Popeye: The Optimus Prime of Early Animation


D’oh? No. The Shamus has a tip for you: Forget that big-screen version of The Simpsons. A genuine comic marvel hits the DVD shelves on Tuesday: Popeye The Sailor: 1933-1938, Vol. 1.

For anybody remotely interested in animation and film history, this is news of the highest order. For years, fans have traded crappy VHS versions or taped-off-TV copies of the original black-and-white “Popeye” cartoons from Paramount. No more. Now, Warners has issued a four-disc, remastered DVD set with 60 of the original black-and-white shorts from Fleischer Studios, along with gobs of extra documentaries, commentary tracks and the original bookend Paramount logos (for you hardcore animation types.) As the spinach-munching sailor would say, “Well, blow me down!”

The Shamus has to admit that I’ve never willingly been a fan of animation. Cartoons basically strike me as kids’ stuff and I watch enough of them with my kid. But I was completely bowled over by the first two discs of the “Popeye” set and my daughter was transfixed, too (although she seemed mostly transfixed by the Paramount logo at the end where the pen jumps into the inkwell. Funny what kids focus on.) I can’t wait to watch all of the discs. I’m not sure if I saw the TV airings of these original shorts when I was growing up, although I’m sure I saw some of the color TV series. They’re not the same thing.

Along with my recent discovery of Tex Avery (I know, I’m way behind the curve on this), I’m now fascinated by Max and Dave Fleischer’s house style, which seems as fresh and daring to me as anything done by Disney, or by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, for that matter. It’s all about the energy and the visual inventiveness. The frames literally seem to vibrate as every character and every backdrop seems to be in curving, curling motion.

Forget Gene Kelly, or Fred and Ginger, or Cagney. Popeye should be considered one of the screen’s great musical stars. His body moves with a ballet dancer’s nimble grace combined with sure-footed comic timing. (Check out the short called “The Dance Contest.”) His mutterings, his blown-up forearms, his jaunty step, the way his hand reaches inside his vest, rips open a can of spinach and grabs a fistful, the way he sings “I’m strong to the finish” and toots on his pipe, it’s all nothing less than poetry. And the marvelous speakeasy jazz scores and bouncy songs used by the Fleischers accentuate his every move.

The sight gags are astounding. I loved the early Swee’pea short where Popeye is parading the sleeping tyke in his stroller, but on every street corner he runs into people making a racket or playing musical instruments too loud. (Swee’pea even takes a toke off Pappy’s pipe, which would never go over today.) Inanimate objects, such as musical instruments, are given a sort of oversized life in the gags. In this short, Popeye sends a fist flying into a radio and his spinach-fed force is so strong it sends the musical note across the ocean and into a recording studio where it punches out the opera singer emoting into the mike. This stuff is sort of surreal. Popeye is like the Optimus Prime of early animation — everything he hits is transformed into something else. (Of course, if you watch a lot of these in a row, you realize that many gags are rehashed with slight variations and the basic plot of a Popeye short is always the same.)

The Fleischers also proved themselves to be top-rate action directors. There are great “set pieces” where Popeye and Bluto are battling each other over rivers and through forests, across ice floes and in boxing rings and fire houses, and the camera dances across the images. Especially pay attention to the classic short where a sleepwalking Olive Oyl walks across the flying beams of an under-construction skyscraper; it’s worthy of Windsor McKay.

These shorts wouldn’t work as well in color. The black-and-white gives the animation a livelier texture, which also rings true to the Depression era in which Popeye works and frolics. He’s no Daddy Warbucks: he lives in dumpy apartments or dingy homes with frames hanging crookedly from the walls. There are loose patches of plaster everywhere. Popeye and Olive Oyl could easily be the subject of a photograph by Dorothea Lange, which might be one reason that the cartoons and E.C. Segar’s comic strip resonanted so strongly with the working-class audiences of the time. I found my eye especially drawn to the backdrops and sets of the shorts, which have a three-dimensional feel (in one, there’s a great, deep focus shot of Popeye and Bluto running to the back of side-by-side apartment buildings as shot through a front window. It’s Popeye meets Gregg Toland.)

Of course, beyond the visuals, there are the characters themselves. These are some of the most twisted folks ever drawn, and their complexties give the movies a deeper resonance. Let’s just say that Popeye has issues. He’d be locked up if he lived anywhere but Toon Town — he’s clearly psychotic, itching for a scrap and passive-aggressive without the passive, but totally lovable, too. That’s the genius of what Segar and the Fleischers did. Then there’s that great skinny flibbertigibbet of a contortionist known as Olive Oyl. She’s nobody’s woman but her own, and it’s interesting to me how she’s often seen as a damsel-in-distress type. For one thing, she plays Popeye and big, bearish Bluto off each other like a pro. She never commits to either one, although we are given to believe that she really loves Popeye. But maybe she knows he’s nuts, too, and needs to be kept on a short leash. (See. Smart cookie.) And in some of the early shorts, she calls out for Popeye’s help, but she’s already dispatched Bluto leaving nothing for the sea salt to do but stand by and suck on his pipe. But this is definitely one of the more unusual relationships — hey, is this animation’s first three-way?

With all the extras (including rare silent shorts of Krazy Kat, Mutt and Jeff and more), “Popeye The Sailor” is easily one of your most essential DVD buys of the year. Hey, maybe it will even get my swee’pea to eat her spinach.

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July 30th, 2007
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