Carmen Get It! marked the end of another era for our favorite cat and mouse duo. It would be the final Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Gene Deitch. The next year the theatrical cartoon series would be taken over by animation legend Chuck Jones. Though Deitch respected some of Jones' other work, he felt that his Tom and Jerry cartoons were in fact superior to Jones' work with the characters. The reason for this is that he felt that his films followed the groundwork William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had set for the series, while Chuck simply remade the series into something completely different. Deitch has written "Today, our T&Js are mixed right in with the earlier Hanna-Barbera's on the Cartoon Network, and I am confident that few viewers find them that much out of synch with the originals, whereas Chuck's are easily spotted as odd. Chuck himself wrote me that he simply remade the characters as his own." He would also write "... my T&Js are not really up to the standards of the originals, though better than the Chuck Jones later versions."
As to how his run of Tom and Jerry films came to an end, Deitch felt that this was because of movie mogul Joe Vogel, no longer being in charge of MGM. About Vogal he stated, "But even though our Tom & Jerrys were never good enough for the animation history mavens, Joe Vogel and his MGM team were well-satisfied with our results." He would go on to state, "Before we had even finished our first 12 cartoons, Joe Vogel, who had seemed to me to be the very symbol of the powerful movie studio tycoon, was booted out of MGM. Thus, we lost our T&J patron. The new bosses wanted the production closer to home. So just as we felt we were beginning to get the hang of T&J, we were not allowed to develop further, as had the original Hanna and Barbera crew. Just look at the first 12 Tom & Jerry films they did and tell me they were hilarious classics!" Deitch was not however bitter by the end of his run with Tom and Jerry. About them he stated, "It was OK when it ended. That was a great learning experience, but it was not my kind of thing" as well as "And hey, they sure did work for me. Our T&J tenure was wholly supported by the then head honcho of MGM, Joe Vogel. When he was ousted, so were we. But the project had served its purpose for me. Along with the following Popeye and Krazy Kat series for King Features TV, it kept me in Prague long enough to marry Zdenka [who he would remain married to until his death in 2020] and assured us of enough work to keep me busy here quite possibly forever!" Though his Tom and Jerry cartoons are disliked by many cartoon fans (me included), Deitch kept a certain pride about them. Deitch would later gladly point out, "A wonderful sidelight to my Tom & Jerry films occurred in the year 2000, when I was told that an 11-year-old American boy named Pietro Shakarian actually put up a web page honoring my T&Js, pronouncing the 'best of all.'" And would also take every opportunity to defend his Tom and Jerry films and state how it is truly incredible that they turned out as well as they did consider all that was stacked against him.
In this last Deitch directed shot film, Tom is chasing Jerry around the streets of New York. Jerry runs into an opera house unnoticed, but Tom is thrown out by a guard. To get in Tom disguises himself as a musician and Tom and Jerry end up wreaking havoc on a performance of Carmen.
This film contains nearly all the major flaws of the other Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry films. The animation once again feels stilted and there are some poor drawings found here. None of the gags elicit even the slightest laughter. The sound effects are bizarre and often ill fitting. The European art style is often at odds with the American slapstick characters of Tom and Jerry. The opera singer is stylized in both design and movement. While this could work in a more European flavored film, she simply does not belong in the same cartoon as Tom and Jerry. The conductor is slightly better as his movement isn't as stylized. Still his odd coloring and very stylized design does not belong in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
The saving grace for this film is the music. Using music from Carmen, the score is lovely to listen to and actually fits what is happening on screen quite well. This is a departure from previous Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons, where the music sounds good but feels at odds with the action on the screen.
In this last Deitch directed shot film, Tom is chasing Jerry around the streets of New York. Jerry runs into an opera house unnoticed, but Tom is thrown out by a guard. To get in Tom disguises himself as a musician and Tom and Jerry end up wreaking havoc on a performance of Carmen.
This film contains nearly all the major flaws of the other Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry films. The animation once again feels stilted and there are some poor drawings found here. None of the gags elicit even the slightest laughter. The sound effects are bizarre and often ill fitting. The European art style is often at odds with the American slapstick characters of Tom and Jerry. The opera singer is stylized in both design and movement. While this could work in a more European flavored film, she simply does not belong in the same cartoon as Tom and Jerry. The conductor is slightly better as his movement isn't as stylized. Still his odd coloring and very stylized design does not belong in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
The saving grace for this film is the music. Using music from Carmen, the score is lovely to listen to and actually fits what is happening on screen quite well. This is a departure from previous Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons, where the music sounds good but feels at odds with the action on the screen.
