In this strange little anti-war, very cute and overly preachy (near) propaganda film, we pass a ruined battlefield, the remains of a church and head into the small town of Peaceville; where the inhabitants are celebrating Christmas. An elderly squirrel makes his way through the town, listening to a trio of carollers singing a somewhat altered version of “Peace on Earth.” Not too much later, his two grandchildren are asking him what the men in the song are: what follow is perhaps one of the strangest pieces of juxtaposition in animation that I can remember seeing in a while.
Hugh Harman, this short’s director, did seem to have a Disney complex during his time at MGM, with his cartoons featuring many characters who were usually on the insanely cute side of things: maybe this isn’t that surprising given that he had been at the Disney company at the start. Considering also, that MGM had a more relaxed attitude to their new animation studio, complete with state-of-the-art equipment, comparatively lush budgets and a low count in yearly episode requirements. In this environment it no wonder that the short does at least look amazing. Unfortunately, although the artwork may look wondrous, the story and its execution leave something to be desired.
The main problem is the way that the short tries to get its serious message across is jarring and hard to take seriously, killing the whole point of the story. Its mixture of cutesy cartoon animals with sombrely realistic rotoscoped humans, with one undermining the authority of the other. In the end it loses the film its credibility, because it looks like someone has stitched two unrelated films together. A part of me knows that the idea was to emphasis the alien-like appearance of uniformed men of war, but to humans, which I assume where the intended audience, the outlandish appearance of a human in a gasmask, though unsettling, is hardly alien (as unfortunate as that may be).
It is also hard to take humans raging wars over such notions as vegetarianism and flat feet seriously, I note that the idea is suppose to be ironic, but it and the whole film is so matter-of-fact in presentation, that you get the idea that either the makers wanted you to take it as read, or didn’t have the ability to convey their ideas. Wars in general are the effect of profiteering, or have some political roots, and throughout history many wars were about aspects of religion. This later part I’ll come to again in a bit.
Yet you can see where Harman is coming from, which is that war should never be a welcome thing and the goings on in mainland Europe at the time this short was made must have been terrifying for those who had memories of the first world war, which then would have been merely twenty years ago. Looking at the outfits of the humans in this short, it certainly seems as if memories of war certainly played their part. For his intention and involvement in this Harman must be applauded, even if maybe his style wasn’t as proactive in its creation.
However, in another light, if the awkward mixture of cuteness and realism isn’t jarring enough, the short has an underlining religious theme, Christianity, but then hides all references to it throughout. Whether with the changing of lyrics in the song, or the removal of Christ’s head from a church’s stain glass window. It’s as if the makers of the short were afraid to call a spade a spade, so to speak. Why I’ve no idea, as trying to keep the religion in question anonymous while the characters say “Merry Christmas” and read the commandants is something of a redundant exercise.
Ultimately a lot of this film’s problems could be associated with its age and the way that wars were fought before, the way that many would have thought would be in the future, via trenches. One inherent problem with trench warfare is that it is generally localised; we are suppose to believe that these wars have exterminated the entire human populace, a notion that, with hindsight, is difficult to accept (luckily the 1955 remake fixes this issue, for a rather simple reason).
The coyly cuteness’ distinction and separation from the more realistically detailed side of this short are extremely jarring and though there will be those who can overlook such things, it, in the end has to stand up its peers in the here and now. In the coming years toward the second world war, much more sombrely themed cartoons came from Disney and more comedic ones from the other studios, including MGM. It’s antiwar message is welcomed, but with its juxtaposing of un-relating and conflicting styles, the message ends up feeling somehow hollow.
POSSIBLE SPOILER.
I also wonder why the animals would be interested in, or indeed need such human inventions such as houses, towns and the like; when burrows, trees, etc have worked so well (and were more natural to boot). They certainly seem over keen on taking up old habits, almost as interested as the wise old owl isn’t in eating the inquisitive squirrel asking him questions.
/ 3 reviews)
Reviews for Peace on Earth
