---
name: "The Dot and the Line"
subtitle: "Chuck Jones' 1965 Oscar-winning ten-minute fable about geometry and self-improvement"
date: 2026-05-06
link: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0yf7IkWceI"
linkText: "youtube.com"
source: "Open Culture"
topics: [design-and-art, history-and-archives]
tags: [animation, short-film, classic, math]
description: "A straight line, smitten with a dot, watches her flirt with a chaotic squiggle and answers by mastering geometry. Won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short."
---

Chuck Jones' "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics" is a ten-minute 1965 short adapted from Norton Juster's book, narrated by Robert Morley, and it's one of the most economical pieces of art the genre has ever produced. The line, in love with a dot, watches her run off with a careless squiggle; he answers by teaching himself angles, shapes, and finally three-dimensional geometry, until he can produce, on demand, anything she might want. It won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film that year. Watch it.