User Reviews

* Spoiler warning - you may do yourself harm watching this cartoon *

I have been doing a complete analysis of The Cat Concerto as part of my PhD work and I have spent 100 hours on it. You may think me mad but I still burst out laughing when I see one of the single frames as I step through them.

Scott Bradley's arrangement of Liszt's 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody (piano duet, played by Bradley and John Crown, head of Piano at University of Southern California) makes an excellent canvas for Muse, Barge & Spence to animate. There are more comic gems in this 7 minute cartoon than all the latter-day comedy features put together.

Truly wonderful. If you get the chance to watch the cartoon frame by frame on a computer, do so, but I disclaim any responsibility for asphyxia or self-harm from rolling on the floor.

Top marks.

. . . just goes to show that Rigged Elections were common in America well before LA LA LAND and Hillary got hosed. You can go right now into Wikipedia's annual listing for Looney Tunes and quickly pick out a dozen that stood head and shoulders above this lame Tom & Jerry outing the year it stole the gelded statuette. Warner Bros. put a full symphony orchestra at the disposal of animated shorts composer extraordinaire Carl W. Stalling, and such musical delights as RHAPSODY IN RIVETS and WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? were the result. THE CAT CONCERTO features some listless Liszt, along with a mediocre smattering of this and that. To make matters worse, the title critter--a feline unimaginatively dubbed "Tom"--stands mute throughout, unable to even rip off a single one of Sylvester Cat's "Suffering Succotash!" catch phrases. But the Racist Election Riggers don't give a hoot about the quality of their candidates--whether MOONLIGHT, Rump, GONE WITH THE WIND, or THE CAT CONCERTO--once their "fix" is in. No wonder Colin Kaepernick kneels during songs about "the Land of the Free."

This short sees Tom taking to the stage as a concert pianist to play Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by Franz Liszt; it starts well but Jerry has made his bed on the hammers and as soon as Tom hits the low notes Jerry it sent along the length hammers and woken. He gets out to watch Tom play but rather than ignore him Tom pushes him between the hammers before vigorously playing those notes. From then on Jerry tries to disrupt his playing as Tom struggles valiantly to play on… and when the piece finally comes to the end Jerry decides to keep going.

This is one of the best Tom and Jerry shorts; it is not surprising that it picked up the Academy Award. The usual violence is toned down but by no means eliminated; we still see Tom put his finger on a mouse trap and Jerry battered by the piano's hammers. What made it so funny was how Tom managed to continue playing and sounding pretty good, despite Jerry's efforts; of course by the end it is Jerry who is getting the applause! The animation looks great; I'm no pianist but it does look as though Tom is striking the right notes rather than just moving his hands to the music… clearly animators took things more seriously back then! If you like classic animation this one is a must see.

"The Cat Concerto"was originally released back in 1947. It won an Oscar for Best Animated Short.

Anyway - As the story goes - Tom is a concert pianist who goes against Jerry Mouse, who was trying to get a good night's sleep.

Cartoons with music have always been a big hit back in the day, be it in terms of Warner Bros', Disney or Hanna Barbera in this one here. These 7 minutes are possibly the most famous Tom&Jerry cartoon. Fittingly, it also won the Academy Award that year. However, I must say, I was a bit underwhelmed with this one. Tom sure looked handsome, the piano was nicely animated and the music was pretty good, but in terms of the story and comedic scenes I hoped for more. Jerry just wants to sleep early on, then swing to Tom's play, but Tom quickly gets annoyed by the presence of the little mouse and gives it his all to chase him away. He has more moments when it looks like he may succeed than in many other T&J cartoons, but in the end, there can, of course, only be one winner. Not a winner for me though. I have seen many superior short films including the world's most famous cat-and-mouse duo. Not recommended.

In 1847, famous composer Franz Liszt wrote Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (henceforth called Number 2), which is considered today as one of the most iconic pieces of classical music ever written. Though made to be a dramatic piece, it has had a place in the world of comedy, mainly in animated shorts and feature productions. The first use of the tune in film came from the 1929 Disney short "The Opry House", and this started a trend with other studios on making comedic interpretations of the tune performed by cartoon characters. One of the most iconic, and most memorable uses of this concept is found here.

Tom & Jerry, at this point, have become household names in the motion picture industry as one of the greatest duos ever conceived. For MGM, the Tom & Jerry shorts have become just as memorable for their craftsmanship, writing, and execution as their now classic movie musicals like "Singin' in the Rain" or "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". However, this short takes a different turn from the usual house setting. Instead, it takes place in a concert hall, most likely the famous Hollywood Bowl.

