It can be said simply enough but should bare repeating that without a work like Flowers & Trees, Snow White would have been much harder to make. While that film doesn't take all its cues from this Silly Symphony about the good tree, his lovely lady tree, and the villainous tree coming between them, I think the music cues and how the creatures of the forest all come together is a major part of it. Disney's moves in this classical period - hell, up through the early 40's - had the hallmarks of being musical-filmed pieces, synchronized to sound with the tightest detail. But within these to-the-beat markers, there are the graceful nuances of visual poetry on screen: here are creatures and plant-life coming to life, acting as people do in such ways as to make them universal. You can watch this film anywhere over the world and people get what's going on; same was with Mickey Mouse, though here the aim is more to inspire some kind of awe over laughs.
One can criticize this stuff - it's pretentious, it's full of itself, it thinks its so great. But what if it is just a splendid piece of artistic expression? There's a level of simplicity that I think found its way into a lot of those early Disney features, and the bedrock of that is here: no frills storytelling, clever visual flourishes, and here it borders on gags but one can take it a little more seriously. It's also the forerunner for Fantasia, of course; taking a piece (or in this case pieces) of classical music and finding a way to basically make the earliest films full of life and vitality - in brand-spankingly fresh Technicolor (and good lord does it look full of the synonyms you can think of for gorgeous).
It's not simply one of the superlative shorts of all time but one of the great music 'videos', with a fleshed-out story, conflicts and danger with the fire that spreads (and the teamwork to put it out), and the sentimental side, but wholly and expressed with passionate audacity to go for it. There's not a trace of a modern smirk or wink to the audience, no one is being talked or looked down on, and that's part of the purity: here's the trees, here's the flowers, here's the birds, here are the things that make up this crazy little world that Disney's created. It's what it is: beauty realized in a new way that, for those that can take it in some context, heartfelt.
One can criticize this stuff - it's pretentious, it's full of itself, it thinks its so great. But what if it is just a splendid piece of artistic expression? There's a level of simplicity that I think found its way into a lot of those early Disney features, and the bedrock of that is here: no frills storytelling, clever visual flourishes, and here it borders on gags but one can take it a little more seriously. It's also the forerunner for Fantasia, of course; taking a piece (or in this case pieces) of classical music and finding a way to basically make the earliest films full of life and vitality - in brand-spankingly fresh Technicolor (and good lord does it look full of the synonyms you can think of for gorgeous).
It's not simply one of the superlative shorts of all time but one of the great music 'videos', with a fleshed-out story, conflicts and danger with the fire that spreads (and the teamwork to put it out), and the sentimental side, but wholly and expressed with passionate audacity to go for it. There's not a trace of a modern smirk or wink to the audience, no one is being talked or looked down on, and that's part of the purity: here's the trees, here's the flowers, here's the birds, here are the things that make up this crazy little world that Disney's created. It's what it is: beauty realized in a new way that, for those that can take it in some context, heartfelt.