By Marilyn Ferdinand
It takes all kinds to make a movie. From actors great and small to sound and lighting technicians, set decorators, make-up artists, and writers—all held together by the producer and director—movie-making is one of the most interdependent endeavors around. Yet, it is not the only one, and 1953’s Duck Amuck is one of the most universal and subversive films ever made. Despite its reflexive look at the world of animated filmmaking and its use of catchphrases of its time (“What a way to run a railroad!” and “Oh brother, I’m a buzz boy!”), there isn’t a soul alive who can’t relate in some way to the sometimes cruel and unrepentant ways Big Brother takes over our lives and makes a holy hash of our plans and assumptions.
Daffy Duck is the star of the Warner Bros. cartoon Duck Amuck, which starts slyly as a tale of the Three Musketeers—you know, all for one and one for all? Ready to work on a thrilling adventure film, Daffy find himself entering the Twilight Zone instead. He finds himself parrying and thrusting onto a blank background. Like a performer awakening a sleeping stagehand, he calls for some scenery to be painted behind him. Alas, instead of 17th century France, he gets a farm.
Daffy is what I’d call the solid citizen persona of his creator, Chuck Jones. He knows and has internalized all the rules of his universe. If the scene suddenly changes to a barnyard, he runs off and reappears wearing overalls and carrying a hoe. If he suddenly notices an igloo on the back 40, he exchanges his hoe for some ski poles. If he is confronted with palm trees and ocean, he grabs a lava lava from wardrobe and plays the ukelele with outsized enthusiasm. When he’s tortured by this tyrannical and capricious behavior, he looks for fault in himself, muttering aloud that he’s sure he has complied with his employment contract and hasn’t he kept his figure in tip-top shape? In other words, he’s an actor, though unlike what that label implies, he really reacts to changing circumstances with little complaint, the better to keep his precarious existence assured.
Indeed there can be no more precarious existence than being a cartoon character, relying on an artist to provide his body and environment and, in this case, Mel Blanc, to produce his voice—or a sound engineer when the fellow in charge decides to substitute some strange sounds for Daffy’s vocal protests. The humiliations continue when Daffy gets redrawn as a daisy-headed platypus, but what can he do? He can’t even quit if his creator decides to cast him in a movie he doesn’t enjoy, like Duck Amuck.
Jones may not have had it top of mind, but his godlike manipulations of poor little Daffy bear a striking resemblance to the petty torments of the office environment hilariously chronicled in such films as Office Space (1999) and Office Killer (1997). The 1950s were the heyday of the Organization Man, with Daffy perfectly channeling the conformist worker in companies that often operated on the whims of their founders or charismatic leaders. Jones may have been glancing in the direction of the Disney empire and its straitjacket of innocence, imagining what his uncontrolled id could do to the likes of Alice in Wonderland or Wendy Darling. He rebelled against the use of a dynamic filmmaking technique for doing what parents could any night of the week—read their kids a story. Jones sought to free their imaginations with the gleeful anarchy of his many superb animated shorts.
In the end, Chuck owns up to being a very naughty boy. “Ain’t I a stinker?” his cartoon surrogate says. Without a doubt, thank goodness!
Watch Duck Amuck here on Vimeo.
How Duck Amuck made the Top 100:
Ed Howard No. 9
Marilyn Ferdinand No. 20
Bobby Jopson No. 38
Sam Juliano No. 40
Bill Riley No. 51
In Jerry Beck’s seminal volume “The 50 Greatest Cartoons,” voted by animators in the late 90′s, ‘Duck Amuck’ finished No. 2, behind only ‘What’s Opera Doc?’ That both are by Chuck Jones is hardly surprising when one considers his strangehold on the form, even with Avery and a few others standing with the animation icon. This subversive, surrealist six minute short was revolutionary then, and still is today, influencing other shorts, nintendo games and even David Weisner’s Caldecott Medal winner “The Three Pigs” where the animator makes some dimension bending intrusions. The off screen animator is seen as particularly sadistic, and when Bugs Bunny shows up at the end it’s consistent with that character’s own behavior. Marilyn you size up the affair most engagingly, admirably emulating the dense brevity of your suject with a plethora of excellent references and observations.
Chuck Jones had four of the top five cartoons in that survey (#4 was “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century” and #5 was “One Froggy Evening”. (#3 was the 1935 Disney cartoon, “The Band Concert” where Mickey Mouse is trying to conduct “The William Tell Overture” while Donald Duck keeps switching it to “Turkey in the Straw.” Those five belong near the top of any list of greatest cartoons. “Duck Amuck” is my favorite cartoon short of all.
Indeed Syd. That book is one of my bibles. Beyond the top five Chuck had a number of others with the magnificent RABBIT OF SEVILLE checking in at No. 10. The Top 50 is labor of love, though I would have ordered it a bit differently at some placements. But can’t complain at all.
I have fond memories of this cartoon, I remember all the moments of it, even the music cues when it comes down to this one. It’s not exactly my favorite Looney Tunes cartoon, but it surely is up there in the top 3 of them. It defined most of my taste when I was young enough to remember seeing it, it has a “making off” attitude about it, a self-awareness of what is behind all what we see, as Marilyn points out in the review, something that has followed me along the years, as well as the taste that finally made me want to study filmmaking. There’s the meta-textual element here, a cartoon about being aware of being a cartoon and at the same time pointing out the elements that make up of it (frames, scenery, sound, drawings, colour!), and that has followed me through all the arts and has made me prefer the likes of Borges over the seriousness of a Hemingway, and applaud the self-concious of Scream 4 over the over-violent schlock of the modern slasher.
Great writing. I used to watch this in a VHS every time I went to my recently deceased grand-mother, and I loved every bit of it, this cartoon puts me back, it makes me remember the smell of her house and how her house was lit by the different lamps and how the tv was set, how the VHS aparatus ultimately was gifted to me, and how her bed, in which I sat with my brother to watch the cartoons, was always filled with cuddly toys (that were hers) some of them being cartoon characters, specially Tweetie, her favorite.
If I had known we could include animation shorts to the ballots I’d have had this higher up than anyone.
As valid an art-form as anything in film (and considering that animation comes closest to the directors actual vision in his/her head than any live action film could-and that’s a FACT) it often boggles my mind that so many turn tail and disregard the brilliance of these 8 minute gems as legitimate contenders for some of the funniest movies ever made.
Jones used his cartoons as a way of working through problems, sometimes physical, spiritual, psychological or emotional, that he could not work out in his own real life. The dialoque in his short films represents the things he always wanted to say and many of the solutions to the problems plaquing any one of these little gems are solutions he only dreamed of applying in situations that actual tormented him. Jones was one of the rare birds in any film form or genre that put much of his own personility on screen and it’s his neurosis, self-debasement, and flaws in his social personality that make for some of the most memorable moments ever afforded the silver screen. DUCK AMUCK is no exception to the Jones rule of “putting yourself out there” for all to see. His cartoons were a working through of many of the questions and ponderings he had in his own life and that they are brutally funny, ingenious and loaded with pure ingenuity only adds to the validation that animation is a pure directors medium in film.
Taking existensialism to the 9th degree, this cartoon swells the barriers of what had come before and adds a true psychodelic attitude that woud be admired, copied and stolen out right by directors for years to come. It set many of the standards that Warners Looney Tunes would follow for ever more and it’s humor still rings true due to it’s simplicity at the core. Helped greatly by Mel Blanc (and his voicing of the frenetic and often exasperated Daffy Duck-the “every-man” character we most connect with because he is so much like most of us-is a vocal tour-de-force of tongue twisting lisps, cries for help and helpful understanding in a world that, often, doesn’t allow for it), DUCK AMUCK is a simple premise gone totally hay-wire and creatively off-the-wall in an attempt to comment on our true personas, the people we really are deep down in our soul. No matter how flawed and ridiculous we may really be.
It’s funny. We’ve already counted down 26 films on this list of 100 and many funny movies of many different types have been represented here…
But, for what it’s worth, and the honesty that is depicted in this little quickie, DUCK AMUCK is, pound for pound, probably the funniest film we’ve covered on this list so far.
Yes and this would have been higher had many of us even taken into account of short cartoons. I made a conscious decision not to include them for better or for worse. I mean there are TONS of short cartoons. How to distill all of them and hand pick a few is beyond me. I can’t even begin to count the number of Warner Bros. cartoon shorts I’ve seen, let alone be able to single a few out and recall their names! That’s why this would have been an impossible task for me. It really wouldn’t have been fair for me to be trying to scrounge through my memory like that. Fair enough.
Marilyn I love your essay. Very well written and concise. Just how I like them.
