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