As well as a director's credit, Gene Deitch receives a story credit. Štěpán Koníczek receives a music credit and Wáclaw Bedřicz receives credit for animation direction. This marked the 127th Tom and Jerry cartoon. The film is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection, Tom and Jerry: Chaos Concerto, Tom and Jerry's Musical Mayhem and Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5.
Gene Deitch would later write about the soundtracks of his Tom and Jerry cartoons and this one in particular. "What I couldn’t tell anybody at the time is that I brought my own Ampex 1/4” tape recorder into the studio, and recorded the orchestras myself, with little more than a volume control and only two microphones, all my own property! The engineers here thought I was crazy, but I got brighter results than they did. (They had only one-channel mono recording. I recorded all the tracks in stereo. Stereo did not exist here at all in 1961! I also created all the sound effects at home, except the sounds Tod Dockstader made, and sent me on quarter-inch tape! I can only imagine how far we would have gotten, if a half-century ago MGM knew that the entire soundtracks of our Tom & Jerry soundtracks, including the symphony orchestra for Carmen Get It, were recorded on an Ampex 601-2 recorder, no bigger than a carry-on suitcase! And that all my tracks were edited and mixed in our tiny bachelor apartment in communist Prague!"
The Tom and Jerry Wiki states, "This is the fourth and final cartoon to feature The Ants who previously appeared in Cat Napping, Pup on a Picnic, and Barbecue Brawl." Saying that these are the exact same ants that appeared in those William Hanna and Joseph Barbera directed shorts seems like more than a small stretch. Still, this is the fourth Tom and Jerry cartoon to end with a gag involving ants.
-Michael J. Ruhland
Resources Used
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/tom-jerry-the-gene-deitch-collection/
https://www.awn.com/genedeitch/chapter-twentyone-tom-and-jerry-the-first-reincarnation
https://www.tcj.com/the-gene-deitch-interview/2/
https://tomandjerry.fandom.com/wiki/Carmen_Get_It!
Gene Deitch would later write about the soundtracks of his Tom and Jerry cartoons and this one in particular. "What I couldn’t tell anybody at the time is that I brought my own Ampex 1/4” tape recorder into the studio, and recorded the orchestras myself, with little more than a volume control and only two microphones, all my own property! The engineers here thought I was crazy, but I got brighter results than they did. (They had only one-channel mono recording. I recorded all the tracks in stereo. Stereo did not exist here at all in 1961! I also created all the sound effects at home, except the sounds Tod Dockstader made, and sent me on quarter-inch tape! I can only imagine how far we would have gotten, if a half-century ago MGM knew that the entire soundtracks of our Tom & Jerry soundtracks, including the symphony orchestra for Carmen Get It, were recorded on an Ampex 601-2 recorder, no bigger than a carry-on suitcase! And that all my tracks were edited and mixed in our tiny bachelor apartment in communist Prague!"
The Tom and Jerry Wiki states, "This is the fourth and final cartoon to feature The Ants who previously appeared in Cat Napping, Pup on a Picnic, and Barbecue Brawl." Saying that these are the exact same ants that appeared in those William Hanna and Joseph Barbera directed shorts seems like more than a small stretch. Still, this is the fourth Tom and Jerry cartoon to end with a gag involving ants.
-Michael J. Ruhland
Resources Used
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/tom-jerry-the-gene-deitch-collection/
https://www.awn.com/genedeitch/chapter-twentyone-tom-and-jerry-the-first-reincarnation
https://www.tcj.com/the-gene-deitch-interview/2/
https://tomandjerry.fandom.com/wiki/Carmen_Get_It!
The ants becoming music notes, changing the music as they move around, is a good gag (so is the ants under the conductor's shirt causing him to gyrate so the music becomes bump-and-grind); whether it comes off in this cartoon is a matter of opinion.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I prefer that Chuck Jones took Tom and Jerry in a slightly different direction, adding a more cerebral element to their antics. The most elaborate cartoon shorts of their time (getting Mel Blanc and June Foray to supply simple gasps, groans, and giggles seems a waste of their talents), the animation is somehow a little "off," but at least we're spared the carefully rendered welts and bruises of the earlier Tom and Jerrys.