The Sword in the Stone (1963)

Hey All! This week we watched The Sword in the Stone. When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite movies. I remember watching it all the time, though admittedly, I haven’t seen it since I was young and I didn’t remember much of the movie itself. This was a good opportunity to look back at what I liked as a kid and to judge my previous tastes. In short, I’m still not quite sure how I feel.

Original Poster Sourced via IMDB

Summary: The film starts by explaining the eponymous Sword in the Stone legend. In short, there’s a sword stuck in a rock in London; whoever pulls it out is king of Britain. Our main character, Arthur, is on a hunting trip with his brother Kay. While on this trip, he falls into Merlin the Wizard’s house. Merlin takes an interest in Arthur and decided to be a mentor to Arthur. They run into difficulty with Arthur’s adoptive father, Sir Hector. Eventually, Merlin becomes frustrated with Arthur and decided to leave. Arthur goes with Kay to a tournament in London where he accidentally pulls the Sword in the Stone out. He is crowned as king and is fearful of this responsibility, but Merlin returns to let him know everything will be alright.

So, I’ll start with the good. This movie has a lot of fun scenes. Pretty much every scene with Merlin educating Arthur, as well as the Wizard Duel, are fun. The music in the movie is pretty good and there’s some decent music scenes, with standouts being “Higitus Figitus” and “That’s What Makes the World Go Round.” In particular, “Higitus Figitus” seems to be an attempt to recapture the magic from “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and, while not as magical, it is a fun, memorable scene. Overall, the film is well paced and doesn’t overstay its welcome; I remained entertained the whole time I watched it.

Let’s talk about the art of this movie. Again, the art has the same sketchy quality that 101 Dalmatians had. Everything is sketchy, the colors in the background are sometimes outside the lines, everything is a little slapdash. The animated objects seem to float on the backgrounds, which is particularly noticeable in the early scene in the forest. While I feel that it works with the dirty modernist feel of 101 Dalmatians, I’m not sure I agree that it elevates our current story. The medieval setting calls back to Sleeping Beauty, but the comparison just makes me wish I was watching a better animated film. The best scene for the animation, I feel, is the Wizard Duel. The action is pretty decently animated and it ends up paying off. It’s also one of the few action scenes that has some real stakes, though those stakes are pretty separated from the rest of the plot.

Regarding the narrative, I feel that this is my biggest issue with the film. The plot seems confused or jumbled. This movie seems to be a series of mostly unconnected vignettes. For example, there’s a few “teaching” scenes between Merlin and Arthur. You’d think that the lessons he learns in those scenes would then be used later in the film, but it never is. They set up is there, but there’s no payoff. Likewise, the whole message of the film seems to be something like “Brains over Brawn,” which Merlin is always telling Arthur, but it’s only really shown to be correct in the Wizard Duel. Ideally, you’d want Arthur to internalize that message and use that somehow in the climax of the film, but again, it never pays off.

On top of all this, Merlin actually seems to be a bad influence on Arthur. He’s constantly getting Arthur in trouble. While you can argue that Arthur is getting in trouble because Hector and Kay are treating him unfairly, it’s also correct that Hector punishes him because he’s shirking his responsibilities. Merlin convinces Arthur to abandon these responsibilities to play and “learn” which he considers more important. But I’m not sure this is the message we want to be portraying to children, to abandon your responsibilities for “learning.” Especially when this “learning” seems to just be playing.

The big climax of the film, when Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone, is immediately preceded by a scene of Merlin throwing a fit because Arthur wants to keep his responsibility as a squire and go to the tournament in London. If Arthur had followed Merlin’s wishes, he would’ve never pulled the sword out of the stone and become the king of England. I guess we’re supposed to forgive all this because Merlin returns to help him reign, but it is just so weird that our mentor character is constantly trying to undermine the main character’s journey. If I were to rewrite this film, I’d have had the sword pulling moment be in the middle of the film and continued afterword to show how Merlin’s lessons made Arthur as fair and just king. As it currently stands, it seems that too much of the film is is about faffing about and that it ends before anything meaningful actually happens.

Overall, I came off very negative, but I still like this movie. I feel its a good watch, especially for children, but the message and story is a bit muddled. The movie has good moments, but it doesn’t come together as a cohesive whole. Overall, a good bit of fun, but maybe look elsewhere for something substantive. Join us next week for The Jungle Book.

-CJ

Hello everyone! Sorry about the delay last week; things should be back on track for now. This week, we delved into medieval England with Disney’s The Sword in the Stone. I really remember loving this film as a kid, and I’d say it was probably one of my most watched VHSs as a kid. That being said, looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes, I’m left feeling disappointed.

