Alice in Wonderland

When I sit down to watch Alice in Wonderland, it is a struggle.  As you may have deduced in reading this blog, I love stories and storytelling.  Alice is not a film that focuses on story.  It is a bizarre romp through colorful characters that meanders from one scene to the next, with barely a line of dialogue or visual to connect the scenes.  It makes for some amazing visual filmmaking that fails to tell a story.

The film ostensibly tells the story of Alice following the White Rabbit through a rabbit hole into Wonderland.  But the problem is, the White Rabbit is mostly absent during the course of the film.  The idea that this is what drives Alice becomes lost about halfway through the film, and leads to a wandering and lost Alice.  It’s a shame, because the work done by the animators here is very good, and the combination of visuals, music and voice acting is quite excellent.

Start with the visual feast that is Alice in Wonderland.  The imagination on display is fun to look at, and flows naturally from Mary Blair’s designs.  The brilliance of the flowers sequence, where the flowers sing “A Golden Afternoon” to Alice, is one of my favorite things in the entire film.  The use of puns on the bread and butterflies, the rocking horsefly and others supplements the whimsical designs and voices.  But anyone who has seen the film knows that two sequences stand out more than any other.

The mad tea party that is joined by the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse is probably the most recognizable sequence of the whole film.  Ed Wynn’s performance as the Mad Hatter was so memorable that he is the main character outside of Alice to appear as a character in the Disney parks.  It makes for a fun and very entertaining bit of film to watch them demolish cups, sing songs and do things that are physically impossible.  Alice’s astonishment and look of wonder is a stand in for the audience watching these proceedings and trying to figure out what is going on in this crazy world.

That’s the issue with the film, though, is that the audience spends most of their time trying to figure out what they should look at, where they are and what’s going on.  The place where this is the least applicable in the film is the very end, when Alice finds herself in the court of the Red Queen.  That sequence has a fairly straightforward flow – the queen gets upset about the roses, meets Aliceand engages in a cricket game.  When Alice gets sabotaged by the Cheshire Cat, she is sentenced to die and has to find a way out of that predicament.  It all flows one detail to the next.

Contrast that to the early scenes where Alice flows from floating in the ocean to the silliness of the caucus race to the confrontational nature of Tweedledee and Tweedledum and over to the Walrus and the Carpenter story.  All of that in about 15 minutes!  The film is schizophrenic to say the least.  What ends up making it memorable for me is the music.

Many don’t realize it, but this is the Disney film with the most songs.  The reason for that, as I wrote yesterday, is because the filmmakers wanted to pull in as much of the poetry from the Carroll books as they could.  What happens is many memorable songs, like “A Golden Afternoon,” “The Unbirthday Song,” “March of the Cards” and more.  These are songs that are played to this day at the Disney parks, and survive as great memories.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough to make Alice in Wonderland a good film.  The lack of narrative flow through and depth in the characters makes it ultimately a bizarre accumulation of visuals.  I honestly find it hard to watch until it gets to the tea party, and have trouble staying interested, which is not a problem I typically have with Disney films.  Even Walt acknowledged that Alicedid not turn out the way he wanted, and I have to say I agree with him.

Development of Alice in Wonderland

If you’ve been following the arc of Disney films since World War II, you’ve seen things evolve slowly.  In 1949, the company jumped into live action with So Dear To My Heart.  The magic of animated films began to resurface after all the package features with Cinderella in 1950.  And now, in 1951, Disney plunged forward with one of their most bizarre and experimental films, Alice in Wonderland.

Walt had been looking for ways to adapt this story for decades.  Remember that Walt got his start in animation with the Alice Comedies, where he took a live action Alice and dropped her in an animated world.  While he didn’t directly adapt Lewis Carroll’s books, it was using the strange settings and characters from the books that made such a crazed and dynamic world.  

When Walt got the idea to move into feature films, it was Alice in Wonderland that interested him.  The thought was to make a feature length version of the Alice Comedies, and a screen test was shot with actress Mary Pickford in 1933.  It turned out to be a bust when another studio released their live action version of the story.  But Walt was not deterred, and registered the title Alicein Wonderland with the MPAA in 1938.

