Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/For Scentimental Reasons
From Eccentric Flower
For Scent-imental Reasons
1948
Summary: A skunk amorously pursues a cat he mistakenly believes to be a female skunk.
Director: Chuck Jones
Writer: Michael Maltese
Featuring: No regulars.
Onreel
0:20 Sound cue under titles: "Every Day I Love You (Just a Little Bit More)."
0:37 Sound cue (man on bicycle, singing gibberish lyrics): "The Latin Quarter."
0:55 I can't quite figure out the second word in the perfumier's "sacre ____." It may be "sacre maroon," to go with the gendarme's later cry of "sacre cerise!" (Cerise means "cherry" but is also a color.) Either way the exclamations are nonsense, like saying "holy moley!"
0:56 Sound cue as the perfumier runs down the streets: "Alouette."
1:09 Most of the French here is nonsense - some real phrases but strung together in a haphazard manner - and not worth decoding.
1:17 Sound cue: Pepe is singing his own lyrics to the tune of "Time Waits For No One." He is, of course, singing about l'amour.
2:13 "Qu'il est? Ah - le belle femme skunk fatale!" Probably should have been la belle femme skunk, but we shall make allowances.
2:31 Sound cue: "It's Magic." (See Transylvania 6-5000.)
2:35 "Do not come wiz me to ze Casbah ..." See Offreel.
3:01 "Alouette" again, and this time Pepe is singing the correct words (while he cleans and files his fingernails).
3:08 "Dainty or not, we continue wiz ze wooing!" If you could call it that.
3:23 "Come, my little peanut of brittle!"
3:29 "It's Magic" again.
4:20 Pepe's mock-suicide has been repeatedly censored on various airings of this cartoon by the squeamish.
4:41 "C'est la guerre." ("That's (what happens in) war.")
5:22 Pepe's line about her committing suicide has also sometimes been cut by the squeamish, as has been his later "Vive l'amour! We go together."
5:48 Pepe calls the wet, snuffling cat "Grandmama."
5:59 "The Latin Quarter" again.
Offreel
This cartoon won Chuck Jones his first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
I can't explain the Casbah joke, and how it connects to Pepe, any more succinctly than Wikipedia does:
"The 1938 movie Algiers (a remake of the French film Pépé le Moko of the previous year) was most Americans' introduction to the picturesque alleys and souks of the Casbah. In 1948 a musical remake, Casbah, was released.
"The invitation 'Come with me to the Casbah,' which was heard in trailers for Algiers but not in the film itself, became an exaggerated romantic overture, largely owing to its use by Looney Tunes cartoon character Pepe Le Pew, himself a spoof of Pépé le Moko. The amorous skunk used "Come with me to ze Casbah" as a pickup line. In 1954, the Looney Tunes cartoon 'The Cats Bah' specifically spoofed Algiers, with the skunk enthusiastically declaring, 'You do not have to come with me to ze Casbah.... We are already 'ere!'"
Filmographie le Pew
Fans of Pepe le Pew will be a bit annoyed by my "no regulars" line above, and I admit I am on the fence. Pepe does appear in at least fourteen cartoons, which should suffice - barely - to qualify him for his own listing. In making this decision, I was swayed by the fact that twelve of the cartoons are essentially thin variations on the same plot, and that the animators themselves were inconsistent with their use of Pepe from time to time. The reason for the "at least" qualifier above is that in some of these cartoons the question is: is it Pepe, or just a skunk that happens to look like him? Clearly the ones where Pepe romances the black cat are definitely in the tally. But for others to be Pepe, I think, he needs to 1) be French and 2) engage in a romantic pursuit of something.
Pepe and Penelope/Fifi/Fabrette (AKA the black cat):
- For Scent-imental Reasons
- "Scent-imental Romeo"
- "Little Beau Pepe"
- "The Cats Bah"
- "Past Perfumance"
- "Two Scent's Worth"
- Heaven Scent
- "Touché and Go"
- "Really Scent"
- "Who Scent You?"
- "A Scent of the Matterhorn"
- "Louvre Come Back to Me!"
In general, once you have seen For Scent-imental Reasons, the best of the lot, you gain very little with the rest of these ... although it's a shame that the Golden Collection chose to include Heaven Scent as a second example instead of Really Scent, which is the only significant variation on the formula and has June Foray narration to boot. Bad copy of "Really Scent" on Dailymotion with annoying ads
Acts like Pepe - amorous pursuit, bounce, French:
- "Scent-imental Over You"
- "Wild Over You"
- "Dog Pounded" (cameo at the end - he pursues Sylvester!)
Not Pepe:
- Odor-able Kitty - first appearance of this skunk model, but he is revealed to be an American skunk named Henry!
- "Odor of the Day" - not French and no romantic pursuit
Anybody's guess:
- "Fair and Worm-er" - hard to say because the skunk never speaks in this brief cameo
