The Dot and the Line A Romance in Lower Mathematics
Screenshots from the award-winning short
Directed by	Chuck Jones Maurice Noble (co-director)
Produced by	Chuck Jones Les Goldman
Story by	Norton Juster (book and screenplay)
Narrated by	Robert Morley
Music by	Eugene Poddany
Animation by	Don Townsley (supervising) Ken Harris Ben Washam Dick Thompson Tom Ray Philip Roman
Backgrounds by	Philip DeGuard Don Morgan
Studio	MGM Animation/Visual Arts
Distributed by	Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Release date(s)	December 31, 1965
Color process	Metrocolor
Running time	10 minutes 1 second
Country
Language	English

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (ISBN 1-58717-066-3) is a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster, first published by Random House in 1963.

In 1965, famed animator Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio adapted The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley. The Dot and the Line won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. It was entered into the Short Film Palme d'Or competition at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. ^[1]

The cartoon was released as a special feature on the The Glass Bottom Boat DVD in 2005. The cartoon is also featured on the 2008 release of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection

[edit] Story

The story details a straight line who falls in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself, giving rise to shapes so complex he has to letter his sides and angles to keep his place. The dot realizes that she has made a mistake: what she had seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. The line, on the other hand, has much more to offer her. In the end she decides to accompany the line, instead.

This was one of only two non-Tom and Jerry animated short subject to be released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer post-1958. The other one would be The Bear That Wasn't, released in 1967 as the last-ever MGM animated short. "The Dot and The Line" won the final award for an animated short for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Chuck Jones' only award as a producer. (Jones also made an animated film out of Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth.)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Animated The Dot and the Line on YouTube

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