#763) Tarantella (1940)

#763) Tarantella (1940)

OR “Kiss of the Spider Woman”

Directed by Mary Ellen Bute

Class of 2010

The Plot: With music courtesy of pianist Edwin Gershecfski, “Tarantella” is, as described in the opening text, “a swift moving dance presented musically and in linear forms of color”. That’s all well and good, but how is this going to help with my tarantula bite?

Why It Matters: The NFR gives us a rundown of the film and Bute, citing her influence on future filmmakers and animators. An essay by film professor and author Lauren Rabinovitz is a thorough dive into the artistry of Mary Ellen Bute.

But Does It Really?: Even with the amount of experimental animation covered on this blog so far, “Tarantella” stands out for being ahead of its time. With its geometric patterns and avant-garde music, “Tarantella” predates UPA’s animation style by a full decade! Plus, Mary Ellen Bute’s work here can definitely be seen in the films of Sally Cruikshank, Lisze Bechtold, Ayoka Chenzira, and many of the other female animators on this list. A pass for “Tarantella”, but mainly as representation of Mary Ellen Bute and her trailblazing work in experimental animation.

Everybody Gets One: After studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and stage lighting at Yale University’s Drama School, Mary Ellen Bute became interested in combing the two to create paintings that were visualization of music. Influenced by Oskar Fischinger (as well as working with inventor Leon Theremin and artist Thomas Wilfred), Bute continued these experiments through animated shorts throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bute had no problems with Hollywood, having her films screened at such major movie theaters as Radio City Music Hall in front of many a prestige studio feature.

Title Track: “Tarantella” opens with the definition of tarantella, citing the dance as a supposed Neapolitan remedy for a tarantula bite. The music in “Tarantella” appears to be more rooted in this origin, rather than the more upbeat evolution of the dance I associate with Italian weddings.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nomination for “Tarantella”. For the record, the winner for Animated Short in 1940 was MGM’s “The Milky Way”, the first time in the category’s history a non-Disney short took the prize.

It’s your favorite and mine: “Things I Thought I Saw During “‘Tarantella’”:

Lips
Ben Day dots from old comic books
A barcode
TRON?
My totally illegible signature
The copyright logo
Lightning
The Looney Tunes opening
A ringworm
Clouds (though admittedly those could look like anything)
A seismograph
Ice picks
The dream sequence from “Vertigo”
My optometrist’s peripheral vision test. Quick, press the button!
A whole lot of flashing. This should come with a warning.

Legacy

Although completed in 1940, “Tarantella” would receive its commercial premiere in 1950 where it preceded the American run of the French film “La valse de Paris” [“Paris Waltz”] at the Paris Theatre in New York City. I suspect the then-recent rise to fame of UPA helped get “Tarantella” that booking.
Mary Ellen Bute continued making experimental animation throughout her career, eventually pivoting to live action films including 1966’s “Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake”, notably the first film for one of its co-editors, the legendary Thelma Schoonmaker.

Shortly after Mary Ellen Bute’s death in 1983, the Museum of Modern Art hosted a retrospective of her film work. “Tarantella”, along with the rest of Bute’s filmography, continues to be celebrated in various exhibitions, including at the George Eastman Museum in 2024.