Marilyn -
A smart, wonderful and brilliantly concise assessment. I’m not sure how I missed this one in my ballot – it really is ingenious and very funny I have so many Looney Tunes memories rattling around in my brain (from childhood mornings spent watching Ray Rayner on Channel 9, something a Chicagoan like you will appreciate), I know I must have seen it several times.
You’ve all noted my concision. Believe me, it was not to match the brevity of the film under consideration but due to an earache! I love Duck Amuck and especially Daffy as our cartoon everyman, just trying his best when all around him is chaos. Indeed, this is an existential dilemma, with Daffy absorbing the comedic tortures of Job from a more sophisticated cartoon character who, despite his more savvy way of dealing with threats, has the same vulnerabilities as Daffy. There’s a Marx Brothers kind of humor in the film, and I just love the Marx Brothers. Thanks all for commenting.
Haven’t watched a Looney Tunes cartoon in ages. Will check this one out later when I get home. I’m sure I’ve seen it at some point, but couldn’t recall it off the top of my head. As a kid I always loved the shorts that were based on The Barber Of Seville, Viking Opera, and anything with Pepe Le Pew.
Pepe Le Pew’s A Scent of the Matterhorn made my comedy countdown list.
Wasn’t Pepe le Pew based on the character of Pepe le Moko somehow?
Seems I read something to that effect.
Yep (or was it the same character in the remake ALGIERS), and the funniest thing about ol’ le Pew is that in France his voice is dubbed AS ITALIAN. I’ve always loved that bit of racist hot potato, sort of throws all the PC accusations of that Series on their collective heads.
When Pepe le Pew is great, and it was several times, it’s as good as any cartoon and for my money even more so. There is a subversion there that still hasn’t been properly articulated, what with ODER-ABLE KITTY being a sly take on cross-dressing and the representation of image (and its distortion) in courting while WILD OVER YOU is all stuffy Louis XIV representation in the opening then you see Pepe le Pew get doubly aroused when he gets his ass kicked. S&M was never this advanced and, frankly, frank. He’s lurid, demented, and honestly bordering (I’m being generous here) on a rapist, but that’s the manic point; sexuality in all its disgusting transgressions when it’s solely based on sensory stimuli. Brilliant.
That being said, my heart still aligns itself with Thomas the Cat and Jerry the Mouse.
Never occurred to me to include cartoons, either, but funny is funny. Duck Amuck clearly owes something to Sherlock Jr, though I suppose a true cartoon counterpart to that would pull back to reveal Daffy tormenting himself. I probably identify with the duck too much because these Jones cartoons sometimes annoy me with their one-sidedness. I like to imagine Daffy c. 1942 or thereabouts suddenly going wild on Bugs and dispensing some payback before bouncing away on his head. I rather enjoy the ones where Bugs gets his from Chester Turtle, Elmer (“I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I’m not going to Alcatwaz!”), etc. It’s not that I hate Bugs Bunny, but he did get smug after a while. I might like Duck Amuck better if not for the final revelation, but on its own terms it’s a brilliant piece of work.
I guess you prefer “Rabbit Rampage” to this, then, eh?
Ehhhhhhhhhhh, could be!
I’ve love Bugs Bunny my whole life, in the same way I love Groucho Marx and Hawkeye Pierce. But looking at this today with a more academic eye, I can only see Bugs — who, like the other heroes I mentioned, mostly finds a way to outsmart the powers that be — AS THE POWER THAT IS, and in that capacity, I find him much less likable. Daffy, here to just do a good job as best as he can, is thwarted at every turn by the cool kid who always gets his way.
Yeah, Bugs is acting a bit out of character here. Usually he’s used as a reactive character, someone who responds to some other character’s agression. We root for him because he’s the underdog, whereas here, he’s just cruelly toying with Daffy. Really, the Bugs reveal is just a weak gag at the end, and no matter who was revealed as the cartoonist, it’d be the same (though it might’ve worked to have Porky do it, and deliver his catchphrase– besides, Daffy’s tormented the Pig in so many other shorts that some comeuppance would make sense). The way that Jones closes out the same scenario in “Rabbit Rambage”, with Bugs pulling down a “The End” card in order to stop the cartoon, is a much cleaner way to end it.
Excellent piece. I think I placed this with my favourite Tom and Jerry ‘Heavenly Puss’ (an absolute gem with the afterlife fantasy core of the ’40s) and ‘King-Size Canary’ – another short, like this one, touched with lunacy. One day, I will have to revisit all of them again.
It’s about time Daffy Duck had a tribute. Great post!