At some point in the film, Merlin describes the movies current time as a “medieval mess” and that’s exactly what this movie is in every way, shape and form. The jazzy music doesn’t fit in with the medieval setting, the story is all over the place and, again, the animation is scratchy and looks half-finished at times. All this just leaves me wondering why and how? Why on earth did Disney decide to tackle The Sword in the Stone after the financial failure of Sleeping Beauty? And how on earth did this movie come to be?

While The Sword in the Stone is nowhere in the same league as Sleeping Beauty, there are still some similarities. Both have medieval themes; they have some shared styles in their musical scores. There are even some similarities in how they open; drawing inspiration from tapestries, and how they open with story book entrances. This is where the similarities end though. Where Sleeping Beauty takes off with it’s amazing art, score and animation, The Sword in the Stone sinks like a rock.

I really would like to know more about the history of this movie, but I wasn’t able to find much. What I did find is that the rights to T.H White’s The Sword in the Stone were purchased by Disney in 1939, and story boards were put together in 1949. The Sword in the Stone did compete with another scrapped film about Chanticleer, and there was high tension between the animators after The Sword in the Stone was picked by Walt as the next Disney movie. I can potentially see this causing some issues with the animation in general, but there’s nothing to really confirm this. I really think Walt wanted this to be a brother film to Sleeping Beauty, and to see if there was a viable market for this kind of film. Again, if that’s the case we’ll never really know, as this was the last movie to be released before Walt’s death in 1966. That being said, let's look into the animation of this film.

I understand that we’re still in the early days of xerography, but, man… this movie looks bad… Base sketch work can still be scene in the frames of animation, and it’s not uncommon to see full outlines for faces. Hair is scratchy, and seems to grow and shrink at will; eyes are wild, and half the characters look like their head will explode at any moment. Along with that there’s an absolute ton of reused animation here. We see a lot of it borrowed from the Headless Horseman’s steed in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Bambi’s mother shows up within the first 5 or 7 minutes of the film. There’s also recycled animation from 101 Dalmatians in here, when Sir Kay gets hit on the head. I realize the average movie goer wouldn’t have recognized this back in 1963, but it stands out like a sore thumb now. All of the reused animation just looks sloppy and out of place, and there’s some pretty glaring issues here and there.

I could at least take some delight in how well the music for 101 Dalmatians fit in with the styling, and the time of the film. However, mixing jazz and the dark ages together doesn’t work at all here. That’s not to say that the music itself is bad, it’s standard fun and bouncy Disney fare made by the Sherman Brothers. This kind of music will be fairly standard through the upcoming films as the Sherman brothers also wrote music for The Jungle Book and The Aristocats.

I’m also at a loss of the story and pacing of this film. We start off in July and suddenly it’s Christmas? There’s no showing of the turning of seasons or really any reminders that there’s going to be a tournament at the end of the movie. Half way through the movie, I’d almost forgotten why Arthur wanted to become Kay’s squire in the first place. The middle of the film is just filled with Arthur and Merlin on small various adventures, and recapping the lesson at the end. Even so, I don’t really feel that the lessons learned are really that well set up, or really expanded on to how they’re going to help Arthur in the long run. I really wish there had been more development through the middle of this film. I feel that we start on a good set up, and leave on a good end. I could even see Disney making a sequel out of this, since it puts Arthur on the throne at the end. However, there’s just nothing substantial filling out the center of this movie. There doesn’t seem to be much developmental or emotional growth through the cast, and at the end I don’t feel like Arthur is even remotely qualified to be king.

I remember liking this film and even though I’ve had so much bad stuff to say about it I still do like it. Even though it’s disjointed and messy, there’s something charming about it. I guess my main disappointment is to see how the mighty have fallen. Disney was such a paramount in the animation industry and at this stage it’s more like watching someone die a slow and painful death. Nothing the company does seems to working. This film doesn’t really make any sense and if anything I would’ve thought that this was the film that would’ve sunk Disney. All I can really do at this point is hope that something gets better, and even though I say that, I know we’ve really started entering the dark times. We’ll be back next week to review Disney’s 1967 film, The Jungle Book.

-AJ

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

Hey everyone! It seems that Disney couldn’t stay away from dog movies, because we have One Hundred and One Dalmatians this week. In only six years, we went from Lady and the Tramp to this. However, while similar in subject, these films diverge in a variety of ways, so they both have room to exist.

