The Dot and the Line
| The Dot and the Line A Romance in Lower Mathematics |
|
|---|---|
| Directed by | Chuck Jones Maurice Noble (co-director) |
| Produced by | Chuck Jones Les Goldman |
| Story by | Norton Juster (book and screenplay) |
| Narrated by | Robert Morley |
| Music by | Eugene Poddany |
| Animation by | Don Towsley (supervising) Ken Harris Ben Washam Dick Thompson Tom Ray Philip Roman |
| Backgrounds by | Philip DeGuard Don Morgan |
| Studio | MGM Animation/Visual Arts |
| Distributed by | Metro Goldwyn Mayer |
| Release date(s) | December 31, 1965 |
| Color process | Metrocolor |
| Running time | 10 minutes 1 second |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (ISBN 1-58717-066-3) is a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster, first published by Random House in 1963. The story was inspired by Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which the protagonist visits a one-dimensional universe called Lineland, where women are dots and men are lines.
In 1965, famed animator Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio adapted The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley. The Dot and the Line won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. It was entered into the Short Film Palme d'Or competition at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. [1]
The cartoon was released as a special feature on the The Glass Bottom Boat DVD in 2005. The cartoon is also featured on the 2008 release of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection and the 2011 release of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1 Blu-ray box-set on the third disc as a special feature.
Contents |
[edit] Story
The story details a straight line who falls in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself, giving rise to shapes so complex he has to letter his sides and angles to keep his place.
The dot realizes that she has made a mistake: what she had seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. The line, on the other hand, has much more to offer her. In the end she decides to accompany the line, instead.
[edit] Notes
- This was one of only two non-Tom and Jerry animated short subjects to be released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer post-1958. The other one would be The Bear That Wasn't, released in 1967 as the last-ever MGM animated short.
- "The Dot and the Line" won the final award for an animated short for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Chuck Jones' only award as a producer.
- This would be one of two Juster books to be adapted for the big screen by Chuck Jones, although Juster had no involvement with the other, The Phantom Tollbooth.
[edit] References
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: The Dot and the Line". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2820/year/1966.html. Retrieved 2009-03-08.
[edit] External links
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
