The Sunshine Makers (1935)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good concept, poorly executed.

An Exercise In Nonsense

The first must-see film of the year.

The Sunshine Makers (1935)*** (out of 4) Catchy animated short has a bunch of gnomes gathering up sunshine, turning it into milk and then passing it around to people so that they can be happy. One gnome ends up running across an unhappy man who lives in the dark forest with many other unhappy people. Soon the gnomes are trying to pour milk on them so that they too will be happy.I was surprised to see how much I enjoyed this film and I was even more shocked to see that it was rather catchy. This really comes across as a dark fairy tell where the happy people must venture into a dark area and try to make the bad people see why they should be good. Of course, the selling point here is that milk makes people happy. I thought the animation itself was quite good and I really liked the simple story and the song itself was very good and catchy.

"The Sunshine Makers" was sponsored by Borden and it's the sort of film that just screams out 'THIS IS JUST A GIANT ADVERTISEMENT' to the audience. I noticed one reviewer loved it--I just thought it was a blatant attempt by Borden to brain-wash audiences.The film consists of happy gnomes (which I think are supposed to represent Borden) and nasty creatures in black who LIKE gloom and depression. However, the happy gnomes squirt milk (huh?!) on the gloomy guys and it makes their black clothes spread sunshine!! Naturally, the gloomy guys don't like this and do on the attack. But, with the power of milk (one of Borden's biggest selling products), the cute gnomes vanquish the dark jerks and spread color (or at least Cinecolor with its rather limited color spectrum) all about. Three cheers for the gnomes...those corporate shills! Preachy and dumb but at least the animation is reasonably good for 1935.

I remember seeing this cartoon on TV (Channel 13, an early 50's incarnation of PBS) here in NYC. I was four or five years old, and I thought it was totally cool.That channel also deserves the glory of running the Farmer Gray cartoons, my first exposure to classical music)---I heard a song that stayed in my head for twenty years, until I finally heard someone playing it and found out its name (the old English country dance tune known as "Sellenger's Round" or "The Beginning of the World").Anyway, I saw "The Sunshine Makers" there, and then promptly forgot about it until I saw it on the light show screen at the Fillmore East, many years and some illicit substances later. Stoned, we loved it...I still do. SO extremely weird. There were other cartoons the Fillmore East ran, including one with Tommy Popski that was all about immigrants and their "funny" names. Hey, social conscience! Rocks.

(SPOILER although it isn't much.) In its eight years of existence from 1928 to 1936, the Van Beuren animation studio never achieved the illustriousness of other studios like those of Walt Disney and Max Flesicher. They never developed a star like Mickey Mouse or Betty Boop and their cartoons, on a whole, did not create a lasting impression. However, the studio did produce a few authentic gems. THE SUNSHINE MAKERS is one of these gems.The story isn't much. Cheerful gnomes spread happiness through bottled sunshine milk. Miserable goblins decide to spoil the fun with gloom-inducing gas. A battle erupts and the gnomes bombard the goblins with sunshine milk, turning them into happy, lovable creatures.What makes the cartoon memorable is the way the story is presented. First of all, the animation crew under the direction of Ted Eshbuagh and Burt Gillette devise a picturesque fantasy world. Even in the faded print I saw, the contrast between the gnomes' rosy world and the goblins' grim milieu is well established. The gnomes are depicted in bright hued in sunny, pastoral surroundings. On the other hand, the goblins are drably hued in a bleak, Gothic environment. Winston Sharples's music enhances the atmosphere, buoyant for the gnomes and sombre for the goblins.Then there's the climactic battle. The animation stuff imaginatively illustrates the effects of sunshine milk on the goblins and their environment. Particularly memorable is a scene where two goblins undergo the effects of sunshine milk. Their skin brightens, they begin to smile, and they start to sing and dance. Meanwhile flowers sprout in the background, brightening their milieu. Sharples' score enhances the war scenes, building to a lively crescendo.One cannot fully appreciate THE SUNSHINE MAKERS from reading this review. It's one of these pictures that seem trite on paper but are remarkable on the screen. One cannot articulate WHY it's so remarkable-one can only feel exhilarated from watching it. If all of Van Beuren's cartoons were so memorable, the studio might have dominated the animation field rather than dwindled into oblivion.