Right place, right time : the pink panther.
What if, to conclude, we see life in pink?
Last article and here is the cartoon I kept for the end. May be one of my favorites for many reasons: The Pink Panther.
The Pink Panther is the sly, lanky animated cat created by Friz Freleng, and Iâm willing to bet that by just reading that name, a little music is already ringing in your head. And thatâs what makes all the magic and the genius of it. So letâs let ourselves be guided by the music and unravel this whole story.
Letâs start from the beginning: the pink panther was not originally a panther at all, nor even a character created to be the hero of an animated series. What does that mean? Well, the first time the animal appeared on a screen was in 1963, at the credits of a comedy film by Blake Edwards, in which we follow the adventures of a clumsy detective in search of the worldâs largest missing diamond: The Pink Panther! For the opening creditsâ music of this film, the director Blake Edwards calls on his friend Henry Mancini (who has already written him a mythical ballad for Breakfast at Tiffanyâs).
For the drawing, he calls Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt. Freleng already had a career at Disney and Warner. He notably participated a lot in the development of the Looney tunes. But in the 1960s, he saw the animation department of Warner close, and itâs in this state of technical unemployment that he was asked to the credits.
While the Pink Panther is thus a jewel in the film, for the credits, the idea is launched to make it come to life as the imaginary animal that its name evokes. The crazy animal is born. With a mysterious felinity, at the same time very graceful and facetious, he just plays with the spectator and the names in the credits.
Always animated to the measure to fit with the tenor saxophone of the musical theme. The mixture between the animal and the notes like velvet steps is perfect. The theme is both sweet and elegant, a kind of mix of jazz and pop as its author knows how to do so well. And it will not fail to become absolutely mythical.
In fact, the credits are so acclaimed that they triggers the creation of a short animation film devoted to the animal ! This short film will be Oscar-winning in 1965. 60 others directed by Hawley Pratt will follow and the so captivating Pink panther will get his animated series broadcast in the United States from September 6, 1969 on NBC. All the codes of the credits are simply reproduced. The recipe is found: a series without words, all in music, which develops the facetious character of the animal in adventures without links with each other. About 6 minutes each time, simple, effective, with a lot of gags that, often involving a small man who looks strangely like Inspector Jacques Clouseau from Blakeâs films.
This first version of the series will be broadcast until 1978 in the USA. The first French broadcast started in 1974 on the ORTF.
At the end, there will be 124 episodes.
Tree things are the key ingredients :
First, the mythical musical theme. Very simple but captivating. It strangely does not tire. It is such an integral part of the cartoon that it is sometimes the source of the episode. For example in episode 19 of season 1, in which the panther tries to learn the violin with necessarily, this theme as the only reference faced to the 5th Symphony of Beethoven.
Second, the characterâs aura. The spring of the scenario is always the same: follow this imaginary creature in her adventures, but is always as pleasant because the animal is very charismatic. He has an undeniably human side that makes it timeless. He also maintains a somewhat pirate temperament. In most of his cartoons, he stumbles into a difficult situation and stoically endeavors to make the best of it. And at the same time the stories are funny because the characters are also often full of flaws, and especially very impatient (the problems always end up being solved very suddenly by cannon fire), and thatâs what makes them irresistible (funny or endearing).
The cartoon with its gags still hits today. Maybe because even if the spring is still the same, the stories are very varied (from parentality/home decoration/a revisit of Cinderella/the taking of narcoticsâŠ). And maybe because the visual still makes very good, and that absurd humor can be intergenerational.
Third and last element: the color. Of course the name of the panther announces the color. But the titles of each episode also do. Absolutely everything is pink. And if you analyze it a little, the work on the colors is quite stunning. It was already important in the credits of Blake Edwards films. Itâs actually a permanent color explosion that goes back to the beginning. Letâs not forget that the person was created in the cinema, by a director who likes it when itâs colorful and at a time when the TV is still in black and white.
The mass flattens and changes of color are very often at the heart of the cartoon. Actually, when I think of the pink panther, the episode 1 of the first season always comes to me : a very simple and perfectly effective episode where the panther fights to impose its « pink » throughout the house preventing the Little Man from putting blue.
There, color is the comic spring of the entire episode. But when we look at it more closely, color is always an integral part of the cartoon. For example, It very often allows the panther to disappear into the decor, to hide, to play or to escape from an unpleasant situation.
Finally, this element allows to perfectly define the animal: a character always between two worlds. Desirable, terrifying? Between the folds and the slits, he hides, reveals, disappears, returns, fascinates.
With the acquisition of the MGM by the giant Amazon (as told by Louis Vallet in his article later on this blog): all episodes of the Pink Panther will now be accessible online! Amazon definitely hands down a real treasure to enrich its catalog !