When the Day Breaks 1999

6.8 / 10   41 vote(s)
Animation

A rooster has his last biscuit for breakfast and goes grocery shopping. A pig prepares her breakfast (potato peelings, with the potatoes thrown in the trash) and discovers she needs more milk. Their paths cross, a lemon falls into the sewer, and both lives are changed.

Top Billed Cast

Release Date 1999-02-21
Runtime 10m
Directors Wendy Tilby, Amanda Forbis
Producer
Writer

This has something of a very early, silent film look to it as a neatly dressed singing pig discovers that the milk in her fridge could walk to the bin by itself, so she dons her coat and heads out to replenish her supply. Walking into the shop, she slams straight into a rooster carrying his own shopping. Despite his lemons hitting the pavement, he keeps on walking - and that's his mistake! The story itself isn't so hot here, but the flash-frame animations are really effective at giving us an almost photographic narrative at some stages then a more continuous stream of imagery as the thrust of what has just happened sinks in for our tea-making shopper. Loads of animals with human traits, carrying out human tasks, watching television - accompanied by a very 1940s wartime-sounding soundtrack and all connected, it would seem, by their shared use of the electricity network. Quirky and innovative, this - and a lot happens before breakfast.

CinemaSerf