Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"For Scent-imental Reasons" is a 7-minute cartoon from 1949 and among Edward Selzer's five Oscars, one was for this one here. I must say the comedy throughout the film was okay all in all, but not great, so an Oscar may have been too much. Anyway, the idea of a skunk falling in love with a cat who got paint on her back is a nice one though and it is not too surprising this worked out nicely in the genre of animation. Mel Blanc shines again and Jones and Maltese deliver the quality we are used to from them as well. This may not be the first, but it is probably the most known from Warner Bros' Pepe Le Pew cartoons. If it is a contender for the best, I will decide once I have watched some more of these. As for now, I recommend the watch, but not with great enthusiasm.
tavm
Like just about every Pepe Le Pew cartoon, there's a female cat who's mistaken for a skunk because of white paint that conveniently forms a straight line on the cat's back. As a result, Pepe falls madly in love with her while she is repelled and tries to escape with her running frantically and he just hopping along without a care in the world. That's the premise of the nearly whole series in a nutshell but this one has a twist at the end that makes For Scent-imental Reasons somewhat worthy of the Oscar it eventually won. In fact, I was pretty amused throughout most of the cartoon. And I always wonder how much of the French was real and how much of it was gibberish! Ah well, Say la vie!
ccthemovieman-1
An owner of a French perfume shop enters his store one day and discovers a skunk sampling the merchandise! He calls a cop but that doesn't help. A cat then sidles up to the Frenchman, so the latter throws the cat in the building with orders to get that skunk out of there. The black cat bumps into a can of white paint, which conveniently pours a steak down his back.The skunk - our first look at the character "Pepe Le Pew" - sees the cat and thinks it's a female skunk. He woos it, using every French cliché of the day and the cat keeps running away, of course. When the two of them fall out the window, Pepe falls into a vat of blue paint and the cat falls into a vat of water. Because of their new appearances, the shoe is on the other foot with the cat now "in love" with Pepe!Frankly, I found most of this unfunny, nothing I would watch again unless for "historical" reasons to see the "birth" of Pepe in Merrie Melody cartoons.
tweiss1981
This was the cartoon that formed Pepe Le Pew as we know and love him. It was this cartoon that Chuck Jones found the correct formula to make Pepe a true winner.Earlier, producer Eddie Seltzer thought that no one would believe that a French-speaking skunk was funny. Jones and Seltzer really battled on that. But when this cartoon won an Academy Award in 1949, he was proven wrong, and stepped up to receive the award anyway!According to Chuck, Pepe, like Bugs Bunny, is one of his aspirations. He held a place in Chuck Jones' heart. He claimed that he never had much luck with 'les femmes' when in school, and Pepe is a character with so much security in his own sexuality that he contained much will power. So Pepe's a very personal character to Mr. Jones.In the past, the humorous 'talking-through-the-glass' scene was cut due to the suicide reference. However-Pepe: I meesed...fortunately for you!"
His name was a spoof of Charles Boyer's character in the French film Algiers, a character named Pepe Le Moko.A truly great for the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes collection.BTW: I am saddened by the fact that Mr. Charles M. Jones, the last of the original Looney Tunes directors and creator of such a great Looney Tune, passed away just recently.*sniff* Goodbye, Chuck Jones... >_<
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