 Mary Pickford

Like nearly every other project, the financial struggles of the 1940s put Aliceon the back burner.  Between the animator’s strike, the loss of foreign markets, the war and the financial failures of some of the pre-war films, Walt’s output had to turn to what made money moreso than what art they could produce.  Alicewas no exception.   After the war ended, Walt returned to the idea of producing a live action/animation hybrid.  Several actresses were tested for this version, including Ginger Rogers.

Ultimately, though, the decision was made in the late 1940s to turn to a musical, comedic take on the books with less of a focus on slavish devotion to the story.  This was the version of the film that was released to theatres in 1951.  For years, Disney animators had tried to recreate the illustrations of Sir John Tenniel, the man who had done iconic drawings for the Carroll books.  With this new freedom, the artists created their own versions of the characters, and ended up defining the look of these characters for generations. The biggest key to this was Mary Blair, who had been such a key on the South American films.  Her design was applied to the backgrounds and art direction of the film, making it very unique in the Disney canon.

Mary Blair's designs

Rather than stick to the poetry and verse that Carroll had put in the books, Disney commissioned songwriters to use those poems as a starting point for new songs.  The film ended up with tons of songs, some of them only lasting for seconds, because they were there to simply use the story beats from the books.  The changes were not popular with fans of the books, something that Disney expected.

Kathryn Beaumont, who would go on to do much more work at Disney, was chosen as the voice of Alice, and a variety of character actors and comedians were picked to round out the looney cast.  Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter turned in the most memorable performance, but former Disney faves Jerry Colonna as the White Rabbit and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat also turned in fan favorite performances. 

Kathryn Beaumont with Walt

In the end, the public reacted rather unfavorably to the film.  While it wasn’t the financial disaster that some other films like Fantasia were upon initial release, the film never found its footing and made less than $3 million in theatres.  It wasn’t until the 1970s that audiences got to see Aliceagain, but this time, it was much more a part of the counter culture than a family film.  Once again, in later years, when Alice was released on video, the audiences started flocking to it, and recognizing the work done in the 1950s.  Tomorrow, we’ll look at the film itself and how it holds up as a work of art.

The Disney Studio - 1940-1950

It’s been a struggle lately to get the blog updated on time, and for that I apologize.  But as we speed through 1950, it seemed relevant to me to take a moment to pause and catch up to where Walt and his studio stood on the precipice of the release of Treasure Island, the first official full live action Disney film.  So Dear To My Heart and Song of the South had featured large chunks of animation, but Treasure Island would be the first Disney film comprised entirely of live action.  We’ll discuss the reasons for that tomorrow.

Fantasia was creatively successful, but not financially.

The 1940s were probably the worst decade at the Disney Studio since it’s founding.  After the great successes with Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons, Walt’s empire grew to new heights with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  That film alone provided the capital to build the new studio in Burbankthat still stands today.  It also allowed masterpieces like Pinocchio and Fantasia to be made.

But the onset of success and World War II brought strife to Walt’s life unlike any he had ever experienced.  Now, rather than struggle to get things done, Walt and his team was struggling to keep what they had earned and have enough money to continue on with new projects.  It had to be the most frustrating time for a creative man that sought only to improve constantly.

Think about the succession of events.  In 1940, Fantasia launches and is a failure financially.  For the first time, Walt’s vision of creative success did not achieve financial gain.  Then, in 1941, the “family” he had built around the studio turned on him when key animators went on strike.  As pressure increased on Walt to figure out ways to settle the strike, his health deteriorated to the point that his brother, Roy and his wife, Lillian, both were very concerned.  Couple this with the fact that the studio didn’t have the money or time to produce the kinds of films Walt clearly wanted to make.

Dumbo turned a profit, but wasn't the kind of film Walt was hoping to make.

