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Champs-Elysées? I wonder what they taste like

Tonight

derspatchel and I attended Black Cat Rescue Benefit Night at Flatbread. We did not adopt our cats through Black Cat Rescue, but we like supporting their brethren: we ordered pizza, bought raffle tickets, got my mother a magnet that reads "KEEP CALM AND LOVE CATS." I was handed a pair of dangly earrings with little black-and-silver pawprints. Then we came home and watched a delightful cartoon oddity off TCM.

Animated in a variety of styles drawn from French Impressionism, Gay Purr-ee (1962) is a classic romantic melodrama set during the Belle Époque—a beautiful, restless ingénue leaves her little town in Provence for the electric-lit, decadent gaiety of Paris, falls in with a slick-talking scoundrel who promises to make her the toast of Paris while really planning to sell her as a mail-order bride to a millionaire in Pittsburgh; her rustic but true-hearted lover follows her to the big city, crosses paths with the villain and gets shanghaied to Alaska, but by a stroke of luck makes a fortune in the gold fields and returns to Paris just in time to rescue the now disillusioned heroine and reunite with her in a whirl of high life and true love. It's a musical, with songs by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. Starring voices are provided by Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Red Buttons, Paul Frees, and Hermione Gingold, with backup from Mel Blanc, Morey Amsterdam, and Thurl Ravenscroft and the Mellomen. Also, in case the title didn't give it away, everybody in this story is a cat. Garland's Mewsette is slender and white with an expressive plume of a tail and eyes as blue as butterflies, Goulet's Jaune Tom is a lanky green-eyed barn cat with sharpshooter mousing skills, Buttons' Robespierre is a little tuxedo kitten with a cynicism all out of proportion to his tadpole spike of a tail, Frees' Meowrice is a rakish tuxedo tom with devilish ears and whiskers that he waxes into points suitable for twirling, and Gingold's Madame Rubens-Chatte is a zaftig pink Persian whose so-called brother really should have known better than to try to cheat her with a bouncing check. Meowrice's henchmen are four spindly, yellow-eyed cat-shadows who slither and tapdance and occasionally stick together into one skinny eight-eyed supercat like the blocky-shouldered goons from Sylvain Chomet's Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003). I wouldn't have called the score immortal, but at least two of the songs—"Paris Is a Lonely Town" and "Little Drops of Rain"—made it into Garland's concert repertoire. It was her only animated film and Goulet's first appearance in the movies. Frees can't sing, but he talks his way through his villain number, "The Money Cat" (the money cat knows where the money tree grows), with such sepulchrally voiced smarm that nobody cares. The animation is genuinely beautiful and full of gonzo sight gags. Jaune Tom spies a mouse and his entire body turns into a ginger-furred targeting system fueled by a firecracker fuse of tail; the mouse squeaks and scrambles and finally resigns itself, whipping a tiny white blindfold out of nowhere before bravely presenting its chest to the firing squad of Jaune Tom's claws. (Jaune Tom then trots proudly back to Mewsette with the live mouse in his mouth because they are cats, after all. Mewsette's dreams of Paris include the beautiful food—the champignons, the Champs-Elysées. Champagne is obviously the sophisticated Parisian term for catnip. I appreciate these concessions to reality.) At one point the devious Meowrice decoys a homesick Mewsette by taking her to all the cafés of Paris, where there are ballet dancers à la Degas and cancan dancers à la Toulouse-Lautrec and there in fact in the front row sits an absinthe-green feline Toulouse-Lautrec sketching away on the tabletop. As Mewsette's Parisienne grooming nears completion, Meowrice has her painted by the leading artists of the day, providing a neat little lesson in the styles of Monet, Seurat, Rousseau, Modigliani, Renoir, Gauguin, Picasso . . . I have absolutely no idea who the target audience of this movie was, other than cat-lovers who also like French Impressionism and future generations of furries. I can only assume it was a passion project for Chuck Jones, since working on the script with Abe Levitow at UPA got him fired from Warner Bros. along with his entire unit; I think it paid off, if only in sheer purring WTF, but I'm not surprised it was a critical and commercial disappointment at the time. Nowadays, my husband informs me, it has a fandom. Autolycus stuck his head over the top of the screen during an action sequence and batted at the screen; he was helping. This pre-Aristocats peculiarity brought to you by my ailurophilic backers at Patreon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I remember catching that musical on some kind of "Weekend Afternoon Matinee" as a kid (ninety thousand commercials), falling in love with it, and then I couldn't remember the title and couldn't find it again for a long time -- and now I think it's on UTU and I could buy the DVD!

I knew someone on my friendlist would have heard of this movie! I think it must have been going through a period of obscurity in my childhood or I would have run into and remembered it. Impressionist cats are not the sort of thing you forget.

(This train of thought led me to An American Tail (1986), which I did see exactly once in childhood and haven't forgotten yet. It starts with a mouse pogrom, for God's sake! I think children's animation has always been weird.)

I also think the scene where she's painted in all those styles is an homage to the bits in American in Paris

Oh, interesting. I figured it was just a delightful excuse for even more artistic pastiche. I really liked Modigliani Mewsette.

I love, love, love Chuck Jones. Best animator of all time IMHO.

moon_custafer on LJ declared the trailer "the Chuck-Jonesiest thing I've ever seen." It really is a fantastic showcase for his style. He wrote the screenplay with his wife Dorothy Webster Jones.

Edited 2016-03-30 20:22 (UTC)

I knew someone on my friendlist would have heard of this movie!

AND IT GOT TO BE ME \o/ srsly, a while back I had been wanting and wanting (jonesing? HAH) to find it for years, and I described it in detail to my friend Julia who googled for a few minutes and was all "Gay Purr-Ee?" and I was like OH MY FUCKING GOD YES because everyone else always suggested Aristocats instead, and I was like, NO, THAT'S NOT IT. I developed a mild loathing for Aristocats just because it had been suggested so often.

