1946 - Make Mine Music

1945 - Make Mine Music

Well, here we are with another anthology, this time conceived as “Kind of like Fantasia, only without all that froo-froo smart people music.” This, and the next few, are technically in the post-war era, but a lot of the development was during the war, hence the relative cheapness. I was reading something by an animation historian who said it’s unfair to judge these through modern eyes, a sentiment similar to those I’ve expressed here previously. But you know what? I’m going to stop feeling bad about that. Modern eyes are the only ones I have, and it’s not like all stuff from the 40s is automatically bad. It’s a Wonderful Life came out this same year, and while it’s not remotely ’timeless’, it’s still a hell of a good movie. So let’s see how this mix holds up, one by one.

THE MARTINS AND THE COYS - “A Rustic Ballad”, according to the title card, this hill person opus has actually been deleted from most rereleases of the movie. It’s a telling of the classic Hatfield and McCoy feud as sung by the tiresome 1940s vocal group The Kings’ Men. The stated reason for this being deleted is due to some incidents of comedic gunplay not sitting well, but I think the company may be having some Sunflower-style regrets over the portrayal of the clans as the most ridiculous barefoot, moonshine-swilling, inbred, gun-loving, woman-punching, toothless hillbillies you can imagine.

But, well, you know...

BLUE BAYOU - “A Tone Poem” this time around, sung by the Kim Darby chorus. Originally animated for Fantasia to be set to Clair de Lune, the end result is moody animation with a boring song that doesn’t quite fit, and with the deletion of the previous, far more lively number, a real crummy opening bit for the movie. Looks nice, though.

ALL THE CATS JOIN IN - “A Jazz Interlude” by Benny Goodman, says the title card, going on call it “A CariCATure”, which makes me wish I could reach through time and slap an animator. This is about a bunch of teenagers being teenagers and driving a car around and getting up to the kind of shenanigans middle aged animators thought teens got up to in 1946. The visual of a pencil drawing the sets and props as they go is nice, but it’s hampered by a heavy dose of sexism, with a sprinkling of anti-intellectualism that kept me crabby through the whole thing. Plus, Benny Goodman? Meh.

Cover your shame, you sinful, sinful ladies.

WITHOUT YOU - “A Ballad in Blue”, as we are informed by the (no joke) weeping title card. Ugh. Cheap animation of sad things accompanies a mopey-voiced guy singing a slow song about being dumped. Basically the worst.

CASEY AT THE BAT - “A Musical Recitation” of the classic poem. I was looking forward to this, because I love the poem, and I love the aesthetic of 1890s baseball, but it fell kinda flat. Interruptions for gags and non-poem dialogue killed the rhythm, and the narrator‘s attempt at an old-timey radio announcer voice was really tough to understand. Swing and a miss.

Prancing is an underestimated fundamental of the game.

TWO SILLHOUETTES - “Ballade Ballet” that is so dull I fell asleep twice watching it. We’re not on a good run here, folks.

PETER AND THE WOLF - “A Musical Fairy Tale”? Whatever you say, card. Hey, what can I tell you? It’s Peter and the Wolf. You get a decent narrator, and Prokofiev’s done most of your work for you. And the narrator is Sterling Holloway, which we’ve already established wins big points with me. Plus, the Russian language is spotlighted a few times, which is a nice added dash of culture.

AFTER YOU’VE GONE - Huh. No cutesy intro on the title card. Well, this is more Benny Goodman, but as a simple quartet, it works a lot better than the full band piece, and the visuals are cute, with anthropomorphic instruments dancing around various musical landscapes. Nothing big, but quite cute.

JOHNNY FEDORA AND ALICE BLUEBONNET - “A Love Story” sung by the Andrews Sisters, who should really stick to peppy songs, because slow ballady-type things are not their forte. Anyway, this is about two hats that fall in love, then get purchased, then the people who bought them meet and fall in love without noticing they have ambulatory hats on. Fun fact: I wrote that after watching the first 30 seconds of the short, and I was absolutely right, except for leaving out the part where the eventual owners are draft horses. But really, how could I have seen that coming?

Just focus on the music. Don't imagine what it smells like.

THE WHALE WHO WANTED TO SING AT THE MET - “Opera Pathetique”.  Which is not an actual term. Anyway, this one, the longest at 15 minutes or so, is fantastic. Nelson Eddy sings every character in this story of… Well, it’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? He gets harpooned in the end, because it’s an opera, so of course it’s sad. It’s also sad that we had to wait until the last short to get one that was really good. Eddy’s formidable range is used to its best effect, and the character animation on Willie the Whale and the impresario who hunts him down is top-notch.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* Perce Pearce has been replaced in my “weird name in the opening credits” affection by the new champion, story editor “T. Hee.”

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1942 - Bambi

MEANWHILE, IN THE PAST…

All right, so Dumbo made big bank, and Disney was now free to go for higher pursuits. Walt had long been enamored with the German nature novel “Bambi: A Life in the Forest”, and after several attempts by other studios to make a live-action version, had acquired the rights. Was the world ready for an artistic, environmental film with no humans in it? Would children be as interested in animal mating as the filmmakers were? What the heck gender is Flower? And how was anyone planning to do this in live action? Twitterpated? So am I. So grill up a venison steak, you heartless monster, and let’s talk about Bambi.

Ohhhh man, I missed Disney with a budget. This movie is gorgeous, with lush backgrounds and amazing animation on things like falling leaves and moving water. The animal animation is more realistic and fluid than It’s anything they’d done before, and while the styles are a bit inconsistent between animalistic and cartoonish, they always look great. I can’t overstate this, the look is fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that they really feel the need to show it off. For a long long long time. The opening pan is about 7 minutes long. Breaks from the plot to show the forest in its usual course are frequent and lengthy. I don’t really mind, though, which surprised me. The movie’s not really about the plot, or even about Bambi. It’s about nature in general.

There are only three characters besides Bambi, and his family (Fambli?), and they are weird. There’s the absurdly-named Friend Owl, a wise yet cranky old man with TERRIFYING yellow eyes. Then there’s Flower, a skunk who is… Okay, I did not have a single earthly clue whether Flower was a boy or girl until they all grew up and got new voices in the last act. He’s always batting his long eyelashes and playing with flowers and making movements that can only be described as “flirty”. But he’s still the first one to get a special ladyfriend after they grow up, so he’s doing something right.

I mean, seriously.

The third is Bambi’s best friend Thumper, a rabbit. Thumper is introduced early on, making fun of Bambi for not knowing anything mere hours after his birth. This, along with Bambi’s extremely vague title of “prince of the forest” led me and my sister to assume Thumper is a staunch anti-royalist and advocate of the rights of man. Turns out the movie’s far more entertaining when Thumper’s constantly saying, in his cute little baby voice, “You think you’we supewior because of your social cwass, but the pwoletawiat shall wise up!” I guess they became friends when he figured out that “Prince” didn’t mean anything.

Okay, I know what you want me to talk about. If there’s one thing this movie’s known for, it’s the childhood-scarring death of Bambi’s mom. I hate to tell you, but it didn’t really hit me. Maybe I just saw it coming. After all, this is a common knowledge spoiler, like how Rosebud was Kane’s sled, or it was Earth all along. But I think it might just be that I’m too old, and not easily affected  by cute animals. And that’s a problem I kept running into. I try to be fair with these and put them in their proper cultural perspective, so when the entire point is “Look at the cute animals”, I don’t think I can give you the entire experience. In this case, I really do need a kid’s view.

Seriously, that is one attractive movie.

Now I don’t have a kid. What I do have is my younger sister Katie. And while she is, on the surface, a smart, capable, and professional 23-year-old woman, she also has epically low standards for movies and a love of adorable fuzzy animals that rivals Lisa Frank herself. Put those two together, and you’ve got an eight-year-old girl where film is concerned. So how did she like it?

Well, pretty much the same as I did. Sure, she was more inclined to gush over the admittedly adorable animals, and found things like Bambi learning to walk or sliding on ice far more fascinating than I did, her general impression was the same as mine. The animation was beautiful but occasionally tedious, the dialogue was peppy but uneven, and Thumper the Wevolutionawy Wabbit was hilarious. So I guess in the case of this movie, the charms are the same for a 28-year-old male geek and a 8-year-old basket case. Good to know. I’ll probably have to get her opinions again when I get into the princesses.

Yes, wove is fwee; it can dwell in no othew atmosphewe. 

I guess I can’t shake the feeling that this movie wasn’t very good, regardless of how much I enjoyed it. As has been the case for the past several films, the story has little cohesion from scene to scene, the characters and dialogue are very thin, and the music is poorly integrated and mostly terrible. And they’re running as thin as they can on the “experimenting with a new art form” excuse. This one once again didn’t do so well. People weren’t taken with the realistic animals, and hunters went on the attack against it. But on a rerelease in 1947, the post-war era found it far more to their liking, and they made their money back.

This takes us out of the Golden Age. Next week we start the anthologies (EDIT: sort of.) and at least they aren’t supposed to be cohesive. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, we’ll see. Hopefully when the features start again, they’ll have pulled it together.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Everyone knows the word ‘gay’ primarily used to mean ‘happy’, but I think deep down we all thought of this as an archaic use even by the 40s. But they really do say it a lot in these movies. And I know that laughing at that is juvenile, but when they say “Let’s sing a gay little spring song”, what am I supposed to do? I’m not made of stone, people.

* Speaking of that song, it follows the death of Bambi’s mom immediately. I mean, I get the impulse to soothe us somehow, but to skip right from the death of the mom to happy little birdies and flutes-a-trillin’ and tweet-deedle-ee-tweet-deedle-ees.

* Of course, given that Bambi’s mom isn’t mentioned again after the death scene, maybe the film’s just in denial.

* I mentioned this before, but really, in what way is Bambi the prince of anything? No one shows him any deference, he has no authority, and no responsibilities. And if he’s ‘the prince’, and the big guy is ‘the great prince’, then how did they expect us to be surprised that it’s his dad?

* At one point, Bambi and his lady, Faline, are getting reacquainted as grown-ups when another buck (whose name, according to the Wiki, is “Ronno”,) shows up and starts pushing her into the woods against her protests. Then Bambi beats the tar out of him and throws him off a cliff. Which makes this the first, possibly only Disney film in which the hero prevents a rape.

Everyone forgets about the grown-up part, and it's like a third of the movie. And it has RONNO in it.

* At the end, Faline gives birth to twins. I didn’t think deer could do that, but apparently they can. Anyway, Bambi abandons her, just like his dad. What a class act.

* No, Ronno was never seen before or mentioned again. That would connect the scenes together, silly.

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1944 - The Three Caballeros

1944 - The Three Caballeros

Well, what with the success (both political and financial,) of Saludos Amigos, Disney decided to stick with a winning formula for their next film and make another South American travelogue. With more confidence, more money, and less direct government influence, this one would be less blatantly propagandistic, have a more cohesive plot, and actually be something like a real feature length. I never thought I’d think those were bad things. Sintiendo una conexión más profunda con nuestros vecinos del Sur? También estoy. Así que algunos burritos y margaritas, y vamos a hablar de Los Tres Caballeros.

So we start with that laziest of all anthology film setups: Donald Duck gets some presents, including 3 home movies. The first is about a penguin who hates the cold, and is just tired gag after tired gag, with some half-hearted geography thrown in. Oh, and Roman mythology, because why not. If this one was narrated by the usual guy instead of our special guest, the delightful Sterling Holloway, I would have shot my TV, Elvis-style. The second describes many real and unusual birds, and one fictional and annoying bird. And the third is about a young gaucho who befriends a flying donkey named Burrito. (Which sounds a little racist, but remember, it does mean ‘little donkey’.) This does feature the regular narrator talking in a horrible phony accent. And the narration keeps switching between rhyming and prose, and between the narrator being an older gaucho reminiscing, and a 3rd person-type who can speak directly to the kid. It’s sloppy and badly done and unfunny.

