Frolics at the Circus
Frolics at the Circus is an American animated short film featuring Felix the Cat and released on September 26, 1920.[1]
| Frolics at the Circus | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Otto Messmer |
| Produced by | Pat Sullivan |
| Animation by | Otto Messmer |
| Color process | Black-and-white |
Production company | Pat Sullivan Studios |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 5 min. |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Language | English |
Summary
Just outside a tent at the circus, a moustachioed man with a pipe strokes a contented Felix; within the same, an elephant chained sleeps. From a bucket emerges a mouse; curious on seeing the elephant, the creature climbs the great beast's trunk to the top of his head and performs a few pirouettes. He then slides down the back into the crook of the elephant's tail which springs up, propelling him back to his previous position atop the elephant's head, whereupon the beast awakens, and, turning up a fearful and confused eye, he sees his little tormentor and stiffens in dread such that his trunk and head become a straight slide down to the floor for the mouse. His back to the beast as he lands, the mouse leaps to an about-face and puts up his fists in readiness for battle. The gentle giant quivers terribly, sweating bullets and putting up his forepaws in sign of surrender; he struggles to flee, his tremendous weight & strength hindered but a moment by his chain; he hops and flails about, the pest ever in his way. We cut as he dives forward: a great mass of tent and elephant sends Felix's caretaker flying off his stool and Felix his paws. Confused, they look at each other as the tent twists and jumps with the commotion within. (The stool runs off.) BANG! within, and the elephant emerges, tearing the tent as he does and running faster than could be imagined past trees and over hills. Back at the tent, Felix stands over his master as he beweeps the loss of his elephant. "It's that doggone mouse again!" he laments with a consoling pat on the back from Felix, who gestures to himself as if to say, "leave this matter to yours truly!"
Felix brushes aside a flap of the torn tent to find the mouse within, who picks up the bucket and hurls it at the prying feline's face opening first, ejecting and enveloping him. Quite, quite stuck, Felix whirls about the air several times in his tiny prison, dropping defeated here but regrouping swiftly and sending the bucket flying off. The question marks of a moment past give way to an exclamation point of indignation, and in rushes Felix again to confront the cretin. The mouse gives chase about the floor and up the tent pole, thence to the roof and down the pole again; the vermin slips out from under the wall of the tent and spies a garden hose, wherein he hides just as Felix, spotting his prey, emerges. The cat leaps on a bulge in the hose, thinking for a moment that he has won; but the clever devil slips away, knocking Felix over. Felix looks over at the spigot, shakes his fist at the lump, and moves to turn on the water when the mouse emerges from the hose and turns the nozzle on Felix, blasting him through the air and into a tree stump, thence onto his behind where he sits wincing at the smart. Sensing the mouse still, his tail snapping for the chase, he turns about and leaps for the mouse, who ascends a fence pole and leads Felix along a wire; Felix pauses at a segment of the wire while the mouse has assumed another pole of the fence, where he pulls out a saw, much to Felix's alarm! The wire falls to the blade and Felix to his back and the ground dazed. He gets up, sees the haughty rodent still atop his perch, then spies a pile of rocks; he hurls one at the mouse, who deftly evades it. Spying nearby a plank of wood and what seems to be a piece of pipe, Felix shakes his fist again at the mouse and runs off, reemerging a moment later with a pelican, who stands a little way off. Our hero fashions a seesaw out of the board and pipe and begins to climb, a greater rock in hand, at a moderate pace up the pole; the mouse jumps down onto the lowered side, farthest from the pelican, of the seesaw to avoid feline aggression and, in that moment, Felix tosses the rock down onto the raised side, thereby catapulting the pesky creature into the hungry bill of the waiting bird. (The board disappears.) A little pensive, Felix looks about just to confirm his triumph; he clambers back over the landscape to his concerned keeper proudly declaring "I settled his hash!" "But for the love of Mike," worries the keeper, "where is the elephant?" Felix's startled tail makes a question mark and off he runs to look he knows not where.
He stops at a hole in a tree to gaze this way and that; a question mark forms over his head, and he leaps atop that in order to look over the horizon. No luck! He paces and paces till an idea comes to him: "I'll find him -- I'll make a noise like a mouse!!" SQUEEEK! The tree with the hole shivers all the way up its trunk; a swirl of confusion rises over Felix's head. Ever resourceful, our feline friend gathers the fanciful emission and makes a lasso, hurling it into the hole in the trunk and catching the pachyderm by his; he pulls the beast out and with him marches off. Riding the trunk, a smile on the elephant's face, Felix commands, "Home, James!"
See also
References
- Gerstein, David. (2011).Felix the Cat Filmography 1919-1930?. GAC Forums Archives. Golden Age Cartoons.
N. B. This filmography, reflected by Wikipedia's, gives the simpler title The Circus.
External links
Frolics at the Circus at British Pathé N. B. British Pathé gives the film the unlikely date of 1930.