The story is about with a bee in the meadow who uses his (or her?) stinger to play an abandoned record player. It an enchanting bit of magic, with the bugs helping each other and dancing together.
Compared to what Disney and Fleischer were doing, it's very sophisticated technically, with animation methods that are different from anything I've seen before. It starts with an incredible vertical move to a multi-plane push-in. Then there's a full 3D rotation around the record player.
"Fischerkoesen and his team were not only inspired by Disney, but also by "Fleischers' Stereo-Optical process (which combined model sets with cel animation) or Disney's multiplane camera (which filmed several layers of cels). Fischerkoesen had already been using a simple multiplane effect derived from the multilayered glass animations that Lotte Reiniger used in the 1926 animated feature Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926).
The timing of animation seems to be modeled on rotoscope, and the sense of movement and character design is quite different from American stuff.
The films, unfortunately, came from Nazi Germany, and Fischerkoesen was promoted by Goebbels. I only mention that at the end of this post so as not to influence your reaction to the films upfront. Some people have read political overtones into the films, (such as the idea that he was being daring by having the phonograph play banned jazz music). But the films struck me as innocent in the best sense, that is, surprisingly free from propaganda, at a time when many other animators around the world were doing politically-driven films.
Fischerkoesen's son said: "My father was completely apolitical. After the war, he never spoke about the time again."