I love Dumbo as a film, and can’t imagine it being different, but it’s not the kind of film Walt wanted to make in 1941.  He was more interested in Fantasia.  You see more of his efforts and publicity behind Victory in Air Power than you do in things like The Reluctant Dragon.  Then you have the package features, with short features being combined together.  Sure, Saludos Amigos is interesting, but it’s not a full film.  There’s more of Walt poured into The Three Caballeros or some sequences in the other package features, but the lack of time and money to make these films more feature length clearly was not his preference.

Part of the cause of this inability to make feature films was World War II.  The war dried up European markets, depriving the company of desperately needed cash flow.  Films like Pinocchio or Snow White had done well overseas, but now future films were not able to premiere in Europe or Asia.  Or, if they did, the money received had to stay in those countries.  That conundrum led to the situation that created Treasure Island, which we will talk more about tomorrow.

Little things like the "Baia" sequence in The Three Caballeros showed where Walt wanted to go.

But look back at the films of the 1940s, the time that Walt spent away from the Studio on the Good Neighbor tour, the time he took off to recover his health, and the way the films were produced.  You can see a clear pattern of Walt trying to find ways to break new ground, but being unable to do so except in small bursts.  A little bit of Baia from the Three Caballeros, a fun bit in the Sleepy Hollow sequence or some live action & animation combinations in So Dear To My Heart and Song of the South – these were places Walt could do new things. 

So, in retrospect, it should not be surprising that the 1950s saw a burst of creative energy from the Disney Studios.  The creative geniuses had been somewhat bottled up, but would soon unleash with new animation, live action features, a theme park, television shows and much more.  The 1950s really created what we know as Disney today, and a lot of it starts with Treasure Island.  More tomorrow…  

Cinderella

There was a moment when I sat down to watch Cinderella when I knew that I would be in for a treat, even though I had seen the film many times before.  That moment was when I saw the credits roll before the film, and saw the names of the people involved.  First, there was the list of background or color artists: Mary Blair, Don DaGradi, Claude Coats – titans of the industry.  Then, the directing animators came up, and it was literally a list of the Nine Old Men: Ward Kimball, Marc Davis, Woolie Reitherman, Eric Larson, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsbery, Milt Kahl and Les Clark, with Norm Ferguson thrown in for good measure.  This is an unrivaled collection of talent.

It makes a huge difference, because the story of Cinderella is nothing original, at least not for Disney.  A young girl becomes a scullery maid in her wicked stepmother’s castle, only to discover true love with the aid of some small friends and become a princess.  Sound like Snow White?  It should.  This film follows many of the same roads that Walt Disney’s first animated feature did, right down to the conversations with the animals who help her perform household tasks.

I had never watched the two films closely before to see how similar they are, but that is a good thing in this instance, as years after Snow White, Cinderella advances the medium in numerous ways.  The story is somewhat together here, the animation is much more fluid, the characters are deeper and richer and the colors are vibrant and beautiful.  Everything about the film leaps off the screen, making it extremely engaging.

Typically, I don’t care for large diversions from the main story, and in Cinderella there are quite a few of them, mainly centered on Jaq and Gus, the two mice, dealing with Lucifer the cat.  In this film, they are done so well that although they do detract from the main story, they don’t bring the proceedings to a stand still as many other Disney films have done.  Plus, Jaq, Gus and Lucifer play key roles in the climax of the film, so taking time to know how they interact is important.

The key to the entire film, though, is Cinderella herself.  Voiced by Ilene Woods, the character becomes real as you watch the film.   Her troubles mount by the moment, yet she never lets them overwhelm her until just the precise moment the narrative calls for it.  It’s an endearing trait, and one that stands in stark contrast to the cynicism we see in so many non-Disney animated films today.  Cinderella is a story of hope against all odds, which is so much a part of the Disney legacy.

If there’s any criticism of the film, it’s that it moves slowly, but so do most movies of this era.  Before the emphasis on plot and story became so pronounced in Hollywood, films had time to breathe and explore the world they had created, so the Disney filmmakers do so in Cinderella.  The main conflict in the film isn’t really introduced until 20 minutes in, when the King pops on screen.  In today’s world, that would be unacceptable, but in the 1950s, it worked, and continues to hold up today.

