The Dot and the Line

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (ISBN 1-58717-066-3) is a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster, first published by Random House in 1963.

The Dot and the Line
A Romance in Lower Mathematics
Directed byChuck Jones
Maurice Noble (credited as only a co-director)
Produced byChuck Jones
Les Goldman[1]
Story byNorton Juster
(screenplay)
Based onThe Dot and the Line
by Norton Juster
Narrated byRobert Morley
Music byEugene Poddany
Animation byDon Towsley (supervising)
Ken Harris
Ben Washam
Dick Thompson
Tom Ray
Philip Roman
Backgrounds byPhilip DeGuard
Don Morgan
Color processMetrocolor
Production
company
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
December 31, 1965 (1965-12-31)
Running time
10 minutes 1 second
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

In 1965, the animator Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio worked with Norton Juster to adapt The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley with the narration almost verbatim to the book. The Dot and the Line won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film.[2] It was entered into the Short Film Palme d'Or competition at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.[3]

The cartoon was released as a special feature on The Glass Bottom Boat DVD in 2005.[4] The cartoon is also featured on the 2008 release of Warner Home Video Academy Awards Animation Collection and the 2011 release of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1 Blu-ray box-set on the third disc as a special feature. In 2005, Robert Xavier Rodriguez made a musical setting of the book for narrator and chamber ensemble with projected images, and in 2011 he made a version for full orchestra.

Story

The story details a straight line who is hopelessly in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. Taking advantage of the line's stiffness, the squiggle rubs it in that he is a lot more fun for the dot. The depressed line's friends try to get him to settle down with a female line, but he refuses. He tries to dream of greatness until he finally understands what the squiggle means, and decides to be more unconventional. Willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, the line manages to bend himself and form angle after angle until he is nothing more than a mess of sides, bends and angles. After he straightens himself out, he settles down and focuses more responsibly on this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles in order to keep his place. When competing again, the squiggle claims that the line still has nothing to show to the dot. The line proves his rival wrong and is able to show the dot what she is really worth to him. When she sees this, the dot realizes that her relationship with the squiggle has been a mistake; that what she had thought was freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. The squiggle makes an effort to reclaim her love by trying to do what the line did, but to no avail, as no matter how hard he tries to re-shape himself, he still remains the same tangled, chaotic mess of lines and curves. Fed up, the dot tells him how she really feels about him, denouncing the squiggle as meaningless, undisciplined, insignificant, and out of luck. She leaves with the line, having accepted that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils."[5]

Authorship

Though listed as being directed by Chuck Jones, the true acting director was Maurice Noble according to his own recollection, Noble being the long-term background artist and eventually credited co-director on numerous projects with Jones. Chuck Jones was one of the originators for the adaptation and did the first treatment for the short. However the results did not please the producers who asked Maurice Noble to take over, heavily vexing Jones. Noble recalls the passation happening somewhat dramatically as “Chuck, with a big scowl on his face, came in and threw all the pieces on my big brown bookcase; he stacked the whole picture like this: plunk, plunk, plunk...and stalked out of the room.” [6]

Legacy

The Dot and the Line served as the inspiration for a collection of jewelry by designer Jane A. Gordon.[7] The short film also inspired The Dot and Line, a blog that publishes essays about cartoons and interviews with voice actors and creators like Genndy Tartakovsky, Andrea Romano, Brandon Vietti, Fred Seibert, and Natalie Palamides.[8]

Notes
  • This was one of only two non-Tom and Jerry animated short subjects to be released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer post-1958. The other one is The Bear That Wasn't, released in 1967 as the last MGM animated short.
  • "The Dot and the Line" won the final award for an animated short for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Chuck Jones' only award as a producer.[9]
  • This was one of two Juster books to be adapted for the big screen by Chuck Jones, although Juster had no involvement with the other, The Phantom Tollbooth.
  • Unlike other MGM Cartoons from 1963 to 1967, the lion in this film's opening logo is Leo.

See also

References
  1. 1966|Oscars.org
  2. "The Dot And The Line". Big Cartoon DataBase. 2012-12-16.
  3. "Festival de Cannes: The Dot and the Line". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-03-08.
  4. Amazon.com: The Glass Bottom Boat (WS) (DVD)
  5. Internet Archive
  6. Polson, Tod (2013-08-13). The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design. Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-1-4521-2738-5.
  7. "The Dot And The Line at Jane A. Gordon's Facebook page". 2013-04-03.
  8. "The Dot and Line". The Dot and Line. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
  9. Short Film Winners: 1966 Oscars
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