Studio: Fleischer Studios (Color Classics)
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
A small boy is given an air rifle for his birthday and goes into the garden to try it, shooting at anything that moves. The birds in the trees are singing, a mother bird is feeding her chicks in the nest, and the boy, aiming at a sparrow on a branch, hits a baby bird, which falls to the ground and lies still. The boy, horrified, runs inside. The birds gather round the little body and hold a funeral: a procession of mourners, a tiny coffin, a hymn sung by the whole flock, with the mother bird weeping. The boy watches from his window in misery and buries his gun. Then the rain comes, and a drop of water falling on the baby bird revives it; it was stunned, not dead. The birds rejoice, the boy is forgiven, and the song of the title returns to the garden.
Why It Matters
- The bird funeral is one of the most affecting sequences in the Fleischer canon and a surprising one from a studio known for grotesques; the film is a direct lesson against cruelty, with the air rifle as villain, and it anticipates the message cartoons the studio made with Betty Boop a year later.
- It is in the public domain in the United States through lapsed copyright, and it was popular enough that Famous Studios remade it in 1949 under the same title, with Little Audrey as the culprit, a version that is itself public domain; the two films make an instructive pair.
Notes and Trivia
- The 1949 remake kept the funeral and the rain but gave the boy's role to a girl.
- Roland Crandall drew most of the bird animation.
- See also: An Elephant Never Forgets (1935), Be Human (1936), Little Dutch Mill (1934).