Cinderella, when she finally becomes the princess, is merely fulfilling the promise that the audience saw in her from the moment she appears on screen.  It’s the little moments with her and the mice and birds that show her character, leading to her transformation by the Fairy Godmother.  In the end, it makes for a satisfying conclusion to the film.  This may be an old story, and this may be an old film at this point, but everything about it feels fresh and invigorating, like a blast from the past that is well needed in this cynical age of animation.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

The package features had the blessing and the curse of being able to offer several different types of material in one film.  It’s a blessing because variety is the spice of life, a curse because the various types of stories could be wildly uneven, with one being simply amazing and another being downright bad.  After several tries, though, Disney got it right with The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

 

Like the other package features, Disney recruited celebrities to come on board and provide narration and music.  For the first part of this piece, it was Basil Rathbone, best known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, who was the narrator of the story of J. Thaddeus Toad.  The aristocratic tones of Rathbone lend an air of credibility to a tale of talking animals.  After all, the original book was meant to poke fun at the British aristocracy, and the film follows that while infusing some Disney magic.

Walt was not impressed with the animation of this story, which is why he shelved the project for so long.  And to be honest, he wasn’t entirely wrong.  The animation isn’t as fluid and beautiful as what is seen in the second half of the film.  That’s not to say it’s bad, however, as some very memorable images from this film still resonate today.  The shot of Toad standing atop his horse, Cyril Proudbottom, and the weasels chasing him through Toad Hall are images Disney still uses.

The story ultimately comes down to a lighthearted romp through the tale of Toad swapping Toad Hall for a motorcar.  The best work in this film is the contrast between Toad’s mania and the stuffy, buttoned up attitudes of his friends Rat and Mole.  You see it during the courtroom scenes, the chase sequences and more.  While the crazed pace of the film keeps kids entertained, it’s the way that character is revealed through the actions of these characters that fascinated me this time around. 

When we hit the second part of the film, it’s a welcome slow down to spend some time getting to know the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow, especially the skinny schoolmaster Ichabod Crane.  Helping along that path is Bing Crosby, who brings his crooning skills to the table and provides songs and narration to the tale.  This was probably the best choice Disney could have made, because Bing’s trademark vocal tones soften the sharp edges of the tale and make it much more friendly to the viewer.

The story of this tale is actually quite light, as we are simply introduced to the three main chracters – Ichabod, his rival Brom Bones and their mutual crush Katrina Van Tassel – then shown how they interact.  The rivalry between Ichabod and Brom is the conflict of the short, and is established through action rather than narration.  Sure, Bing puts out a few lines that prod things along, but most of the rivalry is displayed through the slapstick back and forth between the two.

Of course, the real masterpiece of this film is the Headless Horseman, and the animation does not disappoint.  This is where Disney’s Nine Old Men spent their time, filling the short sequence with gags, suspense, horror, thrills and some of the best work the Disney studio produced in the 1940s.  There is a reason this part of the film still resonates today. 

The complete package of the stories of Mr. Toad and Ichabod Crane seem mismatched, and they probably are.  But combined together, they make for a film that is probably amongst the best of Disney from this era.  Soon after would come a second renaissance for the company with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and others, but the seeds for that future success are sown in this film, which should not be missed by anyone who loves Disney. 

Development of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

As 1949 draws to a close soon in our meandering path through the Disney films, we come upon the end of an era for Walt and the studio.  It has been years since the last full length animated feature film and that does not change until 1950.  Since 1942’s Bambi, the Disney studio turned their focus to shorts, war materials during World War II and the so-called “package” features, where a group of shorts that were not considered enough material for a full film are packaged together and served to the public as the latest Disney feature.

The last, and perhaps best, of these is The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which took a long and torturous route to the screen.  Work first began on adapting Kenneth Grahame’s work A Wind In The Willows back in the late 1930s.  The book was a spoof of British aristocracy, masked as a children’s book about anthropomorphized animals.  It was brought to Walt’s attention after Snow White was such a huge success, along with nearly every other kid’s story known to man.