I had high hopes for the next bit, where Donald opens a book about Brazil and finds Jose Carioca in there. But my hopes are dashed when the program goes as follows: 1 - Jose sings a song about how great Baia is, and how they should go there.  2 - Jose Carioca sings a different song about how great Baia is, and how they should go there.  3 - They go there, and that annoying bird shows up again. 4 - Aurora Miranda sings a song. It’s not in English, but I imagine it’s about how great Baia is, and how nice it is that everyone’s there. Toward the end, Aurora kisses Donald, and he has a crazy hallucination where everything turns funny colors and there’s a cockfight.

And from there we meet Panchito Pistoles, our Mexican representative, who is loud and likes shooting his guns into the air. Ahem. They sing an absurdly catchy song, and then learn about the piñata, which Pancho oddly calls “the very spirit of Christmas”. Sticking with this holiday (?) theme, we learn about las Posadas, which seems awfully religious for a mainstream release, but it is culturally important, and hey, 1940s.

And the rest of the movie is just another folk dance, some more crazy hallucinations, and Donald hitting on human women. Seriously, that’s it. At first there’s some semblance of story left over, with the guys flying around on a serape, magic carpet-style, chasing ladies on the beach or whatever. But then it just descends into a Technicolor acid nightmare, all severed heads, sexy cactuses, random shapes, and the birds dancing with human female legs. It makes Pink Elephants on Parade look like Steamboat Willie.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

* Oh, you expected an ending to the main review? WELL I EXPECTED AN ENDING TO THE MOVIE. After the screaming insanity sequence, there’s just a few seconds of fireworks and the movie’s over.

* So yeah, their attempts to make it more commercial mostly worked to its detriment. It was far more stretched out, and without the live action documentary between-shorts bits, became less educational and more cartoony. A third feature, focusing on Cuba, was planned, but unmade. Nonetheless, Disney had found the crowd-pleasing, budget-saving shorts technique that would see him through the war and post-war years.

Seriously, guys. All this and more

* Did I just do an ending to the main review? Dang.

* Hey! All the voice actors got credits! Good for you, Clarence Nash!

* This guy shows up during the Aurora Miranda number, and is just plain awesome. He’s making percussion by tapping a stick on his teeth. Who needs fancy instruments?

I call him Juan Aguas.

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Another brief delay

I think it makes sense to follow Saludos Amigos directly with The Three Caballeros, so rather than the usual weekend post, I'll be doing that on Wednesday evening and then finally getting to Bambi on Saturday. In the meantime, enjoy this very well-done montage. I do question the use of the Dragonheart theme, but hey, it is a hell of a theme.

Weird thing: tomorrow, I'm actually going to be working for Disney (via a temp agency) at an event. I'M INSIDE NOW, BABY.

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1942 - Saludos Amigos

First of all, I know you were expecting Bambi this week, but there was a snag in the writing, so I’m skipping ahead into the start of the Anthology Age. Normally, at the start of an age, I’ll discuss my reasons for grouping these movies, but this one has a distinct and interesting origin story all its own…

Whenever I mention this undertaking to anyone, I find that this is the first film that makes them say “Huh?” You can expect a lot of that this month. With the war in full swing, money was tight, and people didn’t want in-depth storytelling, as the success of Dumbo and failure of Bambi showed. So Disney refocused on making collections of shorts for their feature releases. And they were given a little help in this direction by the State Department, of all things. See, the governments of South America were getting pretty cozy with the Axis powers, and the people of the USA were all, as we have seen, pretty racist, and so didn’t care. Uncle Sam knew this was no good, and figured a good ol’ dose of propaganda would set ‘em straight. So they paid to have Disney and his team flown all over the continent to make a series of shorts, showing the people of North and South America that they’re not so different after all. Swelling with fraternal brotherhood? So am I. So get a big bowl for feijoada and a frosty caipirinha, and let‘s talk about Saludos Amigos.

