Week 12: Cinderella (1950)

I'll admit that I have been so excited to get to this week's viewing that I bought the Diamond Edition of Cinderella on Blu-Ray and DVD almost three weeks ago. It was totally worth it. Plus, Best Buy was having a sale, so I picked up Peter Pan, too.

With Disney's 12th animated theatrical release, Cinderella, a new era begins. Gone are the days of experimentation and packaged cartoons. Apart from Snow White and Pinocchio, Cinderella is the only the third film (up to this point) to encapsulate my definition of a "classic" Disney film. That's not to say it's only the third movie I have legitimately enjoyed and if you don't believe me, read about Bambi!

So, what exactly is a "classic" Disney film? Well, that's something of a complicated question, but I'll do my best to describe what it means to me. First, "classics" must have a full-length story complete with conflict, intrigue, and compelling and realistic (enough) characters. Love Bambi as I do, the narrative is somewhat shaky and it took adulthood to truly appreciate the nature of its storytelling. To me, this is the only measure in which Bambi does not meet expectations. Second, the animation has to have a certain detail and beauty about it. There's nothing out there quite like the work Disney animators can create when they're at the top of their game. Dumbo, sadly, doesn't meet expectations in this category, which I understand was purely a money thing. Third, it's a gut feeling. My favorite Disney movies are the ones I grew up watching (or can now imagine myself having watched as a kid, Tangled, Princess and the Frog, and Wreck-it-Ralph for example). There needs to be a longing for simpler times. Honestly, it's the nostalgic feeling I get from Disney creations that really makes me love the characters, the movies, the parks, etc. as much as I do.

The story of a young woman being held back by circumstance, in this case an evil stepmother, is no doubt a relate-able one and could account for just one of many reasons that it has held up through the ages, aside from the three good reasons I gave above that is... Or, perhaps it's the film's ability to creating lasting images. I was struck throughout this viewing session by just how many sequences and moments I remembered quite vividly. There's the scene where Cinderella cleans the floor on hand and foot only for Lucifer to leave behind his dirty paw prints, Anastasia and Drizella ripping Cinderella's dress to shreds, Cinderella's mice being turned into horses and then back, the list goes on. Then again, I may have seen Cinderella more than the average person, but I'd like to think they're memorable either way. Let's put the theory to test, how many of you can recall the moment when the mice and birds are assembling Cinderella's dress for the ball? I'd guess most of you! You can see a screencap of the moment below.

As I mentioned back with Snow White, I took a course on fairy tales that allowed us to examine several different fairy tales across their many translations and Cinderella happened to be just one of them, so I have some familiarity with its origins and thus its variations. If I recall correctly, one has her father very much alive. But Disney chose to give Cinderella some companions, who helped to fill in the scope of her life and in some ways, their existence parallels her own. And parallel storytelling is always cool in my book. Cinderella, for all intents and purposes, is treated by her stepmother and stepsisters with the same amount of reverence as a mouse. Okay, maybe a little more than that. After all, Anastasia is none-too-pleased to discover a mouse under her teacup. The mice, though, do have a lot in common with our titular heroine. They, too, are constantly punished and chased about the house (in this case by Lucifer) and, from what we see, forced to do their own share of daily chores. So, for the duration of the film, Cinderella's story is intercut with adventures of the mice, namely Jack and Gus, which expands on the origin story to give the audience a broader view of life in the house. Plus, it shows us all of the really cool mouse-sized secret passages, photos of which I cannot find.

Quick sidebar regarding the mice, during my first Disney Parks outing at age 2, I was introduced to the mice from Cinderella and was apparently deathly afraid that I would be eaten. In my defense, just imagine looking up at the person holding you and seeing only its mouth. If I had a picture of the moment readily available, I would gladly display it to prove my point. However, judging by the below photo, it's quite obvious the mice are plotting evil. 