Walt was not entirely convinced, but bought the rights to the story anyway and set some of his story men to work on it.  Script work was completed in 1941, and a reel was completed along with some dialogue on some initial story concepts.  It was apparently not good, and Walt shelved the project only to be interrupted by World War II.  Many in the studio wondered if A Wind In The Willows would ever be started up again.

Toad/Cyril sketch from Van Eaton Galleries

It wasn’t until after the war in 1945 that work resumed on A Wind In The Willows, but this time the story was shortened and it was intentionally put into work as part of a package feature.  The initial concept during the war was to put this short together with Mickey and the Beanstalk and a short based on The Gremlins, a concept by author Roald Dahl.  However, The Gremlins never got off the ground, and was shelved in 1943.  The intended package film was titled Two Fabulous Characters after Mickey and Mr. Toad. 

Once Bongo came along, however, it was determined that the story of the circus bear was a better project and fit better with Mickey and the Beanstalk, and the two were released together as Fun and Fancy Free in 1947.

Still searching for material to make the Mr. Toad project work, in late 1946 Disney acquired the rights to make a version of the book The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving.  It was determined that this would be a good pairing for Toad and friends, and the Two Fabulous Characters title was reborn, this time pointing to Toad and Ichabod Crane, the hero of Sleepy Hollow.

Mary Blair concept for Sleepy Hollow, courtesy of Dipity.

The work of the Disney studio’s finest animators was on display in the film, as Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsberry, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl, Woolie Reitherman and Eric Larson all contributed to the finished product.  As such, the animation was top notch, and audiences responded when the finished film was released as The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad in October of 1949.  It became the hit film that Disney needed and has been a perennial favorite since the segments were broken up and re-released in the late 1970s.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the film itself and see the brilliance behind this Disney classic.

Second Screen with Lady and the Tramp

Last Valentines day the Disney Film Project Podcast team released Episode 6 about a movie about two dogs who fall hopelessly in love, spend a magical evening together, and get to experience what is considered to be one of the most romantic moments in a Disney film ever.  This year, one full year later, Disney has cracked open their vault once more to re-released the same movie, Lady and the Tramp, this time on Blu-ray as the Diamond Edition.  While we’re not going to revisit the movie on the podcast (though we highly recommend you listen to the episode), I thought I’d take this moment to go all “Wonky Sluice” on you and talk about once of my other passions... tech.

Of late, Disney Blu-ray releases come with this nifty add on feature called Second Screen - Lady and the Tramp is the 5th release to have this feature.  Now, since I’m both a recent iPad owner and a recent Blu-ray owner, I finally felt now was the time to sit through a Second Screen screening.  So I popped in the Blu-ay and went to set up the app on my iPad.  This was really the only big snafu I had.  The program is huge... it took a very long time to download from iTunes, and it took even longer to get it synced over to my iPad.  So if you’re planning to check this out, don’t want until you’re ready to watch to get the app on to your iPad.

There are two features in the app, and immediately rather than watch the movie, I jumped to the second feature which is a 360 degree viewing of Walt Disney’s Apartment in Disneyland.  It’s a nifty little program where the iPad’s accelerometer is used to allow you to tilt and pan your way through a 360 image of the apartment.  I read a few of the info panels that you can bring up as you look around, but really having looked at numerous pictures of the apartment over the years, I was done with it rather quickly and moved on to the movie itself.

Not entirely sure if I was supposed to start the application first, or the movie itself.  However I opted for the movie first and selected the option on the Blu-ray menu to start the Second Screen viewing of the movie.  Then I started the application.  It immediately gave me the option to sync the application to the movie one of two ways, either via audio from the movie, or I could attempt to sync the app via my home network to my Blu-ray player and have it control the movie.  I chose the latter and in seconds the movie adjusted back a bit and was synchronized with the application on my iPad.