Tom is a concert pianist who arrives on stage to perform Liszt's Number 2 on the grand piano in front of a massive audience. When he begins to play, everything is going fine, until we look inside the piano and we find that Jerry has made himself a small abode. Of course, he is waken up, though he doesn't get angry about it when he finds out who's at the keys. So he decides to have a bit of fun by making Tom's big night something he wishes never happened. Plus, it serves as a lesson for all piano owners: make sure there's no mice inside to ruin your session, 'cause then you're gonna have a bad time, and no one wants to have a bad time.

What makes this short work to its advantage is how it slowly builds up the slapstick as the tune goes on, and as it goes into the second half of the short, it starts to get more hectic, with the orchestra joining in. At first, Jerry does things to the piano that just irritates and distracts Tom, but when the tempo begins to rise, Jerry decides to make Tom's night a living hell by pushing him towards exhaustion, as if the last straw was finally drawn. In the end, as usual, Jerry gets the last laugh, as the spotlight shines on him and he takes a bow for the performance instead of Tom. Now THAT is a sign of satisfaction.

This is one of the Tom & Jerry shorts that has gotten such high praise from critics and audiences as a comedy classic, it became one of seven Tom & Jerry shorts to win an Academy Award for Best Short Subject in the Cartoon category, which was accepted by the film's producer, Fred Quimby. However, the film also met a moment of controversy. Right after the film was released, Warner Brothers released the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Rhapsody Rabbit", in which Bugs also plays Number Two on the grand piano in front of an audience, with the only difference being that he does not have an adversary to quarrel with. This led to the filmmakers at MGM and Warner Brothers arguing with each other saying that their film was original, and that they plagiarized each other, when really, it was all coincidental.

As for the film itself, it's one of the greats from the Hanna-Barbera catalog of Tom & Jerry shorts. The animation and timing is well done, and the comedy is as smart as usual. The music, obviously, flows with the on-going havoc, and it fits perfectly, making it one of the best uses of Liszt's classic piece. In fact, I have a feeling that the scene from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" where Donald Duck and Daffy Duck do dueling pianos in the Ink and Paint Club pretty much pays tribute to this particular short.

In conclusion, this is a gem in the Tom & Jerry franchise, and a step forward for the characters to interact in different environments. As a kid, I looked forward to seeing this film appear on a Tom & Jerry block on Cartoon Network. Though if you're looking to own this film so you can watch it at anytime, it can be found on the first Tom & Jerry Spotlight Collection or Volume 1 of the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection.

. . . the main premise of THE CAT CONCERTO--a grand piano infested with one or more rodents--has been borne out time after time in Real Life. Most of my lumbering music boxes--whether grands or the space-saving uprights--belong to widows who seldom or no longer play, due to dementia, failing health and pervasive arthritis. However, from force of habit they or occasionally a rarely-seen housekeeper, think it is good for the morale of the house to shell out a couple hundred bucks twice a year for the benefit of having an experienced piano turner make a house call and put the musical elephant in their domicile back into as close a semblance of "working order" as possible. After awhile, the discovery of rodent droppings, decaying corpses and even live musical mice became so frequent that I was working in almost as much personal protective gear as an exterminator. THE CAT CONCERTO hits particularly close to home for me. Like most piano tuners, the famed Liszt rhapsody is my post-tune-up test piece. I play it to make sure that I've worked all the bugs out of a just-serviced keyboard instrument.

. . . is NOT when LA LA LAND's "Best Picture" gelded statuette was filched by MOONSHINE, but remains when the Groaning Fat Cat stole not only the hardware but also the software for RHAPSODY RABBIT lock, stock and barrel cactus with its bogus CAT CONCERTO spin on the top-rated "10 of 10" RHAPSODY RABBIT. A not-so-"independent" film lab, in cahoots with Old Scratch, sent the developed film for the latter cartoon over to Plagiarist House. The copycats there recognized a good thing when they saw it, assigned a squad of fourth-rate doodlers to ape it virtually verbatim and then rigged an "election" to award the grand prize to their purloined knock-off. Many live-action criminal case documentaries, True Crime volumes and "Now You Know the Rest of the Story" segments have been done over the decades exposing this brazen incident of intellectual property thievery and the pervasive evil pervading this pernicious film franchise. Leo the Leper turns everything he touches to dross, with a sad history of gangster culture, child abuse and not-so-organized crime.