Speaking of building on its predecessors, in earlier scripts for the film, Prince Charming was supposed to have played a larger role in the story. This was to have included an opening sequence of him "hunting" a deer only to reveal that he and the deer were truly friends playing around. For one reason or another the scenes were inevitably cut and he was reduced to nearly the same token-prince-sized role as Snow White's. I, for one, would have liked to see him have a bigger role. First, it would have helped to see that he had a legitimate personality - hopefully, one unlike his seemingly crazy dad. Secondly, if we had seen him befriending a deer, well, at least we'd know he was less likely to judge Cinderella for talking to mice. Imagine that revelation! I can't help but wonder if this lead to Prince Phillip's role being as integral as it was in Sleeping Beauty. More on that later.

The last thing that I want to mention before drawing this blog to a close is that Once Upon a Time really needs to get back to Cinderella's origin story. The only morsel we've been given this season was a brief glimpse of poor Gus before he was torn apart. RIP Gus. We hardly knew ye. And I will say that watching this movie gave me plenty of great story ideas, so I'm pretty sure the people at Once can step up their game. Like what if all of Cinderella's mice were human servants that had been turned into mice as punishment by the evil stepmother? Also, remember that time Rumpelstiltskin made Cinderella's fairy godmother go poof? Yikes.

Anyway, it's great to be back to watching movies I consider "classic." As it happens Cinderella has always been one of my mom's two favorite Disney movies (you'll have to wait on the second title!) and, by association, one of mine.

Next week/still this week (technically I'm in week 13) I have Alice In Wonderland, which hopefully comes complete with images from my own imagining/set design of the tale.

Weeks 10 & 11: Melody Time (1948) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

This week, I once again take a card from Walt Disney's deck and bring you a blog inspired by the "package films" of the studio's 1940's collection. That is to say, another blog featuring a double review. But fear not, much like the package films released in the 1940's gave way to bigger and better animated features, these double reviews are allowing me to close back in on my goal to watch one animated Disney film a week and once I have my normal blogging habits will resume.

The good news is that with each passing package film, Disney and his animators seem to be growing closer to establishing the whimsy and magic we all know and love. In fact, Melody Time starts with a segment, Once Upon a Wintertime, that makes up in story what it lacks in animation value (these things were made on the cheap). Whereas I complained in my previous blog about a stream of seemingly insignificant stories and characters in Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free, the beginning of Melody Time instilled me with confidence. The Disney narrative I had always imagined was becoming clearer.

But life isn't that simple, because in the remaining six segments, I was up and down and back again. Yes, Disney and his animators were finding/rediscovering the magic of storytelling, but they weren't doing so on a completely consistent basis. Also, I am assuming, perhaps falsely that Disney was closely involved in these projects, but then again, maybe I'm wrong. Just know that I am choosing to pin the success and failure on him, because I know his name. Fun fact: I also wrote a report on him in seventh grade - didn't we all?

Speaking of strong starts, I felt similarly watching The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which is comprised of only two segments with - thankfully - very little time spent tying the two together (take heed Fun and Fancy Free - no disrespect to the cricket). The first feature is a retelling of The Wind in the Willows, and, arguably the better of the two. The follow-up is a take on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, narrated by Bing Crosby, who could probably held my interested and attention through anything.

Before I get any deeper, though, I would like to the time to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the films beginning with Melody Time, the older of the two releases.

As I mentioned Once Upon a Wintertime gives Melody Time a solid start, portraying the parallel romances of two young couples, one human, the other animal. The story has a certain simplicity, but there are little touches that make it compelling, such as the side-by-side comparison of young love and the male and female counterparts ultimately teaming up. The next segment, Bumble Boogie, is relatively forgettable and brief. But The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, the film's second longest piece at 17 minutes is a success. Perhaps it's the pairing of humans and animals that gives Disney its unique appeal, because in this segment Johnny is able to woo a pack of wild animals simply by treating a stray skunk with the same kindness one might afford to a dog. As a result, Johnny and the animals travel the United States sowing and planting apple seeds. Alas, it's not all sunshine and happiness, because for some strange reason, the ending shows us Johnny's eventual death (don't worry he goes to heaven and all that), which is the segment's one true flaw.

