Tom and Jerry - Episodul 1

Nume : Tom si Jerry (Tom and Jerry)

Nr. episoade : 60

Limba : Engleza

Descriere in Romana : 


Tom și Jerry este o serie desene animate, care prezintă o pereche de dușmani, o pisică de casă și un șoricel, creată de William Hanna și Joseph Barbera pentru studiourile Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Timp de 17 ani, cuplul de animatori a lucrat aproape numai la Tom și Jerry, regizând mai mult de 114 scurt metraje, care se bazau mai mult pe mișcare în dauna dialogului. În anul 1957 MGM a decis să închidă studioul de animație din cauza nerentabilității (un serial de șapte minute cu Tom și Jerry costa 35.000 de dolari), și să le redifuzeze pe cele deja existente.
În 1960 MGM semnează un contract cu studioul cehoslovac Rembrandt Films în urma căruia s-au produs 13 scurt-metraje cu cele două personaje, regizate de Gene Deitch Desenele erau considerate neobișnuite și, în multe feluri bizare.Deoarece fiecare desen avea doar un buget de 10.000 de dolari,s-a trecut la animația limitată, Gene Deitch fiind nevoi să redeseneze personajele cu mai puține detalii și bolnăviciose iar deseori apărea efectul de motion blur. În 1963 MGM cere studioului Sib Tower 12 să creeze alte 34 de scurt metraje, de data aceasta regizate de Chuck Jones. Mami doi Pantofi este înlocuită de un bărbat alb care îl pedepsește în mod repetat pe Tom, bătându-l cu grătarul și turnându-i pe gât o sticlă întreagă de băutără carbogazoasă.
Începând cu anul 1965, desenele au fost cenzurate de Chuck Jones la cererea MGM, fiind scoase scenele care făceau referi rasiale asupra negrilor (Mami doi Pantofi fiind înlocuită în mai multe dintre desene cu o femeie albă), chinezilor și indienilor.

Personaje

Tom și Jerry

Articole principale: Tom Motanul și Jerry Șoarecele.

Tom este anti-eroul înfometat, motanul șmecher și ursuz care nu are decât o dorință, să îl mănânce pe Jerry. Tom încearcă toate șmecheriile posibile pentru a pune mâna pe șoarecele acela, dar nu reușește decât să facă praf casa. În numeroase episoade Tom Motanul încearcă să-l captureze pe Jerry Șoarecele colocatarul său nedorit, creând haos și dezastru. O fi Jerry mic, dar este suficient de inteligent pentru a întoarce lucrurile în favoarea lui când Tom și-o caută cu lumânarea. În perechea Tom și Jerry, șoricelul este șeful. În anumite episoade Tom încearcă sa mănânce păsări, pești sau alți șoareci, însă niciodată pe Jerry sau pe Tuffy. Unele dintre motivele care duc la război sunt: sabotarea planurilor lui Tom de către abilul său inamic, consumarea alimentelor de către Jerry pe care Tom ar fi trebuit să le păzească, răzbunarea, un motan rival, o femelă sau doar din plăcerea unuia dintre cei doi inamici. Tom reușește rar să-l prindă pe Jerry, doar atunci când șoricelul ajută alte victime ale lui Tom. Destul de interesant, la începutul episoadelor din "era Hanna-Barbera" lângă titlu apar chipurile lui Tom și a lui Jerry zâmbind unul la altul, ceea ce este destul de ciudat având în vedere că cei doi sunt inamici. Există, de asemenea mai multe cazuri în care aceștia prezintă sentimente de prietenie unul pentru altul ca de exemplu în episodul "Thomas îndrăgostit" sau în episodul "Jerry și leul" când Jerry se preface că este rănit, iar Tom aduce trusa de prim-ajutor pentru a-l ajuta pe Jerry.

Spike și Tyke

Articol principal: Spike și Tyke (Tom și Jerry).

Durul absolut din desenele Tom și Jerry, Spike, este buldogul din vecini căruia îi place să se relaxeze în cușca sa rozând un os. Fiind prieten cu Jerry, Spike intervine în favoarea lui atunci când Tom îi deranjează liniștea mult iubită. Tom și Jerry știu să nu îl deranjeze pe buldogul cel mare Spike și mai ales să nu îl deranjeze pe fiul său cel blând, Tyke. Spre deosebire de Tom și Jerry, Tyke nu caută să facă probleme, dar mereu se ajunge la asta. Și de obicei problemele pică pe Tom! Spre deosebire de tatăl lui, Tyke nu vorbește. El comunică numai prin scheunat, mârâit, expresii faciale și dând din coadă.

