Greek Smack

Ugly designs, jerky animation, an unstructured story and constant BOINNGGGGG!s—that’s what you get in the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoon “It’s Greek to Me-Ow!” (1961).

And, for some reason, every impact in the cartoon requires a wild camera shake. It happens constantly and you’d swear the film was shot during an earthquake. Granted, Shamus Culhane did the same thing in a few Woody Woodpecker cartoons in the mid-‘40s but not every time.

Here’s Tom bashing into Jerry’s mouse hole. The camera moves in, out, diagonally, up, down, everywhere.



This is Tom pulling his arm out of Jerry’s mouse hole and smacking himself in the face.



Judging by the bottle cap near Jerry’s entrance, there were soft drinks in ancient Greece.