Then there's Little Toot, or the beginning of the end. It's here that Melody Time started to lose me. Little Toot is a rather dark tale about a small, yet troubled tugboat. At one point he causes his dad to crash a cruise ship and lose his job. What happened to escapism?! Anyway, the follow-up is about the seasons of trees, which I might say is just Bambi with Bambi cut out. So, about three minutes of nature's beauty as it endures the various seasons. Visually striking, but it feels like this belongs in another movie. Then, it's Donald Duck's five millionth appearance. I seriously had no idea he was in so many Disney films, poor Mickey. Naturally, he shares time with the other caballeros and there's a samba. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Finally, it's the over-sized finale, Buffalo Bill, which feels too long for two reasons. First, it's the longest segment at 22 minutes and, second, it follows after three pretty brief animations. There's also a third reason that just came to my mind, it's the weakest story of the bunch and it involves live human narrators. Why?! Then, the color palette is too reddish-orange for my taste and the characters are just drawn in a very irregular-looking manner. The final straw was the glaring omission of my home state, New Mexico, see below. In the end, there were a lot of things working against this short, which tried to explain Buffalo Bill's entire history in a matter of minutes.

In the end, you win some, you lose some. Nevertheless, Melody Time, reveals Disney animation to be on a general upswing, so I'll accept.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is the greater success, though, containing two longer-form animations that feel more Disney-produced than most of what had been seen in the "package film" era. What the adaptations of The Wind in the Willows and Sleepy Hollow had was the general "look" and story of a Disney film. Sure, the animation lacks the detail previously seen in Snow White or Bambi, but it's pretty on par with that of Dumbo, which was made on the cheap. The stories, though condensed down from a normal feature-length Disney movie, have definitive beginnings, middles, and ends, with plenty of time to establish necessary emotional beats.

More important, to me, than either of the above criteria is the characters. In comparison, this is where I would rank The Wind in the Willows higher than Sleepy Hollow as it is able to capture the essence of compelling characters far better. For most of Sleepy Hollow I was confused about who I was supposed to be rooting for and still kind of am. Ichabod was seemingly the "hero" of the story, yet in the end he didn't get the girl. Then, there was the fact that he seemed to use the women in the village to get meals. But he had the voice of Bing Crosby, so how could I not root for him in some way? Meanwhile, the characters in The Wind in the Willows were complicated, yet understandable. There's Toad, the likable heir too often wrapped up in some sort of mania. As an audience member I wanted him to ultimately succeed in spite of his flaws.

 
It's worth noting that I have zero experience with the texts of either The Wind in the Willows or Sleepy Hollow. And even though I know I saw this film as a child, I recall owning it, I remembered almost none of it, so there you go.

Oh, one last thing that I thought was kind of cool, is that at the beginning of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the narrator asks, "If you were asked to chose the most fabulous character of English literature, who would it be?," before naming off the likes of Robin Hood, King Arthur, Oliver Twist, and Sherlock Holmes, all of whom have been given their own Disney adaptions. I have to wonder if Mr. Toad would feel cheated knowing he only got half of a feature-length film?

This week I have to catch up by watching Cinderella and then Alice in Wonderland, which got me into this mess of being behind!

Weeks 8 & 9: Make Mine Music (1945) and Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

I haven't forgotten about this blog! I'm back. 

Yes, I have fallen behind my own standards... But the good news is that I (and you as my reader) have not given up. A large chunk of my absence can be explained by a commitment I made to set design a production of Alice In Wonderland that was directed by a very close friend. Plus, as a Disney fan, how could I be expected to say no? As an apology, I promise to share my take on Alice, but not until the time is right (see Week 13). So, in the meantime, let's just agree that life is crazy and that sometimes finding even the tiniest slice of time is impossible, but we're all sorry.

