Studio: Walt Disney Studio (Silly Symphonies)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
In a Spanish tavern a barmaid carries a mug of beer to the music of Bizet's Carmen, swaying as she goes, and a man in a white suit tips her and gets a quick dance for his money. The toreador outside sees her with the customer and is furious; the two men fight over her until she walks away from both. The scene shifts to the bullring, where the toreador faces a bull who looks a good deal like Clarabelle Cow and who would rather play than fight. What follows is a chase in both directions, the toreador after the bull and the bull after the toreador, with the band in the stands keeping time, until the bull is finally dealt with in a manner that owes more to a wrestling match than a corrida.
Why It Matters
- It is the second Silly Symphony, made in the shadow of The Skeleton Dance, and it shows the series' first attempt at a story with human characters and a setting rather than a dance of skeletons; Carl Stalling's score, built on Carmen, is the first time the series used a famous opera as its spine, a habit it kept.
- Its copyright expired at the end of 2024, and the film is public domain in the United States. The trade paper Film Daily called it "a continuous riot from start to finish", and its toreador-and-playful-bull plot was one Disney revisited at feature length, by way of Munro Leaf's book, in Ferdinand the Bull.
Notes and Trivia
- The barmaid is one of the first human women drawn at the Disney studio.
- The series' title card at this date read "A Walt Disney Silly Symphony drawn by Ub Iwerks".
- See also: The Skeleton Dance (1929), Springtime (1929).