Movies they constantly showed us when it was raining too hard to go out for recess

[mmcirvin]

Found in the course of a discussion on james_nicoll's LJ concerning The Red Balloon, which was definitely another one:

Robert McCloskey's Homer Price, in "The Doughnuts" (1963):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HowpkY-Aro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uU0N5jBU3Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB1Mca6K6p8

"Caterpillar", apparently a product of Kresleny Film of Prague (possibly 1971):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=offeqj7OOsQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1M6o-teA10

This second one was hellaciously hard to find, because of the much more famous 1944 Cary Grant film Once Upon A Time which had essentially the same subject.

Edit: The caterpillar movie was apparently made by famed Czech animator Zdeněk Miler in 1967, under the title Sametka (The Velvet Caterpillar):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zden%C4%9Bk_Miler
http://accelerateddecrepitude.blogspot.com/2011/11/caterpillar.html

And it and Once Upon A Time are supposedly based on the same story, a radio play by American writer Norman Corwin called My Friend Curly. The Miler film omits most of the plot complications, and works as a simple, gentle meditation on fame and ephemerality. I also wonder if the Cary Grant film partially inspired the classic Warner Brothers cartoon "One Froggy Evening".

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Huh. I had no idea about Caterpillar. Thanks for the links.

I remember when I saw Zelig, I was strongly reminded of Caterpillar. Small, unprepossessing person/insect becomes an unexpected fad.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's in the Big Cartoon Database under its Czech title:

http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/49127-Sametka.html

It won a number of film awards in 1968.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Come to think of it, I know I was shown at least one of Miler's Mole films as well, The Mole as a Painter.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

Never saw the other two, but they did show us The Red Balloon in grade school. On a sunny day!

I remember them also showing a film about a boy who puts a wooden boat in the Mississippi River with instructions to anyone who finds it to send him a postcard and put the boat back in the river so it can continue on its way. Also, some live-action film about a monarch butterfly almost being killed, but I may be confusing a documentary about the monarch with the film "Don't". Or maybe they did show "Don't" just before I left Maplewood Elementary, but that's more or less the same year the film was released, so I'm doubtful.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A horrifying one that I think I've mentioned here before is the bicycle-safety film "One Got Fat":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Got_Fat
http://archive.org/details/OneGotFa1963

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of a farm safety film someone once showed me that apparently was shown to every kid in school in England back in the '70s. I don't recall seeing any really horrific safety movies as a kid, but apparently in many areas, they were popular with administrators.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

They showed us "And Then It Happened", about how misbehavior on the school bus will kill everyone:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1285725859935620263

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

"One Got Fat" is among the collection of perennial filler shorts for "New Orleans Worst Film Festival" events, given MST3K style audience comments.

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

The first time I saw "The Doughnuts", I was thinking "So, just unplug the machine!" by the first reel, and thought the plot wildly implausible that no one came up with that solution.

Years doing audio engineering where the issue of something not plugged in has outnumbered all other problems combined has taught me otherwise.