The Old Mill (1937)

Directed by

Wilfred Jackson, Graham Heid

Genre

animated cartoon

Country

United States

Runtime

9 min

Rated

NR

Rating

7.3 of 10 from 222 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This animated short shows the small animals living in an old windmill in the countryside. A severe summer thunderstorm threatens their home and they must find safety until the storm passes.

tranquilstormytensecozyobservationalwhimsicalvisually lushbittersweet

What happens

The Old Mill is a Silly Symphonies animated short film produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, scored by Leigh Harline, and released theatrically by RKO Radio Pictures on November 5, 1937. The film depicts the natural community of animals populating an old abandoned windmill in the country, and how they deal with a severe summer thunderstorm that nearly destroys their habitat. It incorporates the song "One Day When We Were Young" from Johann Strauss II's operetta The Gypsy Baron. The Old Mill was the first Silly Symphony cartoon to be released by RKO and was given a new Silly Symphony logo, some new titles, and a burlap background which was used for several other Disney theatrical cartoon series like Donald Duck, Goofy, Mickey Mouse, and Pluto the Pup. Like many of the later Silly Symphony shorts, The Old Mill was a testing ground for advanced animation techniques. Marking the first use of Disney's multiplane camera, the film also incorporates realistic depictions of animal behavior, complex lighting and color effects, depictions of wind, rain, lightning, ripples, splashes and reflections, three-dimensional rotation of detailed objects, and the use of timing to produce specific dramatic and emotional effects. All of the lessons learned from making The Old Mill would subsequently be incorporated into Disney's feature-length animated films, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which was released a month later, as well as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942). In 2015, The Old Mill became the second Silly Symphonies short (after Three Little Pigs) to be selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Summertime (1935)
• Autumn (1930)
• To Spring (1936)
• Barnyard Babies (1935)
• Summer (1930)
• The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937)
• Ain't We Got Fun (1937)
• Winter (1930)