Jim on Film
Page 7 of 7
Many people complain that the film has no heart. In fact, it is said that even Walt Disney was unhappy with Alice in Wonderland because it didn’t have the heart of his other features. It’s true that, in a sense, we have nothing about Alice to hold onto to make us feel for her, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel for her plight. When Alice breaks down, singing Very Good Advice, it is a sad moment of reflection, and there is pity for little Alice because she so badly wants to escape this mad world but cannot. Is there heart in the same vein as Cinderella or Bambi? No, definitely not. But criticizing it because it lacks heart is like complaining that The Sound of Music doesn’t have any action sequences. Alice in Wonderland isn’t about heart. It’s about a girl getting lost in a crazy world, and as a result, the film is one of the funniest Disney ever made.
Filled with great music and memorable characters, Alice in Wonderland makes its mark with hilarious scenes of mad characters thinking mad thoughts, and as a result, the best moments of the film are too numerous to list. But an attempt to create such a list would have to include the caucus race with animals racing about a giant rock to get dry and water continually washing over them or the scene where the White Rabbit begins calling Alice Mary Ann. Never mind that he’s never seen her before; he starts calling her Mary Ann, and she listens obediently. The Red Queen is also too funny for words, and the entire croquet game is hilarious.
Furthermore, as critics complain about how Cinderella, Tinker Bell, and Princess Aurora are such bad role models for girls, they completely overlook Alice, who constantly challenges others and presses on in her own adventure. She even thinks deeply, evaluating her own situation and taking responsibility for her actions.
Alice in Wonderland
(c) Disney
Like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan is book-ended by more realistic drawing styles. Once in Never Land, the colors are brighter, the details less apparent, the shapes broader, and the humans more caricatured. But in its more realistic book-ends are the beginnings of the style that will bloom in Lady and the Tramp.
Oftentimes, people look back and say that the films from the Golden Age are superior to these films. While I think those films do have a special touch on them, it doesn’t discount the films of this time. Visually, these films do have less of the realistic and delicate detail and wondrous special effects. There is nothing to compare to the multiplane shot of Gepetto’s town, the fanciful dollops of imagination like Pink Elephants on Parade, or the majestic realism of Bambi, but they are beautiful in their own way, in an equal way. More importantly, the films from this era-Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and, arguably, Sleeping Beauty-are all perfect films. Once again, people may have things they would change if they were in charge of making the movie, but in character development, songs, story, art direction, and so on, there is no way to change these films to make an improvement.
Lady and the Tramp is a markedly more realistic film than the previous three, with a return to the intricate detail from the Golden Age. Each carpet, throw rug, and panel of wallpaper has delicate designs to add to the otherwise very realistic renderings of the backgrounds. The humans are realistically drawn, and those who are caricatured fit alongside the realistic ones very well. The dogs are also very realistic. Visually, it bears only a slight resemblance to the films before it, though it acts as a definite bridge to the stylized realism of Sleeping Beauty.
In tone, the film is also similar to the films from the Golden Age in its dark moments. The dog pound has some horrific moments, particularly knowing that each of the dogs we love there will meet the same fate as Nutsy. Plus, Lady goes through some very traumatic experiences in the film-emotional abandonment, being chased by violent dogs . . . and then there’s the rat who threatens the baby in an intense and dramatic scene. Even the darker moments in Cinderella do not go as far as those in this film.
Watching Lady and the Tramp again reminded me a lot of Finding Nemo and the other Pixar films in its collection of rich and original characters to help tell the story-the Scottish Scottie, a philosophic Russian Wolfhound, Peg from the dog and pony follies, and Dachsie, who digs his way to freedom, only to cover it up when humans come.
Sleeping Beauty
(c) Disney
With its closer step to stylized reality, Sleeping Beauty always amazes me with its beauty, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. The intricate detail on the backgrounds always astonishes me. In a way, it is a stylistic move away from the realism of Lady and the Tramp (in its backgrounds at least), while a step closer to realism in its treatment of animals and humans (or, perhaps, it might be better to say a decrease in caricature in humans-many of the humans in Lady and the Tramp are very realistic).
Watching it again for the first time in a long time, I was amazed by how well-developed Aurora is, most of which comes through in her animation. She is playful and mischievous, even a little bit flirtatious, which is much to achieve in such a short amount of screen time. Much of this happens shortly before and during Once Upon a Dream, which is beautifully directed. The business of her dancing with the animals, then having Phillip step in is great. It’s a truly romantic scene, much more so than the scenes in the two previous fairy tales.
I think it’s also interesting that the hilarious antics of the three fairies making Aurora’s cake and sewing her dress are one of the few times during these films that the humor mostly comes from dialogue. Perhaps the closest the studio came to this was in Alice in Wonderland, but even in that film, there was a heavy reliance on great animated visuals for humor.
Once again, Sleeping Beauty is a film that could easily have been a carbon copy of either of the two previous fairy tales. But Disney avoided this, for all three fairy tales are vastly different, despite some similarities between the events in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
With the box office failure of Sleeping Beauty, Disney would economize his animation studio. As happened once before, tastes were thought to be changing, and after an expensive failure, Disney would be forced to face economic reality.
Leonard Maltin, on the DVD release of Dumbo, made an interesting comment concerning the success of that film. He said Walt Disney wanted people to want Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi, but that’s not what audiences were looking for. Considering that Dumbo, Saludos Amigos, and The Three Caballeros were all successes, this sounds like a reasonable hypothesis. And just as at that time Disney had to tame his fantastic visions of grandeur and find financial success with fewer frills, he would do so again.
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-- Jim Miles
Jim On Film is published on the first Wednesday or Thursday of each month.
The opinions expressed by our guest columnists, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted September 4, 2003