Original Poster Sourced via IMDB

Summary: This movie follows Pongo, a dalmatian, and his family. The movie opens with Pongo introducing us to his owner, Roger. The beginning part of the movie revolves around Pongo finding Roger and himself a mate, them all living together and then Pongo and his mate, Perdita, having a litter of pups. Early in the film, we are introduced to Cruella de Vil, who is an aristocrat that was once a schoolmate of Roger’s wife, Anita. Cruella is very interested in Pongo and Perdita’s litter of pups; we later find that this is because she wants to make a dalmatian fur coat. Cruella offers to buy the pups, but Roger stops her. Later, the puppies get kidnapped. We find out that Cruella had them kidnapped. She also bought a bunch of other dalmatian puppies. The latter majority of the film deals with the search for the missing puppies, and their subsequent rescue, with Pongo and Perdita bringing them back home with the help of a secret network of dogs and farm animals while avoiding and outsmarting Cruella and her henchmen. All the dalmatians show up at Roger and Anita’s home, where they are adopted and live happily ever after.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians is one of those Disney movies that I was never too familiar with. It was hot stuff when I was young, due to a recent re-release and the live action remake, but for some reason, I never jumped on that bandwagon. As such, I came to this movie relatively fresh, even though I did see it when I was a child, probably once.

Coming back to this movie after all this time, I will say that I generally liked it. Compared to the last couple of movies, however, the art has really suffered. It’s to be expected, considering we just came from the artistic masterpiece that is Sleeping Beauty, but the quality drop is much more severe than what you’d expect. Everything is sketchy and messy. The colors get a little trippy. The backgrounds are cluttered and improperly colored in. It’s a really dramatic shift. AJ will probably go into this in a lot more depth, but this is due to change in the animation technique that made the animation significantly cheaper and quicker, which is key to this movie’s success and Disney’s continued success for this time in history. While the art is disappointing, its a necessary disappointment.

At first, this seems a little harsh, but I actually feel One Hundred and One Dalmatians handles this the best that it possibly can. The adjustment to the animation and art, while obviously worse than some previous Disney films, actually fits this movie pretty well. The setting of 1960’s London, with most scenes taking part inside either a crowded apartment or a decayed country estate, fits with the sketchier animation. When it comes to the outside shots, like when everyone is at the park or they’re walking through the countryside, the art is able to handle properly with few strange or wonky shots. In particular, there is one egregious example where the animation doesn’t work later on in the film in a shot of the dogs running up a snowbank. You might not notice it if you aren’t looking for it, but we did, so take that for what you will.

This movie is great in a lot of other ways, however. The music in this film is good. More than that, it’s tied to the story of the film, with Roger being a songwriter and one of his songs being the way that the family can afford to adopt a hundred dogs. The song in question also happens to be the song for this movie, “Cruella de Vil,” which is just a song mocking the villain of this movie. To me, its hilarious that their family got rich and famous releasing a disparaging song about another person, but I guess that’s normal in the world of this film.

As far as the narrative of the film, I was under a misconception about this film for a long time. To make it succinct, I always thought this movie was more like Mousehunt or Home Alone but with dogs, but it’s actually more like Homeward Bound. Basically, I forgot or didn’t realize that the majority of the action of this movie is them going on this long journey and avoiding being caught out in the wild, as opposed to them outsmarting some dumb burglars to prevent getting caught. It was a pleasant surprise and created some unexpected drama for me when the burglars came in and kidnapped the dogs with no issue. The journey back, with all ninety-nine pups, is also shown to be very difficult and, while I knew they would all get back, there was dramatic tension that kept me excited.

This movie keeps you emotionally engaged. It almost seems like a cheap trick, but everyone loves dogs and potential danger coming to these dogs is almost master crafted to tug on the heartstrings, even though most of the dogs have little or no personality. This emotional engagement help back up the dramatic tension of the film. I also feel that it backs up the underlying theme of this film, which seems to be a message on doing the right thing, even though it is difficult. Often in the film, we see good characters doing what they know is right even when given an easier option. This is best shown with Roger refusing to sell the dogs to Cruella, but it is also shown with Pongo forcing Roger and Anita together even though he may get in trouble for it. We also see this with the members of the Twilight Bark, assisting Pongo and Perdita to the annoyance of their owners and, later on, despite the potential danger that Cruella and her henchmen present. On a smaller level, we see this with Sergeant Tibbs constantly correcting The Colonel despite being outranked.

Overall, this movie is fun and entertaining. I can see this being more of a film aimed towards children, but I liked it regardless. Despite the change in animation, I feel that the movie works out. Next week, we return yet again to Medieval Fantasy with The Sword in the Stone, a movie that I watched a ton when I was a kid.

-CJ

This week, we looked into Disney’s 1961 classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Growing up this was possibly my favorite Disney movie of all time. So much so that, in my first grad class, I drew one hundred and one different dalmatians on my desk. It’s a heartwarming little movie and I still really like it story-wise. Animation-wise, though, this film doesn’t hold a candle to all the prior films we’ve seen up to this point.