The film is split into four shorts, corresponding to Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. I suppose that means I should do a list review again, but you’ll have plenty of those by the end of the month. Besides, there’s not much to say. The Peru segment has Donald going to a rural village by Lake Titicaca where he learns about llamas, and hilarity ensues. The Argentina segment is quite similar, with Goofy learning to be a gaucho. Both of those are funny enough, and quite educational, though I seriously doubt that gauchos eat by holding their meat and bread in one hand and then holding it in their teeth and using their knives to cut off each bite when it’s already in their mouth. And yeah, that was a clunky sentence, but it’s a very impractical method to describe, so don‘t blame me.

Also very impractical: Whatever they're doing here.

The Chile section is about a plane named Pedro, who‘s the son of the big mail plane and has to make a dangerous delivery over the Andes when his father falls ill. I watched this with a Spanish class once, and there‘s a bit at the end where it really does look like Pedro died on his return, and it‘s got a surprising impact. When you can get a class full of jerky middle-schoolers to be paying rapt attention to the probably-not-death of your comedy cartoon plane, you‘re doing something right. Most interesting to me is that this short inspired the creation of South America‘s most famous cartoon, Condorito. A Chilean cartoonist was offended by Chile being represented by a baby plane, and decided to make his own cartoon to counter it. But considering that Pedro is heroic and triumphs over difficult odds, while Condorito, as a work, is racist, sexist, reactionary, and worst of all, trite and predictable, I don‘t think he came out on top.

Brazil gives us an inarguably fine cultural mascot, Jose Carioca, a smooth talking parrot. He shows up and takes Donald out to see the Rio nightlife, and then the movie stops. Wait, what? That was only 42 minutes! That’s barely feature length. Wow, okay. So anyway.

This was actually surprisingly good. The best part was the live action footage showing Walt and his animators on their goodwill tour, interacting with the locals, making their initial sketches, and smoking like chimneys. And it’s clear that they really gave it their all. I was expecting more of the (admittedly light for the time) racial insensitivity that I’ve made fun of here, but there’s almost none to see. They depict every culture fairly and, as far as I can tell, accurately. And that was one of the things that helped the movie achieve its political goal. When people saw the modern cities and fashionably dressed people, they realized that the barriers between them weren’t that extreme. And while the portrayals of the rural people were a little quaintsy, they never made the people look primitive or otherwise condescended to them. Sorry, if this all sounds a little sappy, but it‘s not for nothing that a prominent film historian said this movie "did more to cement a community of interest between peoples of the Americas in a few months than the State Department had in fifty years".

(I don’t know what that guy looked like, so here’s Deems Taylor again.)

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. It’s basically 3 comedy shorts and a musical bit, so there’s not much to say. The final part, with Brazil, is the most promising, yet shortest, so it’s for the best that there’s a part 2 that includes Joe Carioca to a far greater degree, as well as extensively covering Mexico. See you next week for that.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Speaking of Joe Carioca, in an attempt to bolster their international bona fides, his voice actor actually got a credit. Starting in the next film, all voice actors receive credit, and that little injustice is finally rectified.

* When showing the initial plane flight down south, the narrator says “Three days later, they land in Rio de Janiero.” Three days to fly from Anaheim to Rio? Jeepers cripes. Also: So much smoking on the plane.

Doesn't it look like he should be holding something?

* Speaking of, the DVD I have has looped a few seconds of footage to avoid showing Goofy smoking a cigarette. I’m not as entirely in favor of that as I am the deletion of racial stereotypes, but I can certainly understand it. I mean, I was smart enough as a kid to never think smoking was cool, even when I saw Ray Stantz do it. And he was the second coolest Ghostbuster. And I really doubt kids look at Goofy doing anything at all and think “Hey, that’s a good idea.” But then, most kids are pretty stupid, and I definitely get not wanting to put a cigarette in the mouth of one of your mascots. Joe Carioca smoked a cigar, which was left in, and Disney and the rest of the animators were smoking pretty much constantly, so they don’t remove it when it would interfere with characterization or historicity. So we’re cool.

* And yes, I know now that Ray was the lamest Ghostbuster. But I was a kid, and I just said, they’re stupid. Egon, however, was and remains the coolest.

LIKE A BOSS

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