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00:00Bonjour, I mean hello, this is Greg Ford discussing the Oscar winning Pepe Le Pew cartoon for
00:08Scent of Mental Reasons, and we'll also be hearing some all-too-brief snippets from the
00:11last surviving tapes of a long-ago interview I did with the director Chuck Jones on the
00:15subject of Pepe Le Pew.
00:18And here he is, Pepe Le Pew, with all his foul-smelling suave-té intact.
00:22Now checking out the key personnel on the credit roster, you'll see the story man Michael
00:25Maltese, who really deserves co-creation credit for the character with Chuck, dating
00:31several films earlier.
00:32This wasn't the first Pepe film.
00:34And the animators Ken Harris, Phil Monroe, Ben Washam, this was really a peak period
00:38for Chuck's unit, and this is their richly deserved first Oscar.
00:41Now the film begins with these picture-postcard type tableaux, these quaint touristy shots
00:46featuring a shop owner and a gendarme, so in the meantime, we can prepare ourselves
00:51for Pepe's arrival.
00:52Pepe was unique in the annals of chase cartoons because of his motivation.
00:55It wasn't out of hunger, it was out of sexual desire.
00:59Here's Chuck Jones.
01:23Chuck loved the character of Pepe, quoted him frequently, but lest you detect incipient
01:27chauvinism or male egomania on Chuck's part, let me remind you that identification with
01:31Pepe Le Pew comes with a certain caveat.
01:33He stinks.
01:34He's a skunk.
01:35So in knowingly comparing yourself with Pepe, there's a certain amount of self-deprecation
01:40that's also inherent, along with the male egomania.
01:43Now the way these Pepe films operate, on the theory that Pepe is attractive and a female
01:48skunk would go for him, there had to be some inter-species switcheroo, and although
01:53at one point he actually fell for a fur-coated chihuahua, usually it's a female cat who got
01:58a white stripe down her back.
02:09So we got the white stripe, and now here's Mel Blanc's tortured franglais.
02:19Tortured are the years of French-language PhD candidates at universities everywhere.
02:24And now here's the first stage of the chase, and the first of Pepe's lecherous gropes,
02:28and you know, it's pretty explicit, she's almost horizontal there.
02:31These poses were actually more suggested than most live-action couplings at the time, because
02:36this was years before Burt Lancaster and Deborah Carr grappled on the beach in From
02:39Here to Eternity.
02:41These Pepe cartoons are wonderful, and they're definitely not shown enough nowadays.
02:44They're sort of out of distribution, and I'd like to see them come back.
02:46And this one's just typical.
02:48Even though it won an Oscar, there doesn't seem to be anything exceptional about it,
02:51at this juncture at least.
02:52But later on, there are two extraordinary sequences that definitely elevate, for sentimental
02:57reasons, a notch or two above your average Pepe outing.
02:59One is the sequence coming up shortly, which finds the female cat securely locked inside
03:03a soundproof glass case.
03:06And the way the scene is directed, intercutting back and forth between the respective listener's
03:10two sides of a glass partition, the whole conversation plays out as pantomime.
03:14Chuck loved doing that, as we know, but he didn't have an outlet then on any regular
03:18basis, as his Roadrunner films hadn't really started up yet in earnest.
03:22So the glass partition thing was really a trick to be able to do pantomime with Pepe,
03:25even though the skunk was otherwise a very vocal character.
03:32Now, here comes Pepe through the living room hallway, where are you, Pigeon?
03:36And this leads right to the glass case routine, which, right from the get-go, is funny because
03:40it's like a lover's spat.
03:41Suddenly, even though they just met, they're like an old married couple, with him an outraged
03:45husband.
03:46You come here, you know, and she's going, ah, go jump in the lake.
03:49What's always a pleasure in Chuck's cartoons is his unique use of facial expressions and
03:53the manner with which they spell out character.
03:55His technique is to just do a surplus of character layouts for an interlude like this one, and
04:00then time it so that the original drawings just sort of pop out of the flow of drawings,
04:03so this special rhythm is created and the expressions read beautifully.
04:10Carl Stalling's interpretation of Sammie Kahn's and Julie Stein's It's Magic helps a lot here
04:15because the string section mimics the words, because you stink, and then me, and that works
04:20great.
04:21And now look at this drawing, it's unbelievable.
04:26And now another great expression, and now the last line.
04:33The perfect capper.
04:34Now coming up is that slow and steady wins the race pacing idea where Peppy consistently
04:39keeps hopping and the frantic girl cat gets progressively tuckered out.
04:44But as a sidebar here, one of the raps on the Oscars, and let me say, don't give this
04:49any credence, this is the sort of thing you hear on the street in Nermed Legend thing,
04:52but one of the raps is that it's always actors doing exotic foreign accents, like Meryl
04:57Streep with a Polish accent, or getting nominated for that Australian accent at I Didn't Go
05:02Ate My Baby thing, or Paul Muni for the story of Louis Pasteur.
05:06They get the prizes.
05:07And it's weird that out of the first three Academy Awards given to Warner Bros. characters,
05:12two of them were for comparatively second string stars like Pepe Lepew and Speedy Gonzales,
05:16with Mel Blanc doing accents, however comically flavored they may be.
05:20Now Charles Baillé, who comes by his accent naturally, appeared as Pepe Lomoco in Algiers,
05:26a character whose endearingly obnoxious traits are here being satirized with Pepe Lepew.
05:31Now he was nominated but didn't win, but Pepe Lepew won, which I guess is a testament
05:34to the power of cartoons.
05:41And now this is the second of those two extraordinary sequences, and for sentimental reasons, it's
05:45coming up here, a role reversal, where Pepe becomes the object of sexual pursuit and
05:50gets a little comeuppance, you know, a little sensitivity training.
05:54Sensitivity training, get it?
05:56Now this one is really best, he did it in other cartoons, but look at that shot, that's
06:00from her point of view, and there she reacts, you see?
06:02I mean, this is really the best of the role reversals he did, because of that POV shot
06:06of the bedraggled girl cat.
06:08You never see male secondary sexual characteristics being exaggerated, you know, from a woman's
06:13point of view, it's always the other way around.
06:16And of course her bedraggled look is great, I mean, now she's unattractive, and the drawings
06:20are great, and the timing is great, and the weird noises she makes there.
06:23I mean, you really see why cats want to stay away from water and don't get wet, you know,
06:28so it's like suddenly she sees him with broad shoulders in that shot, and I guess the blue
06:33paint blocks out his malodorousness.
06:35But anyway, this is an excellent Pepe cartoon, and I also recommend Odorable Kitty, the first
06:40one, Cat's Bow, with the great subjective camera thing happening there too, Sentimental
06:44Romeo, where Pepe does a Chevalier impression, and this is Greg Ford, au revoir.
06:50Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada