Dots
Dots
| 01 January 1940 (USA)
Dots Trailers

An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by Norman McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and ink. The main title is in eight languages. Rereleased with multilingual titles in 1949.

Reviews
Michael_Elliott

Dots (1940) ** 1/2 (out of 4)This early short from Norman McLaren basically has a bunch of dots appearing on the screen and moving around to the music score.I went on a binge of McLaren shorts and this was the last one that I watched and it was also one of the least interesting. There's really nothing ground-breaking here, which is okay but at the same time there's really nothing that entertaining either. I'd argue that the best thing about the movie were the sound effects, which were quite catchy and certainly memorable.

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Horst in Translation ([email protected])

"Dots" is a Norman McLaren short film still a while before his Oscar and this one is really short, foes not even reach the 150-second mark and that already includes a lengthy introduction in all kinds of languages. He made this one during World War II, but I don't think there are any political references in here. It is really just, like the title states, blue dots and other shapes on red background. I quite liked the sound effects here, they fit nicely to what we saw. Nonetheless, this is not a good film and watching it more than once would make it really boring. I am glad it was so short, because otherwise it may have dragged pretty quickly. I cannot recommend "Dots", I have seen better and worse from McLaren.

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