An early Bugs Bunny, not the most inventive - the animation is a little stilted, the usual flights of fantasy are rejected in favour of one hermetic setting, the Bugs persona is not quite as subversively developed as it would be. But there is much to enjoy. Elmer Fudd, shotgun ready, sets a trap for a rabbit by a gaping burrow. In a scene with wonderful Surrealist overtones, a hand emerges, and gropes for the carrot while the cocked rifle butt eyes eagerly.
This is followed by a conventional scene of Bugs identity games, that would be used by Ionesco in over a decade for 'The Bald Prima Donna'. Taking mock-pity on an exasperated Fudd, Bugs allows him one shot at him, falls down and dies. Fudd's genuine grief is startling - surely it's natural in a rural environment for a hunter to shoot a rabbit - that it's a relief to see Bugs jump up and mock him, and not just to see him alive.
Bugs continues here his very perceptive critique of Hollywood cliche and ideology, here satirising, among other things, the overextended costume-drama death scene (respectable cinema, remember!), and his histrionics are a lot more convincing than those of CAMILLE. The pastoral, vernal setting also mocks Emersonian Romantic rhetoric; the (literally) earthy Bugs, with his protean deconstruction, is joyfully at odds with long-winded transcendences of the self.
This is followed by a conventional scene of Bugs identity games, that would be used by Ionesco in over a decade for 'The Bald Prima Donna'. Taking mock-pity on an exasperated Fudd, Bugs allows him one shot at him, falls down and dies. Fudd's genuine grief is startling - surely it's natural in a rural environment for a hunter to shoot a rabbit - that it's a relief to see Bugs jump up and mock him, and not just to see him alive.
Bugs continues here his very perceptive critique of Hollywood cliche and ideology, here satirising, among other things, the overextended costume-drama death scene (respectable cinema, remember!), and his histrionics are a lot more convincing than those of CAMILLE. The pastoral, vernal setting also mocks Emersonian Romantic rhetoric; the (literally) earthy Bugs, with his protean deconstruction, is joyfully at odds with long-winded transcendences of the self.