![]() ![]() Most Hollywood studios lent themselves to that effort in some way: by financing and loaning talent to films produced by the War Department, by inserting unmistakable propaganda messages into their features, etcetera. Released smack in the middle of World War II, “Reason and Emotion” was one prong of Disney’s comprehensive cinematic contributions to the American war effort. Yet perhaps an even more pertinent factor in Inside Out’s greater overall subtlety is that “Reason and Emotion" is a straight-up, broad-strokes, Hitler-baiting propaganda film. As well, a feature film such as Inside Out simply has more time to explore its ideas with subtlety and detail than does a short like “Reason and Emotion.” That nuance shows up in several ways, not least of which is the later film's splitting of the catch-all category “Emotion” into five parts: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. Pete Docter, the director of Inside Out, has admitted that “Reason and Emotion” was one of the films that inspired his. The Atlantic article linked above makes the accurate point that Inside Out is far more nuanced than “Reason and Emotion.” ![]() Pixar’s digital animation is, famously, equally detailed and skillful. (Since 35mm film ran at 24 frames per second, that means that, for this film of approximately eight minutes, Disney animators created about 11,500 drawings, a staggering sum.) More drawings means an increased ability to create fluid, detailed animation. “Reason and Emotion” is animated “on ones,” meaning that its animators made one drawing for every single frame of film. Another plain connection between the two films is that both were produced by Disney (the entity that owns Pixar), a company that produced, and still produces, film’s most astute and sophisticated animation. This element of the film dates pretty badly - yet it has a modern parallel in Inside Out, as I discuss below. In her case, Emotion is a sassy broad who craves fattening foods, and Reason is a schoolmarm who advocates taking care of one’s figure. That slap occasions a glimpse inside the head of the woman, whose life is governed by similar homunculi. Emotion clobbers Reason over the head with a cudgel to direct the man to make a pass at the woman, who promptly slaps the man in the face. The battle between our instincts and our rationality is dramatized in the film when, for instance, a man passes an attractive woman on the street, and the homunculi inside his head literally do battle. Reason is represented by a sensible, egghead-type fellow who thinks before he acts. In “Reason and Emotion,” a little caveman-like guy represents Emotion: the rash, spur-of-the-moment processes that cause us to act without thinking. The conceit of both movies is the personification of human feelings and thoughts with little characters who live in our heads and govern our actions. The connections between the two films are strong and obvious. When I saw Inside Out (at the glorious Sunset Drive-In in Colchester), “Reason and Emotion” was the first thing that came to my mind, too. The 1943 Disney cartoon “Reason and Emotion” reestablished itself in popular consciousness this year, when various media outlets noted that its premise was revived by Pixar’s summer release, Inside Out. "Emotion" steers in the direction of an attractive woman. ![]()
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