It was an amazing experience.  First of all, the main dialog of the movie is no the main event when viewing the movie this way.  Instead, you’re listening to a voice over of Walt Disney and others who worked on Lady an the Tramp in a manner referred to as “Inside Walt’s Story Meetings”.  This is a true Disney movie geeks dream, and a lot of fun to listen to.  Much of it I had already known from my podcast research, however, there were a few new things I picked up as well.

Second Screen itself is a very neat concept, and I completely got it right away.  For starters, there’s a number on the bottom left of the application that keeps ticking along.  Similarly there is a number on the same spot on your television screen.  If these two numbers don’t match you’re app is out of sync from your viewing.  The app will immediately provide you with two buttons for re-syncing: Blu-ray to App, or App to Blu-ray - meaning either the movie jumps to where the app is or vice versa.

It’s important to note that on the Second Screen app you’re not watching the movie, but rather you’re being presented with information and activities that follow along with the movie.  Because you might spend some additional time on a particular item that is presented, the application has s Pause button that pauses the Blu-ray until you’re ready to un-pause it.  I used this feature extensively throughout.

One thing I really liked that each time the speaker changed, the app showed you an informational blurb about the speaker.  It was a really clever way to maintain the transition throughout.  Also throughout are little “Fun Facts” to expand upon what the speaker is discussing at the time.  There is a plethora of artwork from background stills, to character breakdowns, to storyboard sketches.

There are also several interactive elements.  Many of the pictures have additional information blurbs that can be triggered by pressing a  strategically placed “i”.  There are also several videos that you can play showing you fun scenes from the making of the movie, including one where the Mellowmen bark out the jailhouse blues heard at the dog pound in the movie.  My absolute favorite elements were called “Flip Books”.  These were actual animation artwork with a bar underneath where you could drag your finger back and forth and animate the artwork.  in addition you can press a button and have the artwork switch to the final animation from the movie.

Overall Second Screen is a great way for a Disney geek like myself to watch a movie and I’m going to break out some other movies I have with this feature and take them for a Second Screening real soon.

What about you?  Do you have an iPad?  A Blu-ray player?  Lady and the Tramp?  Have you experienced Second Screen with this movie?  Another?  What do you think of it?  As my grandpappy, Ol' Reliable, used to say...

Melody Time

Melody Time is a mixture of several kinds of short subjects, as we discussed yesterday.  They basically break down into two types, though.  On the one hand, there are shorts that tell a story and have a narrative flow and those that are designed to interpret the music and rely on imagery and visuals.  The film opens with a more story based short, Once Upon a Wintertime.

As the opening song makes clear, this film will touch on romance a bit.  That bit is Once Upon a Wintertime, as the opening shots make clear that this will be a short about the courtship of two young lovers as they are ice skating.  This short is a throwback to the Silly Symphonies, as the characters don’t speak, and the tale is told through the music and the motions.  The looser body style of the characters and the ability to bend, squash and stretch them plays very well.  It allows the characters to express emotion with their movements as well as their faces, and that serves the short well.

Completely shifting gears in the second short, Bumble Boogie, Disney revisited a piece that was originally intended for Fantasia.  The Flight of the Bumblebee gets updated from its classical roots and reworked as a jazz piece.  This short is much more in the Fantasia mode, as the bumblebee that serves as the main character is attempting to escape the surrealist impressions of the music.  It’s a fun concept and executed quite well, which I really loved.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed follows, and it’s a complete 180 from the previous two shorts.  While it’s still set to music, this piece is a story, told with a narrator and musical background.  Dennis Day narrates and does the voices, except an angel voiced by Dallas McKennon of Big Thunder Mountain fame.  It’s a quintessential American tale, and the animation doesn’t work too hard to be flashy or showy, but instead focuses on storytelling and emotion.  That’s the right choice, because this is probably the most sincere and beautiful piece in the film.

By coming directly after Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot is ill served, in my opinion.  The story of a small tugboat that overcomes the odds, very similar to The Little Engine That Could, is a much simpler story.  It pales in comparison to the emotional resonance of Johnny Appleseed, but it’s not to meant to serve that purpose. This is a fable that imparts a lesson, and does so well.  If it had come second, after Once Upon a Wintertime, it might have flowed better in the film and gotten more recognition.

