Favorite Film #24, 1951: Symphony in Slang. Directed by Tex Avery

And now we’ve finally reached the end of “Shorts City”. I still have plenty of short films left to cover in my favorites list. But I won’t be consistently running through one short after the other, with nothing feature length to break it up. And fittingly, since we started this with Tex Avery we’re also ending it with Tex Avery. Symphony in Slang is simultaneously one of the dumbest and most ingenious films ever made. Tex Avery literally makes an entire film about bad puns, and through the art of animation it becomes one of the funniest comedies of all time. This is tremendously helped by Avery’s typically breakneck pace, which throws a million jokes a second before you can even blink. But what really makes the short is the gorgeously stylized art style, that takes the limited budget Avery was forced to work with, and turns it into some of the boldest and most modern looking animation of the time. Everyone gives him credit for his timing and humor, but Tex Avery was just as much an artistic genius as the best of Disney, the Fleischer’s, and Chuck Jones. He could always see the changing tide and make a film perfectly representing the art scene of the time! He had Page Miss Glory for the 30’s, Red Hot Riding Hood for the 40’s, and Symphony in Slang for the 50’s. He always kept the same jokes, but he was never afraid to update his style and presentation. I’m sure if he continued to make shorts on his terms well into the 70’s and 80’s, they would have visually represented the leading art scenes of those eras. We could have had a Tex Avery cartoon looking like a grungy underground Ralph Bakshi film! That would have been incredible!