Rățușca

Este un personaj episodic, apare ca fiind un prieten de nădejde a lui Jerry, dar foarte buclucaș și care intră în necazuri cu Tom.

Description in English :

Tom and Jerry is a series of theatrical animated cartoon films created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, centering on a rivalry between a cat (Tom) and a mouse (Jerry) whose chases include slapstick comedy. Hanna and Barbera ultimately wrote, produced, and directed 114 Tom and Jerry shorts at the MGM cartoon studio in Hollywood from 1940 to 1957. The original series is notable for having won seven Academy Awards, tying with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies as the theatrical animated series with the most Oscars. A longtime television staple, Tom and Jerry has a worldwide audience and has been recognized as one of the most famous and longest-lived rivalries in American cinema.
MGM released an additional 13 entries in 1961 produced by Rembrandt Films led by Gene Deitch in central Europe. Chuck Jones' Sib-Tower 12 Productions produced another 34 entries between 1963–1967, creating a total of 161 theatrical entries.
Tom and Jerry resurfaced in made-for-television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Filmation Studios starting in the 1970s. The feature-length film Tom and Jerry: The Movie was released in 1992, and was followed by their first made-for-television short Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat for Boomerang. The most recent Tom and Jerry theatrical short, The Karate Guard, (2005) was written and co-directed by Barbera.
Time Warner (via its Turner Entertainment division) currently owns the rights to Tom and Jerry: Warner Bros. handles distribution. Since the merger, Turner has produced Tom and Jerry Tales for The CW's Saturday morning "The CW4Kids" lineup, and several Tom and Jerry direct-to-video films in collaboration with Warner Bros. Animation.

  

Plot

The series features comedic fights between an iconic set of enemies, a house cat and mouse. The plots of each short usually center on Tom's numerous attempts to capture Jerry and the mayhem and destruction that follows. Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry's cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck. However, there are also several instances within the cartoons where they display genuine friendship and concern for each other's well-being. At other times, the pair set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, such as when a baby escaped the watch of a negligent babysitter, causing Tom and Jerry to pursue the baby and keep it away from danger. The cartoons are infamous for some of the most violent cartoon gags ever devised in theatrical animation such as Tom using everything from axes, hammers, firearms, explosives, traps and poison to try to murder Jerry. On the other hand, Jerry's methods of retaliation are far more violent due to their frequent success, including slicing Tom in half, shutting his head in a window or a door, stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron or a mangle, kicking him into a refrigerator, plugging his tail into an electric socket, pounding him with a mace, club or mallet, causing a tree or an electric pole to drive him into the ground, sticking matches into his feet and lighting them, tying him to a firework and setting it off, and so on. Because of this, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent. Despite the frequent violence, there is no blood or gore in any scene.
Music plays a very important part in the shorts, emphasizing the action, filling in for traditional sound effects, and lending emotion to the scenes. Musical director Scott Bradley created complex scores that combined elements of jazz, classical, and pop music; Bradley often reprised contemporary pop songs, as well as songs from MGM films, including The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St. Louis. Generally, there is little dialogue as Tom and Jerry almost never speak; however, minor characters are not similarly limited, and the two lead characters are able to speak English on rare occasions and are thus not mute. For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in nearly every cartoon in which she appears. Most of the vocal effects used for Tom and Jerry are their high-pitched laughs and gasping screams.
Before 1954, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio and format; in 1954 and 1955, some of the output was dually produced in dual versions: one Academy-ratio negative composed for a flat widescreen (1.75:1) format and one shot in the CinemaScope process. From 1955 until the close of the MGM cartoon studio a year later, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in CinemaScope, some even had their soundtracks recorded in Perspecta directional audio. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were shot as successive color exposure negatives and printed by Technicolor; the 1960s entries were done in Metrocolor. The 1960s entrees also returned to the standard Academy ratio and format, too. The 2005 short The Karate Guard was also filmed in the standard Academy ratio and format, too.

