ immediate follow-up, and done in a cozier style remindful of the stylized illustrations in such magazines as VOGUE. The “Shock of the New” is softened, as more traditional settings and situations are interpreted. Some of the music is jaunty jazz of a type heard in US cartoons.
In 1937, Hoppin and Gross started work on what was to be an animated feature, AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. Production was interrupted by WWII, and Gross finally finished the project as a short in 1955, then abandoned filmmaking for painting.
PAGE MISS GLORY (1936)
Crossing over to Hollywood, the Leon Schlesinger studio was surprisingly “friendly” to Art Deco inspirations, most consistently in Frank Tashlin’s “books-come-to-life” entries, where the characters are surrounded by strong Deco lettering. It is natural because Tashlin’s own drawing style has the style’s round forms and smooth lines.
However, the best known of WB’s Deco/Moderne cartoons was directed without great love by “Tex” Avery (so he said). PAGE MISS GLORY was based on the designs of Leadora Congdon, an artist from Chicago. The hope was to develop a new, more sophisticated approach, an impressive goal for its time. The cartoon has the whimsical wit and drawing of period cocktail paraphernalia. Its styling is “rationalized” as the dream of a very traditional Li’l Abner type (named Abner). Unlike the future-friendly LA JOIE DE VIVRE, PAGE MISS GLORY’s designs represent an alien and ultimately dangerous environment.
LEARN POLIKENESS (1938)
The “foreignness” of the style is personified in this Max Fleischer Popeye entry. The sleek Professor Bluteau’s office, introduced in one of Fleischer’s eye-popping stereoptical pans, is a striking and elegant Moderne layout, used only to mask the professor’s personal slovenliness, lechery and brutality. This is contrasted with the gauche but “honest” American heroes lured into his web.
Glabrously Yours, MK
Milton Knight blogs regularly at World Of Knight.com