Tom and Jerry. Nice old beat up original (35mm print-down) 16mm print with original titles rather than the fake ones I added for the Tom and Jerry DVD we did in 2009. This print was struck in 1942. Blu-ray set well in progress!
This feels an awful lot like a Tex Avery or Clampett short for Warner Bros. from the late 30s with it's screwball prey outsmarting the hunters with snappy and logic-defying gagwork, and this came out in the early 1930s? Van Beuren was a genuinely great studio that unfairly gets a bad wrap on behalf of their lower quality compared to the competition, and their library consisting of some pretty derivative stuff (despite quite a few hidden gems)
Walter Gutlohn did some of them; Commonwealth did some too, as did Modern Sound Pictures. There's also prints that are pre-Gutlohn. This one is from the Gutohn time period, but who knows who printed it other than it was clearly a rental print. Print downs are prints made directly by taking a 35mm negative and making a print each time it's run. They're usually sharper than prints that were made from a 16mm negative and making a 'contact print' where the film is sandwiched with the negative and run together.
The original would almost certainly have been on 35mm nitrate, therefore any 16mm copy would be a reduction. Because so much nitrate has been lost, in many cases 16mm copies may be all that survive (16mm was always on safety stock), and we should be grateful to have them despite the inferior quality.