Characters

Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse

Tom (called "Jasper" in his debut appearance) is a grey and white domestic shorthair cat. He usually lives a pampered life, although the characters usually live in several lifestyles, while Jerry is a small brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to him. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat (The Warner Bros. cartoon character Sylvester was originally named Thomas).^{[citation needed]} Jerry possesses surprising strength for his size, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts with them. Despite the typical cat-eats-mouse scenario, it is surprisingly quite rare for Tom to actually try and consume Jerry; most of his attempts are just to torment or humiliate Jerry. Despite being very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits. By the final "fade-out" of each cartoon, Jerry usually emerges triumphant, while Tom is shown as the loser. However, other results may be reached; on rare occasions, Tom triumphs, usually when Jerry becomes the aggressor or when he crosses some sort of line (the best example of which occurs in The Million Dollar Cat where, after finding out that Tom's newly acquired wealth will be taken away if he harms any animal, including a mouse, he torments Tom until Tom finally loses his temper and attacks him). Sometimes, usually ironically, they both lose, usually when Jerry's last trap potentially backfires on him after it affects Tom (An example is in Chuck Jones' Filet Meow short where Jerry orders a shark to scare Tom away from eating a goldfish. Afterwards, the shark scares Jerry away as well) or when Jerry overlooks something at the end of the course. Sometimes, they both end up being friends (only for something to happen so that Tom will chase Jerry again). Both characters display sadistic tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other. However, depending on the cartoon, whenever one character appears to be in mortal danger (in a dangerous situation or by a third party), the other will develop a conscience and save him. Sometimes, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture and humiliate them both. Sometimes this partnership is forgotten quickly when an unexpected event happens or when one character feels that the other is no longer necessary. (Example is when in Posse Cat, when Jerry decides to pretend to get chased by Tom in exchange for half his food. Tom agrees to this, but then he goes back on his word later.) Other times however, Tom does keep his promise to Jerry and the partnerships are not quickly dissolved after the problem is solved.
Tom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is Toots who appears in Puss n' Toots, and calls him "Tommy" in The Mouse Comes to Dinner. He is also interested in a cat called Toots in The Zoot Cat although she has a different appearance to the original Toots. The most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in the cartoons.
Despite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent; he even reads about his own death in a flashback in Jerry's Diary. He appears to die in explosions in Mouse Trouble (after which he is seen in heaven), Yankee Doodle Mouse and in Safety Second, while in The Two Mouseketeers he is guillotined offscreen.

Tom and Jerry speaking

Although many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so themselves. Tom, most famously, sings while wooing female cats; for example, Tom sings Louis Jordan's "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" in the 1946 short Solid Serenade. In that one as well as Zoot Cat, Tom, when romancing a female cat, woos her in a French-accented voice similar to that of screen actor Charles Boyer. At the end of The Million Dollar Cat after beginning to antagonize Jerry he says "Gee, I'm throwin' away a million dollars... BUT I'M HAPPY!" In Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring, Jerry says, "No, no, no, no, no," when choosing the shop to remove his ring. In The Mouse Comes to Dinner Tom speaks to his girlfriend while inadvertently sitting on a stove: "Gee, what's cookin'?" (The girl replies "You are, stupid"). Another instance of speech comes in Solid Serenade and The Framed Cat, where Tom directs Spike through a few dog tricks in a dog-trainer manner. In Mouse Trouble, Tom says "Don't you believe it!" after being beaten up by Jerry (this also happens in The Missing Mouse.) Co-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effects from the series, Tom's leather-lunged scream (created by recording Hanna's scream and eliminating the beginning and ending of the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack) and Jerry's nervous gulp. The only other reasonably common vocalization is made by Tom when some external reference claims a certain scenario or eventuality to be impossible, which inevitably, ironically happens to thwart Tom's plans – at which point, a bedraggled and battered Tom appears and says in a haunting, echoing voice "Don't you believe it!", a reference to the then-popular 1940s radio show Don't You Believe It. ^[4][5] In the 1946 short Trap Happy, Tom hires a mouse exterminator who, after several failed attempts to dispatch Jerry, changes profession to Cat exterminator by crossing out the "Mouse" on his title and writing "Cat", resulting in Tom spelling out the word out loud before reluctantly pointing at himself. One short, 1956's Blue Cat Blues, is narrated by Jerry in voiceover (voiced by Paul Frees) as they try to win back their ladyfriends. Both Tom and Jerry speak more than once in the 1943 short The Lonesome Mouse, while Jerry was voiced by Sara Berner during his appearance in the 1945 MGM musical Anchors Aweigh. Tom and Jerry: The Movie is the first (and so far only) installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duos regularly speak. In that movie, Tom was voiced by Richard Kind, and Jerry was voiced by Dana Hill.

