Flowers for Madame (1935) Poster

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6/10
The colors are amazing!!!
planktonrules20 November 2021
During the 1930s, most cartoons were black & white. When Technicolor brought out its three-color system, Disney singed a contract to use them exclusively for several years...so other studios stuck with black & white or tried Cinecolor and other two-color systems...film stock which had a very limited range of colors...mostly orangey-red and greenish-blue.

Because of this exclusive agreement, I was shocked when I saw "Flowers for Madame", as it was full color....with colors simply not possible with Cinecolor, such as purple and yellow. IMDB doesn't say what type of film stock was used....and I thought in 1935 Disney still had an exclusive contract. Could this be some other company's film stock? All I know is that it is unexpectedly vivid.

Because I was confused about the color spectrum in the cartoon, I did a bit of research and found that Disney's exclusive deal with Technicolor expired in mid to late 1935 and this cartoon is indeed in three-color Technicolor...and the first by Looney Tunes. And, because it was the first, it appeared as if the studio deliberately made the cartoon more colorful than usual...to the point of almost being garish at times.

The cartoon features lots of singing and dancing flowers (sort of like Disney's "The Flowers and the Trees") and there apparently is some sort of flower pageant. Like many Looney Tunes cartoons of this era, a baddie arrives and tries to spoil the day (in this case, some fire) and a cactus tries to save the day.

Cute characters, singing and dancing....yick! But despite hating the insipid plot, I must at least commend the cartoon for its great animation. As for the full color it was nice but a bit of restraint might have made it better.
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6/10
Roman Emporer Nero may have fiddled while his Homeland burned . . .
oscaralbert23 February 2017
Warning: Spoilers
. . . but at least he sported man-sized hands large enough to actually play this stringed instrument. For those dudes born with the misfortune of dealing with T-Rex like vestigial "starter" appendages, there's always the harp, Warner Bros. shows viewers in this cautionary prognostication from their Animated Shorts Seers division (aka, the Looney Tuners) originating in the 1930s. The naked less-than-Nero leader upon which Warner's blowing an ahead-of-its-time whistle is Putin's Puppet, Rump, of course. This tiny-handed Red Commie tool is seen tinkling a harp a couple minutes into this cartoon, wild hair and all. Then all Heck breaks loose, as Harpist Rump thoughtlessly leaves a magnifying glass lying about out in the sun when he belatedly takes Captain Khan's dad's advice and tries to read the original copy of the U.S. Constitution. FLOWERS FOR MADAME turns into flames for everyone, as Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin is depicted here in the guise of an anthropomorphic flame, leading a circle of Hellfire out to incinerate America's Food, America's Eden-like beauty, and the Constitutional Rights we all hold dear. It will take a lot of work on the part of We True Blue Loyal Patriotic Progressive Union Carded Heroes to serve as tobacco juice-spitting grasshoppers and quench the Flames of Destruction instigated by the Deplorable Putin Party, Warner warns us.
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7/10
contrary to what Phil Ochs sang...
lee_eisenberg6 August 2007
In one of Friz Freleng's early cartoons, a bunch of flowers have a big parade, complete with floats. I of course was half expecting there to be an "Animal House"-style finale, but something uglier happened. As this was in the early days of Warner Bros. animation, we needn't expect any of the full-scale wackiness that characterized their work in the '40s and '50s. But either way, it's a worthy look into the beginning of what would soon be one of the most popular cartoon series of all time. It's available on YouTube, but has probably been altered a little: the YouTube version starts with the zooming WB shield, whereas the 1935 cartoons began with the credits against a plain background (and ended with a court jester saying "That's all, folks!").
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