Now, you might also feel ripped off knowing that I have combined two movies into a single blog entry. But aside from the fact that it does make my life easier to lump them together, there's actually good reason for them to be discussed side-by-side and that is they are remarkably similar in composition. Much like Fantasia, Sauldos Amigos, and The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free are "package films," or theatrical releases of collected cartoon shorts that are strung together in some sort of thematic way. With Make Mine Music little effort is made to really weave the stories together other than that they're simply stories told through song. Conversely, Fun and Fancy Free gives us narrator Jiminy Cricket to help us navigate the different stories. His (and the director's) job is significantly easier, though, because Fun and Fancy Free contains only two cartoon shorts to Make Mine Music's ten. For clarification's sake, Walt Disney only chose to forgo more traditional animated fare like Snow White, Pinocchio, or Dumbo, because many of his animators were tied up by WWII and he did not want to completely get away from theatrical releases. Essentially, he made the choice to work with what he had and what he had was a lot of unused short cartoons.

I'll be honest and say that Make Mine Music isn't oft remembered or mentioned, because there's not a lot to it. The problem with it being comprised of ten shorts and running at just 76 minutes is that none of the cartoons have a moment to breathe. Before the audience can even get used to the characters, they're gone. And they're not exactly recognizable characters. If the shorts revolved around well-known Disney or even fairy/folk tale characters, they might make more of an impact, but they're not. The only use of a well-known character (that I can think of) is a Peter and the Wolf segment, but the rest are original or fairly unknown. Additionally, the cartoons don't all end in the traditional "happily ever after" manner that we have come to expect from the average Disney feature. In one about a singing whale, the whale is ultimately killed under the suspicion that he swallowed multiple opera singers (he didn't).

Speaking of death, the general tone of these shorts is pretty violent. The first segment features dueling families who kill each other off in a gun battle. The above image shows them going to heaven (really?). I read that in more recent releases of Make Mine Music, attempts have been made to tone down the more violent portions of the original. Of course, I don't know which edit of the film I saw, but I'd certainly hope it was the original, because it got pretty dark! I'd hate to think how much darker it could've gotten - this is Disney, after all.

There's not much more to say, so I will sum it up by saying I'm thankful the film exists, because without it, who knows what might have become of Disney animation had an effort not been made to keep it running during the war?

As for Fun and Fancy Free, there was definitely a lot more thought put into the thematic organization of the film and its shorts, but it didn't make much of a difference to me. In fact, such an effort is made to establish Jiminy Cricket as the film's emcee that the shorts are almost lost among the clunky set up, which is probably as long as either short when added together. Worth noting is that there's some live action in the latter half of the film, live action that includes not one but two creepy puppets! And let's face it, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Rock-a-Doodle are the only movies I can think of that made cartoons and real people co-exist well.

The first short comes in the form of Bongo, in what I can only imagine is the continuation of Dumbo's life, only this time he's a bear. Essentially, Bongo is a poor, mistreated circus bear, who runs away into the wild and must adjust to "uncivilized" animals. In time, he meets a female bear and they fall in love, which apparently in "bear talk" is conveyed via slap (maybe not a super strong choice for a kid's film...). But there's a big bear who tries intervene steals away Bongo's girlfriend for a time. I'm sure you can guess the heroic ending. Then, there's a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk featuring Mickey, Goofy, and Donald, which I had not only seen, but could get behind - familiar story told with recognizable characters, albeit in a condensed form. I might add, this short represented Walt Disney's final voice-over work as Mickey. The below image has somehow remained with me since the first time I saw Mickey and the Beanstalk as a kid (for whatever reason) and so I chose to share it.

Overall, two shorts do have a longer amount of time to establish themselves and their characters than was the case in Fun and Fancy Free, but in the end they're still shorts to me. I guess I require more time and depth in storytelling, just like Donald (above) wanted more to his sandwich. I just want to see one film when I sit down to watch a movie. But like I said before, I'm glad this movie gave way to more enjoyable films a little farther down the road.

Up next I have Melody Time and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which may or may not get a joint blog. Time will tell!

Thanks for reading!