Let's delve a bit into the history of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Unlike most of the movies we’ve recently watched, One Hundred and One Dalmatians seems to have one of the fastest production dates. The book itself was written in 1956 and was picked up by Disney in 1957. Disney had the script written and produced shortly afterwards, but there were concerns on how to animate one hundred and one dogs, especially when so many had to be on the screen at one time. The answer lied in what happened after Sleeping Beauty hit theaters.

If you’ve read our prior review on Sleeping Beauty, then you’ll know the movie was a flop. With Disney hemorrhaging all of its funds for its movies, Walt considered shutting the animation department down. The animation itself was becoming to costly to produce, and, at this time, Walt wanted to turn his attention to building Disney World.

However, the co-founder of the company, Ub Iwerks, actually managed to save the department by introducing Walt to xerography. This new process allowed animators drawings to be printed directly on cells, which helped with decreasing the cost of the film. There had been a slight bit of this used in forest of thorns in Sleeping Beauty, but a full film had never been done in this style before. The company ended up taking a dive into it and ended up with a financial success. The film only cost the company $3.6 million and grossed $215.8 million in the end. This ultimately saved the company, but at a price in the quality of their animation. I would honestly say this marks Disney Animation's death until its brief revival in the 1990’s with its renaissance.

Xerography is by no means a perfect way to animate and it really shows in this movie. Lines are very thick and scratchy; there’s no real smoothness in the characters. There’s also a big issue in the fact that you can still see basic outlines leftover from the initial sketches. This really just leaves things looking cheap and unfinished.

Another issue I have with this film is just how much recycled animation is in it. We see a lot reused material from Lady and the Tramp during the twilight bark scene. I wouldn’t mind a cameo from Lady or Tramp or any of the other dogs that show up in the film. However, the animators used footage from Lady and the Tramp in this scene. It ends up feeling very out of place since the lines suddenly cut from rough sketchy lines to very smooth and detailed lines. I really wish Walt had just left this bit out. There’s a lot of discussion from older animators stating that it was difficult to dig through the ‘morgue’ to find old cells, trace over them and put them in with everything else. I wonder if anyone had brought this up to Walt or not.

The issues don’t stop there either, the film re-uses it’s own footage over and over again. The puppies in the pet shop window are just Pongo’s pups without spots; Pongo’s run cycle is used over and over again. When I saw this film as a kid, I was able to spot a few things here and there, but as an adult, all of the reused work sticks out like a sore thumb. I wish I could say it only happens in this film, but it ends up being an issue that plagues the 1960’s and 1970’s era of Disney animation.

I have mixed feelings about this film and how it looks. Right off the bat, it’s easy to see that the animation has really taken a sharp turn downhill. This works in it’s own way with the jazzy music and the bright and roughly colored backgrounds, but it feels strange to see how rough things are after watching Sleeping Beauty. I will say, this style works for this film, but I wouldn’t say it really works for anything afterwards.

With the drop in animation, I feel like everything had to be made much stronger in terms of musics, color schemes and sound design. It certainly shows here and I will say the music is really spot on. However, when I say that, it just makes me think that Disney went out of their way to play it safe and to keep playing it safe. There’s nothing that pushes the boundaries here, and nothing that really makes me say "Wow."

I will say that story-wise this movie still hits home for me. Even the animation, with as bad as it is, holds a place in my heart. It is still a good film and one that everyone should check out at least once. I think my biggest issue doesn’t lie within the film itself, but mostly what happened after with the sudden lack of creativity and boundary pushing that Disney studios was known for. I’ve actually been dreading this dark time of Disney as I know the animation will keep bothering me for who knows how long. We’ll start our trek into Disney's dark age next week with The Sword in the Stone.

-AJ

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

This is a movie I’ve been looking forward to since we started this project. For this week’s showing, we’ve got Sleeping Beauty. Right off the bat, I can say that this was and remains one of my favorite Disney movies. One of my favorite animated movies. Its just a fantastic production, everything is handled well in the movie. In a way, it seems that all of Disney’s work was building up to this and this is the final peak of the art form.

Original Poster Sourced via IMDB

Summary: This is another one I expect everyone to have some knowledge of. This movie is an adaptation of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, specifically the Charles Perrault version. We open to the christening of our main character, the “sleeping beauty,” Princess Aurora. During this scene she is betrothed to Prince Phillip and is blessed by the three fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. Maleficent, an evil fairy, appears and, upset that she wasn’t invited, curses Aurora. Originally, it was to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die at age 16, but Merryweather uses her blessing to weaken the curse, making it that she’ll only fall into a deep sleep. Trying to escape this fate, the fairies keep Aurora in hiding in the woods until her 16^th birthday. We jump to her 16^th birthday and eventually, Aurora is told that she’s a princess and they bring her back to the castle to be married to Prince Phillip. While at the castle, she ends up pricking her finger on the spinning wheel and is put into a deep sleep. Prince Phillip is captured by Maleficent. With the help of the good fairies, he escapes captivity and goes to save Aurora. Maleficent turns into a dragon to stop Phillip, but he overcomes and slays the dragon, frees Aurora, they marry and everyone lives happily ever after.