Spike and Tyke

In his attempts to catch Jerry, Tom often has to deal with Spike (known as "Killer" and "Butch" in some shorts), an angry, vicious but extremely unintelligent bulldog who tries to attack Tom for bothering his son Tyke while trying to get Jerry. Originally, Spike was unnamed and mute (aside from howls and biting noises) as well as attacking indiscriminately, not caring whether it was Tom or Jerry though usually attacking Tom. In later cartoons, Spike spoke often, using a voice and expressions (performed by Billy Bletcher and later Daws Butler) modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante. Spike's coat has altered throughout the years between grey and creamy tan. The addition of Spike's son Tyke in the late 1940s led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series (Spike and Tyke).
Most cartoons with Spike in it have a system; usually Spike is trying to accomplish something (such as building a dog house or sleeping) when Tom and Jerry's antics stop him from doing it. Spike then (presumably due to prejudice) singles out Tom as the culprit and threatens him that if it ever happens again, he will do "something horrible" to him (effectively forcing Tom to take the blame) while Jerry overhears; afterwards Jerry usually does anything he can to interrupt whatever Spike is doing while Tom barely manages to stop him (usually getting injured in the process). Usually Jerry does eventually wreck whatever Spike is doing in spectacular fashion and leaving Tom to take the blame, forcing him to flee from Spike and inevitably lose (usually due to the fact that Tom is usually framed by Jerry and that Spike just doesn't like Tom). Off-screen, Spike does something to Tom and finally Tom is generally shown injured or in a bad situation while Jerry smugly cuddles up to Spike unscathed. At least once however, Tom does something that benefits Spike, who promises not to interfere ever again; causing Jerry to frantically leave the house and run into the distance (in Hic-cup Pup). Spike is well known for his famous "Listen pussycat!" catchphrase when he threatens Tom, his other famous catchphrase is "That's my boy!" normally said when he supports or congratulates his son.
Tyke is described as a cute, sweet looking, happy and a lovable puppy. He is Spike's son, but unlike Spike, Tyke does not speak and only communicates (mostly towards his father) by barking, yapping, wagging his tail, whimpering and growling. Tyke's father Spike would always go out of his way to care and comfort his son and make sure that he is safe from Tom. Tyke loves his father and Spike loves his son and they get along like friends, although most of time they would be taking a nap or Spike would teach Tyke the main facts of life of being a dog. Like Spike, Tyke's appearance has altered throughout the years, from grey (with white paws) to creamy tan. When Tom and Jerry Kids first aired, this was the first time that viewers were able to hear Tyke speak.

Butch and Toodles Galore

Butch is a black cat who also wants to eat Jerry. He is the most frequent adversary of Tom. However, for most of the episodes he appears in, he's usually seen rivaling Tom over Toodles. Butch was also Tom's pal or chum as in some cartoons, where Butch is leader of Tom's buddies, who are Meathead and Topsy. Butch talks more often than Tom or Jerry in most episodes.

Nibbles

Nibbles is a small grey mouse who often appears in episodes as Jerry's nephew. He is a carefree individual who very rarely understands the danger of the situation, simply following instructions the best he can both to Jerry's command and his own innocent understanding of the situation. This can lead to such results as "getting the cheese" by simply asking Tom to pick it up for him, rather than following Jerry's example of outmaneuvering and sneaking around Tom. Many times Nibbles is an ally of Jerry in fights against Tom, including being the second Mouseketeer. He is given speaking roles in all his appearances as a Mouseketeer, often with a high-pitched French tone. However, during an episode to rescue Robin Hood, his voice was instead more masculine, gruff, and cockney accented.

Mammy Two Shoes

Mammy Two Shoes is a heavy-set middle-aged black woman who often has to deal with the mayhem generated by the lead characters. She is often seen as the owner of Tom. Her face was never shown (except very briefly in Saturday Evening Puss). Mammy's appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated as a slim white woman in later television showings, since her character is a mammy archetype now often regarded as racist.