Disney Movies, Rewatched
Way back in the day (get off my lawn!) Disney movies were only available on a seven-year rotating cycle. Heck, during my most formative Disney years (before six or seven years of age), they certainly weren't available on video, certainly not to own.
Am I the only person who remembers that videos used to cost some insanely high price, like $60 or $80, because the movie studios wanted people to rent them instead of buying? That went down hard, but really, the studios haven't learned a whole lot. Disney is STILL releasing movies on a seven-year cycle, which is nuts if you're a parent. You can't buy their whole catalog; you can't even buy a representative sample at one point in time. You have to guess you'll need it or borrow copies, or scour the used video section.
Anyway. This is all to say that there are a number of Disney movies I haven't seen since I was a kid-if I saw them then. So when going into a rewatch, I don't have the same memory that I do of, say, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, watched and rewatched until the dialogue was ground into my memory and the tape was starting to fuzz. So let's go back to the beginning, and see my random thoughts! I'll start with the first four.
1. Snow White (1937). The proof-of-concept. Curiously sparse as to characters; there is no one and I mean no one in the movie who is not essential to the plot. No servants, no hangers-on, no guards for either the castle or the prince (who just happens to be rambling around the forest.)
*Snow White wears clogs when she's working as a servant. Handy. And the prince actually has a few lines.
*Well, of course she cleans up the dwarfs' house. She's good at cleaning.
*Snow White says her prayers. That would never happen in one of today's movies.
*It's episodic. This is a pattern Disney would tend to follow through the first wave of their movies (pretty much planned in one big burst, as far as I can tell.) You actually need the narrator to take you from scene to scene, because it's all about individual scenes rather than a streamed narrative. Very iconic scenes, though. Overall, while it's pretty good, it's raw in terms of storytelling.
2. Pinocchio (1940). This actually stands among Disney's best films, in my opinion. It's got a good narrative throughout and it stands as a completed story.
*Jiminy Cricket is really bad at his job.
3. Fantasia (1940).
*It's over an hour before they get to the "good stuff" for the under-five set. The "tone poem" is flat-out boring to a little, and the Nutcracker Suite doesn't catch their attention much either, in spite of the mushrooms.
*Talk talk talk talk TALK. Good lordy, they're windy. This is definitely not in my memory of Fantasia, because the early versions I saw were cut for television, and that's the first thing to go.
*The Nutcracker Suite is "little performed today," though "you'll probably recognize it." How things change.
*Visualizing the sound is pretty cute, though the kids were squirming (even though we'd watched the first TWO segments (one hour!) the day before and skipped ahead to this part.)
*The creation of the world. I kind of like the "creation from the sludge in the bottom of a soda bottle" that Allegro Non Troppo did to spoof this. C'mon, I don't want the kids to get an aversion to classical music.
*Ah! Finally! The Pastoral Suite! The flying horses are a hit with the kids.
*I'd wondered what they did with that insanely racist shot of a pickaninny centaur (and I use that term because it's precisely that offensive.) You can't just cut a shot and expect the music to fit. Turns out that they cropped it in to show only the pale centaur instead. O-kay then.
*Dance of the Hours. For a kid, what's not to love?
*Night On Bald Mountain is a favorite, but am I the only one that finds the Ave Maria extremely bland? Maybe it's prettier in a restored version that shows all the faint color shifts or something. Or maybe it's just boring.
4. Dumbo (1941).
*Those other elephants are bitches.
*You can actually look at it as how Indian Elephants would look at the ears of African Elephants. His father is Jumbo, right? Well, take those ears and stick them on a baby Indian Elephant and you've got Jumbo Jr., aka Dumbo.
*Most memorable drunk scene of all time. Disney ripped itself off later when it mimicked the feel with "Heffalumps and Woozles."
*I'm kind of glad that the racist elements of Dumbo are being eroded by time. As an adult, I have the cultural history and knowledge to understand why "Jim Crow" and his gang are a bunch of minstrel crows. My kids, however, won't assume anything other than the fact that they're feathered beings. At least they won't until they're old enough to have someone point that out to them. It's not like Peter Pan. Good lord, Peter Pan has some nasty stuff in it.
*There's a part of the story arc called the denouement. It's the bit after the climax, when the lessons learned are integrated. This movie has none of this. Dumbo gets his courage, we have a brief set of headlines as reaction, and that's pretty much the end of Dumbo until he goes to war in Disney's collection of shorts (gathered as "Victory Through Air Power.")
I'm going to skip Bambi for now. I think that one has a particular amount of nightmare fuel that I don't need to give to my kids. Yes, Night On Bald Mountain is likely to be less problematic than killing off a mother and having a forest fire. I'm also skipping past The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos, because Disney of this era gets a bit weird when it comes to mixing animation and live action.
