100 Greatest Animated Shorts / The Big Snit / Richard Condie

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Stephen Cavalier

Writer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90SIuISIVB8

Canada / 1985

The Big Snit is one of many superb animated shorts from the National Film Board of Canada’s archives. A work of near genius, it is profound in a small and simple way like many great short films. A middle-aged couple are so bogged down in the silly trivia of their lives they are missing what’s really important. They watch TV, play scrabble, he cheats, she shakes her eyeballs in her glasses, they annoy each other, they argue, he saws the furniture, she hoovers, he shouts, she cries…then he finds a reminder of when they first met, when their happiness together wasn’t bogged down in these petty details, and they make up. Meanwhile, in their bubble of TV and domestic trivia they are missing the monumental events happening outside.

Like most of the other members of the surprisingly large sub genre of animation featuring nuclear war (When the Wind Blows, Grave of the Fireflies, Barefoot Gen, and there’s a Skwigly article waiting to happen) this film was made at the mid 80’s height of the cold war. But don’t let this put you off, unlike the others it is far from selling a sombre message and in fact makes a nuclear holocaust seem like a rather enjoyable magic mushroom voyage into Yellow Submarine land.

Richard Condie’s style is similar to that of Bob Godfrey, with its simple drawings, wobbly ‘boiling’ lines, general silliness and emphasis on character, story and humour rather than high design. Based in his home town of Winnipeg he generally collaborates with a small group of people on his films, including musician Patrick Godfrey and his sister Sharon Condie, who created backgrounds for The Big Snit. He also co-produced and provided a voice and some singing for fellow Winnipeg director Cordell Barker’s award winning short ‘The Cat Came Back’ (1988), based on an old comic song. ‘The Big Snit’ was nominated for an Oscar for best animated short and voted the 25^th best cartoon of all time in the 1994 survey for Jerry Beck’s book ‘The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals’.

Oh and I forgot to say, it’s really funny. ‘Sawing for Teens’ should be commissioned as a reality show immediately.

Note: The 100 greatest animated shorts is an list of opinions and not an order of value from best to worst. All suggestions, comments and outrage are welcome but please don’t shoot us, it’s only a list!