I think it must have been going through a period of obscurity in my childhood or I would have remembered it. Impressionist cats are not the sort of thing you forget.

I remember being SO impatient for the commercials to be over because I loved seeing it so much....that was before videotape even. When we were stuck with Million Dollar Movie and Bowling for Dollars and stuff like that.

He wrote the screenplay with his wife Dorothy Webster Jones.

I didn't know that! How fucking adorable. //looks it up on Wiki

On November 4, 2003, Rhino Handmade, a division of the Warner Music Group, released the soundtrack on CD. This was identical to the 1962 LP version but contained 5 additional demo tracks. The demo tracks are performed by Harold Arlen and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg, the composers of the songs for the movie. They were also the primary song writers for the music of The Wizard of Oz

OH MY GOD I NEED THIS _YESTERDAY_

The story -- of a little country cat in 1890 who longs for the color and excitement of the city, and therefore heads to Paris -- was seen as too uninspired and cloying for adults, while the brilliantly stylized animation -- which worked in simulations of art by Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat and Picasso -- was deemed too sophisticated for kids to appreciate. http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/600548%7C0/Cult-Movie-Picks-May-2013.html

EYEROLLS FOREVER

I was pretty fucken young when I saw it (if it was CA in the eighties, I was ten or younger) and I knew what I was looking at. I think it if was released now, it'd be a big hit. Animation still was really not taken seriously in the early sixties.

I developed a mild loathing for Aristocats just because it had been suggested so often.

I haven't seen The Aristocats since day camp at the Arlington Boys and Girls Club. About the only thing I remember from it is the number "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat," which I would have thought was only self-evident, and then the certainty that it contains at least one unwatchable racist joke (a Siamese cat who plays the drums, has a stereotypical "Asian" accent, and may or may not be wearing a cymbal on his head like a conical hat? All I know is it must have been pretty racist if I remember it over the other cats in the band—like, I think there's a jazz trumpeter and that's all I've got), which I don't know how one deals with nowadays.

I was pretty fucken young when I saw it (if it was CA in the eighties, I was ten or younger) and I knew what I was looking at.

And if your kids don't know what they're looking at, but they know it's pretty and they like it, then it's an art lesson and they get into Impressionism and Post-Impressionism when they're eight!

I think it if was released now, it'd be a big hit.

I'd love to see it on a big screen. Technicolor 35 mm, according to IMDb. Get an original print, it won't have faded a whit.

I haven't seen The Aristocats since day camp at the Arlington Boys and Girls Club. About the only thing I remember from it is the number "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat," which I would have thought was only self-evident

That one! Hah, yes. My mother had a Disney songbook and used to sing and play to me out of it, and that was one of them.

and then the certainty that it contains at least one unwatchable racist joke (a Siamese cat who plays the drums, has a stereotypical "Asian" accent, and may or may not be wearing a cymbal on his head like a conical hat? All I know is it must have been pretty racist if I remember it over the other cats in the band—like, I think there's a jazz trumpeter and that's all I've got), which I don't know how one deals with nowadays.

Yeah, I remember the racism. It cheesed me off Aristocats is one everyone knows, too, while Gay Purr-ee, which I think is a lot better, was forgotten.

The Aristocats was re-released to theaters on December 19, 1980 and April 10, 1987. It was released on VHS in Europe on January 1, 1990. It was first released on VHS in North America in the Masterpiece Collection series on April 24, 1996, and on DVD on April 4, 2000 in the Gold Classic Collection line. Disney released the film for the first time on Blu-ray on August 21, 2012. The 2-disc Special Edition Blu-ray/DVD combo (both in Blu-ray and DVD packaging) featured a new digital transfer and new bonus material.

BAH.

And if your kids don't know what they're looking at, but they know it's pretty and they like it, then it's an art lesson and they get into Impressionism and Post-Impressionism when they're eight!

Yes, seriously! I mean, shit, when I ran across words I didn't know reading a book as a kid, I LOOKED THEM UP! If I saw something I didn't understand, I tried puzzling it out! //cough creak tap cane ....it's my experience anyway kids are a lot less nonplussed than adults think they will be at books or movies or whatever.

I'd love to see it on a big screen. Technicolor 35 mm, according to IMDb. Get an original print, it won't have faded a whit.

//whimper

It cheesed me off Aristocats is one everyone knows, too, while Gay Purr-ee, which I think is a lot better, was forgotten.

Not a few people on the internet agree with you.

//cough creak tap cane ....it's my experience anyway kids are a lot less nonplussed than adults think they will be at books or movies or whatever.

Agreed. Even if they are nonplussed, they assimilate it in some fashion that makes sense to them. A recurring experience of late high school and early college was realizing that John Donne's "Song" was not original to Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle (1986), or that Susan Cooper had not invented Robert Graves' "Song of Amergin" for Silver on the Tree (1977), or that "Saint Patrick's Breastplate" existed independently of Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978). I don't think it hurt me or my relationship to poetry.

//whimper

If it happens anywhere that I hear about, I'll let you know!

Edited 2016-03-30 21:18 (UTC)

PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET AGREE WITH ME //fistpump I mean, for a good chunk of my life I'd describe this movie to people and either they never heard of it, or thought it was the Aristocats.

A recurring experience of late high school and early college was realizing that John Donne's "Song" was not original to Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle (1986), or that Susan Cooper had not invented Robert Graves' "Song of Amergin" for Silver on the Tree (1977), or that "Saint Patrick's Breastplate" existed independently of Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978).

Aww, that's neat! What great introductions.