The first thing about this movie that stands out is the art direction. I actually feel that’s what makes this movie so special. This movie is just gorgeous. While I may like another animated film better and might argue that others look better animated, I feel that this movie is the best that I’ve seen, at least for western animation. The design of the movie is inspired by late medieval and early renaissance art. This can be seen in the elegantly painted backgrounds, with their harsh angles and weird-shaped trees. This shows in the design of all the non-central characters, who’s imagery can be described as the face cards from a deck of playing cards.

The design of central characters seems to be the fulfillment of all the improvements that Disney’s been making since they started making feature length films again. Aurora seems to have a similar design philosophy to Cinderella, where she is an idealization of the perfect female from her era, but the closer proximity to the 60’s is felt in her design, particularly in her hair. Prince Phillip is the most realized a young man has appeared in a Disney film until this time. His design is a little generic, but well realized and his animation is good, which is especially important for all the action scenes that take up the end of this film. Unlike previous Disney princes, Phillip has a name and some character, which goes a long way to make him charming. His charm is necessary, because the audience needs to feel that him and Aurora belong together despite not knowing each other. Other princes might get a little more time to establish their connection to the protagonist, but Phillip really only has one short scene and a preestablished betrothal.

This music for this movie is fantastic. I didn’t discover until after the movie was over and I was researching for this review, but the music is adapted from the Tchaikovsky ballet of the same name. This is particularly apparent in the central theme and most memorable song of this movie, “Once Upon a Dream.” This is a great track that ties in with the story’s themes of dreams and sleep. It’s also used to tie Aurora and Phillip together, supporting what I was discussing before about their relatively short time together. It’s also just a really memorable track and a return to form for the Disney theme. It seems that Cinderella was trying to do a similar thing with “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” but I feel that it got lost with the other music in that film. The other music in this movie is also good, but takes a more background role, so it isn’t as memorable.

From a narrative perspective, the story is relatively typical fairy tale fare. Even more so than some previous Disney films. I think its interesting that the common perception of Disney Princess stories is some sort of “Princess is the protagonist, she becomes a damsel in distress, Prince Charming comes and saves her.” In reality, this is really the only Disney movie that just follows that model, with something like Snow White just has some light elements of that, like the prince “saving her” in the very end of the film. Trying to look forward, I believe that this is the only movie that follows this trope so closely in the Disney cannon, which suggests this is, in some way, the quintessential Disney film. I can buy that.

From a thematic standpoint, there seems to be a weird thing about fate and the roles that people live into. From the start of the movie, we find that Phillip and Aurora are meant to be together. Aurora also gets cursed my Maleficent. This whole scene defines how Aurora’s life is going to go. It makes sense, this is a movie; a movie’s supposed to focus onto an interesting story. What makes it interesting is that, while she’s whisked away, Aurora becomes Briar Rose and almost literally becomes a different person. Nobody knows who she is, where she is, she’s free to make her own life. When she finds out the truth, becomes Aurora and returns to the castle, the curse immediately takes effect. There is a real feeling the story portrays that being in hiding did actually protect her and that the curse was somehow avoidable. A maybe it was, as long as she remained Briar Rose, but she takes up the role of princess again and that’s when she gets caught.

This is also played out in the irony of the romance between Phillip and Aurora. We know that Aurora and Briar Rose are the same person, but Phillip doesn’t know they are. He has a whole scene with his father where he says that he doesn’t want to marry the princess anymore, because he found a woman in the forest. We know that they’re the same person. It’s almost some sort of cruel joke, in that takes a moment of rebellion and it turns out to be for naught. What would be the chances that they would find each other in a different context? Slim, but they’re fated to be together, so they find each other.

Altogether, this is just a fantastic film. For a long time, my favorite Disney film was Fantasia, but now I’d say that its tied with this movie. It is definitely worth the watch for everyone, even people not interested in animation. If you haven’t seen it recently, take the time to check it out again. After this, we return to another dog film, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Join us again next week!

-CJ

This week we watched what I would call Disney’s magnum opus Sleeping Beauty. This movie has it all; wonderfully styled characters, highly detailed backgrounds, fantastic animation and great voice acting. This was a Disney classic that I didn’t see until I was nine or ten, but it had the most impact on my life when it came to wanting to study animation. When I had this movie on VHS there was a section at the end that detailed how the animation process was done, and how much research and detailing went into the backgrounds. Disney wanted this film to be a “moving illustration, the ultimate in animation” and this film certainly hits home.