Don't worry, it will get snarkier soon. Peter Pan, in particular, is quite a piece of work.
Am I the only person who remembers that videos used to cost some insanely high price, like $60 or $80, because the movie studios wanted people to rent them instead of buying? That went down hard, but really, the studios haven't learned a whole lot. Disney is STILL releasing movies on a seven-year cycle, which is nuts if you're a parent. You can't buy their whole catalog; you can't even buy a representative sample at one point in time. You have to guess you'll need it or borrow copies, or scour the used video section.
Anyway. This is all to say that there are a number of Disney movies I haven't seen since I was a kid-if I saw them then. So when going into a rewatch, I don't have the same memory that I do of, say, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, watched and rewatched until the dialogue was ground into my memory and the tape was starting to fuzz. So let's go back to the beginning, and see my random thoughts! I'll start with the first four.
1. Snow White (1937). The proof-of-concept. Curiously sparse as to characters; there is no one and I mean no one in the movie who is not essential to the plot. No servants, no hangers-on, no guards for either the castle or the prince (who just happens to be rambling around the forest.)
*Snow White wears clogs when she's working as a servant. Handy. And the prince actually has a few lines.
*Well, of course she cleans up the dwarfs' house. She's good at cleaning.
*Snow White says her prayers. That would never happen in one of today's movies.
*It's episodic. This is a pattern Disney would tend to follow through the first wave of their movies (pretty much planned in one big burst, as far as I can tell.) You actually need the narrator to take you from scene to scene, because it's all about individual scenes rather than a streamed narrative. Very iconic scenes, though. Overall, while it's pretty good, it's raw in terms of storytelling.
2. Pinocchio (1940). This actually stands among Disney's best films, in my opinion. It's got a good narrative throughout and it stands as a completed story.
*Jiminy Cricket is really bad at his job.
3. Fantasia (1940).
*It's over an hour before they get to the "good stuff" for the under-five set. The "tone poem" is flat-out boring to a little, and the Nutcracker Suite doesn't catch their attention much either, in spite of the mushrooms.
*Talk talk talk talk TALK. Good lordy, they're windy. This is definitely not in my memory of Fantasia, because the early versions I saw were cut for television, and that's the first thing to go.
*The Nutcracker Suite is "little performed today," though "you'll probably recognize it." How things change.
*Visualizing the sound is pretty cute, though the kids were squirming (even though we'd watched the first TWO segments (one hour!) the day before and skipped ahead to this part.)
*The creation of the world. I kind of like the "creation from the sludge in the bottom of a soda bottle" that Allegro Non Troppo did to spoof this. C'mon, I don't want the kids to get an aversion to classical music.
*Ah! Finally! The Pastoral Suite! The flying horses are a hit with the kids.
*I'd wondered what they did with that insanely racist shot of a pickaninny centaur (and I use that term because it's precisely that offensive.) You can't just cut a shot and expect the music to fit. Turns out that they cropped it in to show only the pale centaur instead. O-kay then.
*Dance of the Hours. For a kid, what's not to love?
*Night On Bald Mountain is a favorite, but am I the only one that finds the Ave Maria extremely bland? Maybe it's prettier in a restored version that shows all the faint color shifts or something. Or maybe it's just boring.
4. Dumbo (1941).
*Those other elephants are bitches.
*You can actually look at it as how Indian Elephants would look at the ears of African Elephants. His father is Jumbo, right? Well, take those ears and stick them on a baby Indian Elephant and you've got Jumbo Jr., aka Dumbo.
*Most memorable drunk scene of all time. Disney ripped itself off later when it mimicked the feel with "Heffalumps and Woozles."
*I'm kind of glad that the racist elements of Dumbo are being eroded by time. As an adult, I have the cultural history and knowledge to understand why "Jim Crow" and his gang are a bunch of minstrel crows. My kids, however, won't assume anything other than the fact that they're feathered beings. At least they won't until they're old enough to have someone point that out to them. It's not like Peter Pan. Good lord, Peter Pan has some nasty stuff in it.
*There's a part of the story arc called the denouement. It's the bit after the climax, when the lessons learned are integrated. This movie has none of this. Dumbo gets his courage, we have a brief set of headlines as reaction, and that's pretty much the end of Dumbo until he goes to war in Disney's collection of shorts (gathered as "Victory Through Air Power.")
I'm going to skip Bambi for now. I think that one has a particular amount of nightmare fuel that I don't need to give to my kids. Yes, Night On Bald Mountain is likely to be less problematic than killing off a mother and having a forest fire. I'm also skipping past The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos, because Disney of this era gets a bit weird when it comes to mixing animation and live action.
Don't worry, it will get snarkier soon. Peter Pan, in particular, is quite a piece of work.