Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin’s La Joie de vivre is an early example of animated avant-garde cinema that transposes a modernist aesthetic into the musical cartoon formula of the 1930s. Its setting alternates the machinisme inspired by the Parisian working-class suburbs (factories, a power station, a railway) to a bucolic idyll. Though not overtly critical of industrialization, this dichotomy could be seen to represent an escapist pastoral. The original music composed by Tibor Harsányi plays a central role in the film’s aesthetic and its analysis can offer a better understanding of the machine/nature duality from a “post-pastoral” perspective.