This is a short film produced by Jacques Cousteau. There will be spoilers ahead:
This magnificent short deservedly won the Academy Award for Live Action Subject, beating Mysteries of The Deep and The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film, among others.
The short begins routinely enough with inter-cut shots of a woman and a boy leaving work and school. Told essentially without words (you hear one sentence spoken by the man running a game of chance, but it's all but in audible and unimportant to the plot) the boy is shown feeding his pet bird and then going to get milk. He passes the woman, who is his mother, on his way out.
The boy passes a carnival/amusement park, watching first bumper cars and then a game of chance, where he spots a goldfish in a tank. The fish are the prizes. As the boy leaves, a bearded man dressed in black comes up and he too sees the goldfish, which now hides in a rock formation. The bearded man tries to win the game in order to get the goldfish. He wins at last, but the goldfish won't be coaxed out of the rocks The boy comes back while all this is going on and there's a fantastic shot of the boy's face as he looks in at the fish while the men try to get it out of the tank. The efforts to get the fish manage to break the bottle of milk the boy carries and the man in black very kindly gives the boy some coins to make up for the damage.
The boy gets change from the man running the game, places a coin late in the next round, wins and gets the goldfish, which swims right into the net for the boy, who takes it home as the bearded man looks on incredulously at the turn of events, holding a fish he doesn't really want.
Cut to the next scene: we see a cat in the morning, with mother and son leaving for work and school. In their apartment, the bird and fish are active, moving in time to the short's musical score, which is excellent throughout. The fish repeatedly leaps until one jump winds up with it on the counter, out of water.
The last four minutes or so of the short is like a race, as we see the boy leaving school, the fish out of water and the cat entering the apartment through an open window. The cat is at first fascinated by the bird, the look on its face apparently making its designs obvious. Then it spots the fish. Shots of the boy racing home from school are edited with shots of the drama in the apartment between the bird, the cat and the fish create a dramatic tension as to what the final outcome will be.
I won't spoil the ending, which is great. I wish I could figure out how they managed some of the interactions between the animals to get the footage they shot. The music, the editing and cinematography are fantastic! This is well worth tracking down. It should be in print. Most highly recommended.
This magnificent short deservedly won the Academy Award for Live Action Subject, beating Mysteries of The Deep and The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film, among others.
The short begins routinely enough with inter-cut shots of a woman and a boy leaving work and school. Told essentially without words (you hear one sentence spoken by the man running a game of chance, but it's all but in audible and unimportant to the plot) the boy is shown feeding his pet bird and then going to get milk. He passes the woman, who is his mother, on his way out.
The boy passes a carnival/amusement park, watching first bumper cars and then a game of chance, where he spots a goldfish in a tank. The fish are the prizes. As the boy leaves, a bearded man dressed in black comes up and he too sees the goldfish, which now hides in a rock formation. The bearded man tries to win the game in order to get the goldfish. He wins at last, but the goldfish won't be coaxed out of the rocks The boy comes back while all this is going on and there's a fantastic shot of the boy's face as he looks in at the fish while the men try to get it out of the tank. The efforts to get the fish manage to break the bottle of milk the boy carries and the man in black very kindly gives the boy some coins to make up for the damage.
The boy gets change from the man running the game, places a coin late in the next round, wins and gets the goldfish, which swims right into the net for the boy, who takes it home as the bearded man looks on incredulously at the turn of events, holding a fish he doesn't really want.
Cut to the next scene: we see a cat in the morning, with mother and son leaving for work and school. In their apartment, the bird and fish are active, moving in time to the short's musical score, which is excellent throughout. The fish repeatedly leaps until one jump winds up with it on the counter, out of water.
The last four minutes or so of the short is like a race, as we see the boy leaving school, the fish out of water and the cat entering the apartment through an open window. The cat is at first fascinated by the bird, the look on its face apparently making its designs obvious. Then it spots the fish. Shots of the boy racing home from school are edited with shots of the drama in the apartment between the bird, the cat and the fish create a dramatic tension as to what the final outcome will be.
I won't spoil the ending, which is great. I wish I could figure out how they managed some of the interactions between the animals to get the footage they shot. The music, the editing and cinematography are fantastic! This is well worth tracking down. It should be in print. Most highly recommended.