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