Like Lady in the Tramp, there were issues with the release of Sleeping Beauty. Production on the film was started back in 1951 after the release of Cinderella, with plans to debut in 1955. However a solid story couldn’t be decided on, and Walt scrapped much of the early work. The film was eventually re-written, and production started in earnest in 1953 – 1954. However, more delays were in store for the film when the head animator for Sleeping Beauty suffered a heart attack. Eric Larson, one of the “Nine Old Men,” was promoted to direct the film. Disney instructed Eric to take as much time as was needed to animate the film, and pushed back the release for Sleeping Beauty to 1957. The film may have hit theaters around that time, however, Walt was out of touch with his animation department and this led to further delays.

When Sleeping Beauty finally did hit the big screen it ended up being a failure. The film itself was the most expensive film Disney film up to that point, costing the studio about 6 million to produce. The initial release only ended up grossing $5.3 million, and this combined with the loss from Alice in Wonderland and the under performance of Peter Pan and Cinderella led to massive layoffs throughout the company, and to the death of this style of animation. Sleeping Beauty did see a few re-releases after 1970, but it didn’t have much success until it’s VHS re-release.

The backgrounds in this film, are possibly my favorite viewing point of this film. They’re highly stylized and detailed, and pull off the perfect feel of a medieval setting. I remember watching segments in the “How It Was Made” section of Sleeping Beauty where someone brought back tapestries to the studio, and showed how they could be incorporated into the film. I really feel that this was one of the best decisions that the studio made when it came to producing this film. The backgrounds provide a very rich and interactive world for our characters to move around in, and they really end up keeping the viewers eyes glued to the screen. The wide screen aspect that this film was shot in really helps this as well. We’re given a lot of open space so our characters aren’t squashed down into a small box. They have lots of room to move around and there’s good opportunity to show just how small or big something is without having to scrap detail on trees, rocks or other natural land marks. We do lose some details on our characters, but they’re also detailed just enough so we can see their movements, and how they’re focused on the screen. 

I really wish we had move wide screen traditional animated movies. I really do feel that a long screen is best for showing a wider angle of life, and to provide a better plane of existence for our characters to move on. They can have longer sequences of movement without reaching the end of the screen, and re-focusing the camera angle. This is shown really well with Prince Phillip and Aurora dancing in the woods. They start from the left side of the screen and proceed to dance all the way to the right, with their reflections in the lake mirroring their movements. This whole scene really drew my attention, in the fact that we’re allowed to view the characters, but that their movement also draws your eyes to the trees and the other details of the lake. I may be misremembering my Disney films, but I don’t really think we get a scene close to this until The Lion King. There seems to be a fear about putting small characters in a big scene, but Sleeping Beauty really pulls it off.

That being said, let’s take a look at what makes the animation of Sleeping Beauty so great. In every Disney film before Sleeping Beauty, a full live action cast had been used in order to show the animators how the characters should act and move across the screen. However, veteran animator Milt Kahl objected to this and refused to continue this method. He said that, by now, the animators should know how characters were supposed to move. Very few actors were actually brought before the animation team. There’s some surviving footage of Helene Stanley (Aurora) and Eleanor Audley (Maleficent) in their costumes, but other than that, most of the characters were done without models. I really do feel that this is what makes this movie truly great. There’s no uncanny valley to be seen here; it has a life of it’s own and it benefits immensely from this.

There were a lot of issues regarding style that plagued this film. Animators thought that the characters were to flat and cold. The studio complained to Walt, but he enforced the style. This lead to more delays as this was not Disney’s traditional style of animation. Animators had to take extra time on their drawings and there were claims that due to the style and amount of clean up, only one or two drawings would make it out per day. This would lead to about one or two seconds of screen time per month. While I’ve never animated anything in my life, I can certainly understand the issues the animators would be facing. Despite the complaints from the studio, I still think Walt’s overall decision to keep the film so stylized worked in his favor.

I can see there being an issue with the animators when it came to adding shadows and highlights on these characters. Since the characters are so angled there’s a bit of a limit on what can be highlighted and what can be shadowed. One half of the face has to be in shadow and the other lit, or the entire body has to be darkened or lightened. I don’t feel this puts the film off in anyway, I actually feel like it works in its favor. It enforces the style of characters, and the angles and blocks of their faces.

It almost feels like there doesn’t need to be shadowing in some scenes simply due to the color schemes. Everyone shown in the film has a good developed color pallet, that offsets with the backgrounds. This helps them pop, and they mostly feel like they’re in light all the time unless there’s a filter thrown on top of them. The only times it feels like shadow and light are needed are when we have flames or the glow of the spinning wheel.

There’s an absolute novel that could be written about this movie, but for times sake, I’ll cut it here. I really can’t stress enough of just how beautiful this movie is. It has absolutely everything and I would say has better animation than Fantasia. The story, music, animation, and color design is all spot on and it absolutely baffles me on how this film failed in theaters. I doubt anyone reading this hasn’t seen Sleeping Beauty, but if you’ve never seen this gem of animation, do yourself a favor and go watch it.

