Tom & Jerry destroy the fourth wall

Pencil Mania (1932)

Starring: Margie Hines (various voices)

Directors: John Foster and Geo. Stallings

Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

To Tom's amazement (and annoyance), Jerry uses a pencil to alter the reality of their cartoon universe in extreme ways.

"Pencil Mania" starts with Tom painting a portrait of a dancing cow, which is really not that strange an activity for a character who's flirted with mermaids at the bottom of the ocean. It's when Jerry pulls out a pencil and starts creating animations within the animated world, dispelling the 3D illusion of the animated world and revealing it's just flat lines moving at 32 frames a second.

This is one of those films that really needs to be experienced cold, and I can only spoil it by saying too much. In fact, the moment I chose to illustrate this post is a bit of a spoiler in itself--but it's milder than some of the things that precede it.

While an animated character breaking the fourth wall by taking advantage of the fact he exists in a two dimensional world where lines are put down to create an illusion of depth--Felix the Cat did it on a regular basis during the second half of the 1920s-- the extremes to which this idea is taken in "Pencil Mania" keep compounding until the film's finale where the fourth wall isn't just broken, it's completely demolished and the fragments are ground to dust and scattered on the four winds.

"Pencil Mania" is a wild and unpredictable ride from beginning to end. If you enjoy cartoons from the early sound era, surreal humor, or are just in the mood for something a strange and funny, you won't regret watching it from this very post, right here and now.