WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?

Eleven years after <![CDATA[<i>]]>Rhapsody Rabbit<![CDATA[</i>]]>, in 1957, the joint ingenuity of writer Michael Maltese and director Chuck Jones once again demonstrates how Americans can neither feel entirely comfortable with classical music and opera nor leave it alone, resulting here in a love-hate relationship to Richard Wagner’s <i>Der Ring des Nibelungen</i> featuring Bugs Bunny in drag, a ­golden-helmeted Elmer Fudd, snatches of ballet and Nuremberg lighting, outlandish sets that exceed any possibilities of stagecraft, and what may well be the strangest assortment of abstract shapes to be found anywhere in Jones’s work.

This film is screened together with <filmlink id=\"3118\">The King of Comedy</filmlink>.