In it’s own way I really feel that this movie was just ahead of its time. However, I am very thankful that it came out before the death of animation, when xerography hit the scenes. I do wonder if Sleeping Beauty had been more successful if xerography would have been scrapped by the studio or if it would’ve been picked up at a later date. We’ll take a deeper look into xerography next week when we delve into 101 Dalmatians.

-AJ

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Hello Everyone! Sorry that there wasn't any post last week. We had to take some time off for a very special event, so we held off our review for this week. Talking about our review, this week we've got Lady and the Tramp. This is a fun movie about dogs in love in the city. If you haven't seen it, you definitely should, as it's a classic. 

Original Poster Sourced via IMDB

Summary: Lady is Cocker Spaniel living the high life in her suburban home. But her life is shaken up when her owners have a baby. Once the baby is born, she warms up to him and protects him. Things seem like they'll be alright, but when her owners leave town, she and the child are left in the care of their aunt. The aunt's cats torment Lady and the baby, causing a scene the cultivates in the aunt taking Lady to get a muzzle. At this point, Lady escapes and meets up with a street dog named Tramp. They spend a night out on the town, and slowly fall in love with each other. The next day, she's returning home, but, due to Tramp's recklessness, Lady gets caught by the dogcatcher. Tramp escapes. In the pound, she meets a bunch of other dogs that know Tramp who tell her about his previous girlfriends and explain that she's the next in a long line. She gets picked up by the aunt and is chained up outside. Tramp comes around to explain himself and Lady rebuffs him, but soon after, a rat sneaks into the house to attack the baby. Tramp comes to the rescue and they kill the rat and save the baby. At first, this is misunderstood by the aunt and the owners and Tramp is sent to the pound. They find out that truth and go to pick up Tramp, adopt him and Lady and Tramp live together happily ever after in their home.

First thing first, this movie is beautiful. The animation and art design are better than any movie previous. Previously, I've considered Sleeping Beauty to be the pinnacle of Disney's traditional animation. I still think that's true, but Lady and the Tramp is very comparable. Really, it's not that surprising, as Sleeping Beauty is next in line, but I guess I never realized how good this movie looked. On the other hand, it has some stylistic elements that remind me of Disney's films after the change in animation starting with One Hundred and One Dalmatians. It gives the city scenes a realistic, dirty feeling, so I think's its effective.

The story, for me, is a bit difficult to understand. Or, at the very least, to explain. I was able to follow it through the movie, but after the movie, it's difficult for me to relay it. In part, I think that's because there's no clear "Hero's Journey" type structure. Instead, a lot of the movie is spent setting up the rest of the movie. For example, we see when Lady is first adopted and when she's living in bliss before the child and her talking with her friends and her meeting Tramp before the baby comes. They're all good scenes, but a lot of the movie is devoted to this time. For me, the heart of the movie is the night on the town the Lady spends with Tramp. Unfortunately, I don't feel this time gets enough of the movie to grow. This is supposed to be a love story of sorts, but with one trip to the zoo and dinner at an Italian joint, and we're supposed to feel that they're doggy-soulmates.

What I think is very interesting about this movie is the view of its time period that is provided. The movie takes place in 1905, but the themes and attitudes reflect that of the 1950's when this movie was made. In a way, this movie captures a changing set of attitudes in the 1950's. The story is similar to others I've seen, where an upper class young woman is whisked away by a lower class man who might have a questionable background and they fall in love, instead of her marrying someone "sensible."This isn't only relatable to the 1950's, but I think that there was a lot of concern for this sort of thing during the '50's because of the destruction and blending of social classes during that time, as well as the rise of the beatniks.

On a similar theme, there's also the scene that, at first, seemed very strange to me, but when I understood the context, it made more sense. After Lady's night with Tramp, her friend dogs, Jock and Trusty, offer to take her in to their home. At first, I thought that they were just offering to take her in because she was afraid that her owners would throw her out of the house. But, as I take it, at the time it was understood that Lady would be dishonored for spending a night alone with a stray dog and they were offering to marry her to restore her honor. Since it went over my head originally, I guess that's an interesting sign of how things have changed between then and now.

All in all, I feel that this is a lovely film. Its absolutely beautiful so, if nothing else, watch it just for the visual experience. Other than that, the movie is fun and compelling, though I would say it's hard for me to recall it entirely. As such, I'd say it was good and fun, but maybe the impact on me wasn't that deep. Just to reiterate, I would definitely recommend everyone check it out again. We'll be back on schedule next week with Sleeping Beauty.