Trees is the next piece, a recitation of the Alfred Joyce Kilmer poem set to music, with interpretations on screen.  It just doesn’t click for me.  While the poem and the imagery are beautiful, there’s nothing to latch onto and draw the viewer into the animation.  It’s pretty to look at, but has very little to offer beyond that.

The next piece redeems the film, though, as Blame It On the Samba is inspired.  Donald Duck and Jose Carioca are inspired by the aracuan bird to get out of their funk and begin dancing.  It’s a simple premise, but the manic energy of the aracuan, the character involvement of Donald and Jose and the fun, frantic scene transitions make this a fast paced and enjoyable short.  It makes things happy and exciting after the slow moment of Trees.  This is the last vestige of the South American Goodwill Tour shorts, and it does a great job of infusing the culture but making it accessible.

The final piece of this film is Pecos Bill, a short that has served the Disney company extremely well through the years.  Telling the tall tale legends of Pecos Bill, the short takes up a significant portion of the film, and it resonates not as an artistic statement or a masterpiece of animation, but an amazing tale that is very well told.  It’s not the emotional or heartwarming example of Johnny Appleseed, but an exaggerated and over the top tale of amazing deeds.  Pecos himself is charming and fun, his actions make the viewer laugh and smile, and his ultimate fate is sad, yet fitting.  It establishes Bill as a character, and though the ending makes sure Disney could not revisit him, using him in the theme parks and other areas made a ton of sense.

As a film, Melody Time holds up extremely well.  With the exception of Trees, every piece is vibrant, exciting and evokes the proper emotions.  Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill are distinctly Disney tales that have been reused over and again.  The other pieces, like Blame It On the Samba or Bumble Boogie, are in the mold of earlier films, but still manage to break free and create something new.  It’s a great overall film that all Disney fans can still enjoy today.

Background of Melody Time - The Package Features

As 1948 wears on, we come to the Disney animated release of that year, Melody Time.  It was the 10^th animated feature film from the Disney Studio, and reflects a trend that had been building for quite some time  It was the package features taken to a new extreme.  This was the 6^th package feature released by Disney, and it would be 1950 before Disney released another full length feature story.

The package features began with Fantasia in 1940, which was not created for the same reasons as the others.  Fantasia was meant to be an exploration of music and the visual representations of the stories that music inspired or told.  It was a bold experiment in vision from Disney, although it did not inspire movie goers of the time. 

However, the package films that followed were not the same thing.  Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were Disney’s attempt to take the cultural information that they had gotten from their South American tour and transforming that from a shorts program into features.  It was a way for the studio to make feature films during World War II that they otherwise would not have been able to release.

It’s worth remembering how devastating World War II and the animator’s strike of 1941 were on the studio.  The closure of foreign markets killed their box office overseas, and the strike dramatically cut production.  It took years for them to recover, and the profits stashed overseas led the studio to invest in live action films that were somewhat cheaper to produce, such as So Dear To My Heart, which will come later in 1948.

So the features that came after the South American films were one of two things – either a combination of stories that could not support a feature film (Fun and Fancy Free & The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr Toad) or an attempt to graft popular music of the day onto the formula of Fantasia, which is where Melody Time comes in, following in the shoes of Make Mine Music.

Melody Time is a collection of disparate shorts, pulled together almost from the scrap heap of Disney’s development of the time.  You have a discarded short from the South American features (Blame It on the Samba),  a longer piece that at one point was considered for a feature (Pecos Bill), a collection of pieces that tell a story (The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot) and more music based pieces (Once Upon a Wintertime, Trees & Bumble Boogie).  If it sounds strange, it is.  Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the film and how it works.

Fun and Fancy Free - Mickey and the Beanstalk

The second half of Fun and Fancy Free is completely disconnected from the first, and in many ways that is a good thing. We get to see Jiminy Cricket hop houses over to a party being thrown by Edgar Bergen, the famed ventriloquist, where the only guests seem to be his puppets and the child actress Luana Patten. Seems like a strange gathering, but nonetheless, it leads to Bergen telling the story of Mickey and the Beanstalk.

