This silent Paul Terry cartoon is a very good production from him -- at least in the Castle Films cut-down, which is all that seems to be available nowadays. The artwork is very elaborate for this era, the animation is highly fluid, the jokes punctuate the simple story and there is even a moral position if you look for it carefully enough -- perhaps too carefully, since these things are largely meant to entertain. There definitely seems to be an anti-foxhunting tilt in the jokes as the hunters, when first seen, are globularly fat men on horses, and the fox, having escaped his pursuit -- or at least, having made it to the finish line first and retreated to the company of his fellow foxes, is quite clearly exhausted.
This strikes me as a likely item to introduce a newcomer to silent cartoons with: simple, short, a couple of chuckles. While nowhere near as good as Felix the Cat or the Fleischer's Ko-Ko, it also doesn't carry so much baggage due to cultural changes.
This strikes me as a likely item to introduce a newcomer to silent cartoons with: simple, short, a couple of chuckles. While nowhere near as good as Felix the Cat or the Fleischer's Ko-Ko, it also doesn't carry so much baggage due to cultural changes.
