Let's All Sing Together (No. 1)
1944 · 9m · Canada
Genres: animation, family, musical
Tones: theatrical, whimsical
Four Gentlemen Quartet sing 'Daisy Daisy,' 'Old McDonald Had a Farm,' 'Home on the Range' and 'Alouette' while animated cartoons illustrate each song.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1944 NFB sing-along that's almost too earnest to be interesting—four dudes crooning nursery rhymes while animation does exactly what you'd expect. The real subversion would've been if they *refused* to harmonize.
This sits perfectly in the wartime animation-and-music tradition the NFB perfected, where form and function align with pedagogical intent; the quartets' precise diction and the economical illustration make it a textbook example of state-sponsored musical cinema done with actual craft.
The constraint here is the constraint—four voices, four songs, animation tethered to lyrics—and what saves it is probably an unglamorous sound mixing decision, keeping those voices present and slightly ahead of the cartoon, so you're watching the music rather than the other way around.