-CJ

Lady and the Tramp is another one of those Disney films that I’ve mostly forgotten. I could tell you I watched it over and over again as a kid, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what it was about. Re-watching this movie was a treat. The art in this is phenomenal and the animation is really top notch. It’s hard to find any kind of issue with this film and that’s impressive when you consider the issues the studio faced when producing this movie.

First and foremost, let’s take a look into how Lady and the Tramp was produced. Lady was actually based off a real dog of one of Disney's employees, Joe Grant. He explained to Walt that his dog had gotten “shoved aside” since he’d had a baby. He ended up showing some artwork he’d produced of his dog; Walt liked the sketches and wanted to plot out a movie based on them. However the idea never fully got off the ground during the 30’s and 40’s, due there not being enough action, and Lady being too sweet. Grant ended up leaving Disney studios in 1949 and several years afterward Disney ended up pulling out Grants original sketches to re-work them into a movie.

Lady and the Tramp is actually based in part off a book by Ward Green called “Happy Dan, The Cynical Dog” published in 1945. This is what gave Disney the idea to re-work the movie and what was eventually put to film. The main story finally came together in 1953, and production was able to finally finish the movie. Ward Green actually worked with Disney and wrote a novelization of the film that was released a few years before the film so the general public would know what to expect. Unfortunately, Green didn’t receive any kind of film credit for his story work and his role in the film was left behind.

Lady and the Tramp really upped the bar for animation. The movie was the first animated feature to be animated in Cinemascope (this was a tool used to making wide-screen movies in the 1950’s – 1970’s). This meant that the shots had to be wider and that more detail was demanded. Along with this, it made it hard for animators to get close up shots of the characters and led to the need for groups to be shown on screen so that things wouldn’t appear to sparse.

Along with the new widescreen and the issues with characters, better and more detailed backgrounds had to be incorporated into this movie. Originally, Mary Blair was supposed to be the background artist for the film, but she left the studio in 1953. A new background artist by the name of Claude Coats was put on production and he ended up making changes to the frames. He ended up changing the perspective to a dogs view vs. a humans view and this works out incredibly well. We rarely see the faces of any humans, and most furniture or housing is cut low, so we would only really see what a dog would see. Thinking back on this, it’s actually very reminiscent of old Tom and Jerry cartoons, where Mammy Two Shoes interacts with Tom. We’re never allowed to see her from the waste up. The most we normally get is her hands coming down to swat at Tom.

Disney studio took a page out of Bambi for how to animate their dogs. The studio gathered different types of dogs to study how they acted and moved. This really helps to give life to the animation. You can almost forget you’re watching painted cells and imagine you’re just watching a dog in its normal routine. Along with the fluid movement, we get another call back to Bambi in the form of the large expressive eyes. This really helps invoke feeling and emotion in the dogs themselves. You can easily tell when they’re angry or scared.

In general there’s a ton of improvement here when compared to Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Where the other two movies had bold and bulky outlines that hindered immersion. The outlines in Lady and the Tramp are not overly dark or overly thick. It lends a more seamless view of the character and brings in some more life into the picture. You can really see the wrinkles on Trusty or the scruffy muzzle on Tramp and it’s not blurred out by overly thick outlines.

I really don’t know what else I can say about the animation at this point. Out of all of the Disney films, it’s easily the best detailed and one of the best animated up to this point. Everything feels incredibly smooth and natural and it’s hard to point out any kind of issues here.

The main issues I would say I have with this film would be the plot and the music. The plot itself is easy enough to follow, but there’s a lot going on, so things end up feeling rushed here and there. I will say that it doesn’t suffer nearly as much in this department as Peter Pan did. I just wish there had been some more room for character development.

The other issue I have with this film is the music. Maybe it’s just me but I feel like a majority of the songs are pretty forgettable. That’s not to say that the music is bad in anyway. The score for the film fits the feeling of every situation but scores aren’t meant to be remembered as much as show tunes. I think the issue I have with the music is that it’s almost always too calm and relaxed, so there’s not much to snag your brain and put an earworm in it.

Even given these slight issues, this film is really worth the watch. It’s a fun watch and a gorgeous piece of artwork. I would easily say out of all the films we’ve seen up to this point, it’s the best animated and the best detailed film we’ve watched up to this point and one of the best that Disney has produced. We’ll see a return to the land of Cinemascope next week when we take a look at Sleeping Beauty.

-AJ

*On a Side Note*

Did you know that the spaghetti eating scene between Lady and Tramp was almost cut? Walt thought the idea was stupid, and unrealistic. (I will say it is unrealistic in that any dog would have that plate cleared in a matter of seconds…) However, animator Frank Thomas was so against this that he actually animated the entire scene himself! When it was shown to Walt, he ended up liking how romanticized the scene turned out to be and allowed to keep the scene in the movie.