It’s worth noting that this is an updated version of Mickey appearing in this short, while Donald and Goofy appear much the same as they did in Saludos Amigos. Still, it’s the first time that all three of them appear together in a feature, which makes it noteworthy. It would have appeared a little odd to moviegoers of the time, since they had not appeared in shorts together since before World War II. Remember, though, that this film was in development before the war, so Disney simply picked it up where they left off.

There are no real surprises in the story, since it is the familiar tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, but what’s more interesting is the interplay between the animated characters and the narration provided by Bergen. If you’re not familiar with Bergen, he was a great friend of Walt’s, and is most remembered for the two characters who appear in this film, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. In providing the narration, Bergen and his characters dominate the film.

Mickey rarely speaks. Nor does Donald and Goofy speak very much. We get little glimpses of the interplay between the three, with Donald losing his mind over the lack of food or Goofy being quite silly when singing about his desire to eat until he dies. But for the most part, the characters are flat compared to their interpretations in the shorts.

Instead of gags and interactions between Mickey and his cohorts, we instead get jokes told by Charlie McCarthy poking fun at Edgar Bergen. While that’s part of their act, so it’s not a surprise, it’s not what you would expect from a film with Mickey, Donald and Goofy. That’s not to say that the story isn’t fun, however. It is quite a good and enjoyable cartoon, just not particularly notable for the Mickey, Donald and Goofy stuff.

The animation quality is superb in this, which really helps. There is a lot of depth to the line work, and the motion and emotion of the characters is told very well. It’s a fun time to watch, with the pace much quicker than Bongo. Mickey and the Beanstalk works very well, but there is not a lot of usage of the unique traits that Mickey and friends bring to the table. That’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t stop this second half of Fun and Fancy Free from redeeming the film.

Fun and Fancy Free - Bongo

As previously mentioned, Fun and Fancy Free consists primarily of two featurettes that Disney was unable or unwilling to develop into full length features. Using Jiminy Cricket as the bridge device between the two, the film launches into Bongo as the first subject.

Bongo is a character in search of a story, as best I can tell. The story told in this film is that of the circus bear who escapes, only to see that life out in the open is not as easy and carefree as he might have imagined. When he meets a female bear, Lulu Belle, however, that changes. Although he has to overcome some challenges for her affection, Bongo ultimately prevails and is able to win her heart.

It’s a very slight story that could honestly have been told in a 7 minute short, so seeing it stretched over 35 minutes is a problem. It’s kind of like spreading your peanut butter too thin. While you still get some peanuty goodness, in the end it’s not enough. Bongo is that kind of effort. There’s good stuff in there, especially the animation and some of the storytelling, but the overall story is lacking.

A couple of things that seem like they were put in the film to alleviate that problem actually tend to make it worse. The first is the narrator Dinah Shore, who handles all the dialogue for the characters. That leaves every character in the film silent, trying to act to Shore’s intonations. Unlike Dumbo, where the main character doesn’t speak but the others do, it makes every character reliant on the narration, and that lessens some of the impact.

The other thing that pads out the film is a grouping of songs. From “Lazy Countryside” to songs about the bears falling in love, the musical portions are very lengthy and although they advance the story nominally, they also slow it down considerably. Add in the fact that Dinah Shore sings all the songs, and you have one voice throughout the entire film.

This is not to say that the entire thing is bad. The character designs for Bongo and Lulu Belle are completely adorable. The acting between them and the emotion that the animators embue them with is fantastic, especially considering that they had no voice acting to cue them. Also, the gags in certain places are quite funny, even though many others don’t quite hit the mark.



In the end, Bongo learns that you need motivation to change, which comes in the form of Lulu Belle. But it’s very hard to connect to either he or Lulu Belle as characters, despite the great work that the animators do. It never gets to the point of boring, but Bongo drags a great deal, and makes it hard for the viewer to remain engaged with the characters.