Disney animated features: the Mouseketeer years (1950-1959)

And Tramp has had a bunch of other girlfriends, lives on the wrong side of town, etc, which is pretty different to Princes and Princesses, no?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Damn! Well, that's pretty clear. Guess I'll be giving that a watch this weekend.

Kind of shocked at how low Peter Pan ended up. In my head it's full of adventure, but this might be distorted by childhood memories of this: http://goldengems.blogspot.com/2009/11/coming-soonwalt-disneys-peter-pan.html - - - particularly the map, which like all maps of fantasy lands, invites a great deal of filling-in with incident and subplot that may not actually be borne out in the actual story.

Turnout seems good enough to justify continuing the series... I have a couple different ideas of how to split up the next couple batches. Will launch the next poll soonish-like.

Lady & the tramp has Peggy fucking lee

Please continue, yeah, Disney films are films I've never watched critically

The sheer artistry of it really hits you when you keep an eye out for it

yeah def continue dc.

Disney animated features: magic on a budget (1961-1973)

*Our* Alice always enjoyed the style of this movie, but was always disappointed that they made her a golden blonde (as is almost every other version of Alice since), whereas the actual Alice was dark haired (like herself)

Alice in Wonderland is up there with Jungle Book, Sword and the Stone and Robin Hood. I'd say it's the second best of these two but my other half would disown me.

Kind of shocked at how low Peter Pan ended up.

The whole "What Makes the Red Man Red?" (and with it, maybe 30% of the movie) thing makes it hard to enjoy Peter Pan. A shame, cos it's easily the funniest Disney animation. The broad physical humor of Captain Hook repeatedly getting swallowed by the alligator always makes me laugh out loud.

you are high that is not a third of the movie

Take the song and all the scenes about how weird/stupid cartoon Indians are and put them together then tell me that again.

how recently have you watched this film? What Makes the Red Man Red is 2 1/2 minutes, the native Americans (excepting Princess Tiger Lily, who gets a little more screen time due to being captured) are on screen 10-12 minutes tops

Yeah you're right. Feels like a lot more cos throughout the rest of the film they keep doing callbacks, broken English, the hand-on-the-mouth whooping, etc.

secret live-action winner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhyuey4xU3Q

Pretty convincing trailer! LOL at James Mason's delivery in the dinner scene, that's great. The effects/props all seem pretty solid too. I catch so many B genre movies from this period that I forget the A pictures actually, you know, looked good.

Ended up watching Peter Pan on a whim today. Thread was right - the Indian material can't be salvaged at all, and overall it's a somewhat shapeless adventure where several of the main characters are just kind of along for the ride; the Wendy-Peter relationship seems like it should be sort of central, but they don't really get to interact much, so Wendy's arc doesn't quite hang together. And of course the whole point of Peter Pan is that he does not have arcs. On the other hand, Hook is fantastic at all times and there are a scattering of really finely-drawn sequences. The flying looks good too, and the songs, though not great, have some charm.

popped in cinderella like 10-15 minutes ago and omg is this whole movie going to be gibbering mouse antics? PADDING

V weak movie

I think the cat and mouse stuff is the best thing about the film. Also the king and his servant.

Don't like these poll results at all.

Yeah, this morning I said "I started Cinderella and it kinda sucks," and my girlfriend was like "But what about all the cat and mouse stuff?" I think if the cat and mouse stuff was cuter, more clever, or pacier I'd be fine with it, but it has that painstaking slowness of stuff intended for really little kids, like we gotta make sure we've REALLY set up the next gag/take. Also, as noted, the animation is a big step down from the previous batch of films, but no helping that I guess.

I do think it's telling that (AFAIK) the individual mice don't really have a pop-cultural presence the way the Seven Dwarfs do, but I'm not sure any of these films' supporting casts get back that distinctiveness until Little Mermaid.

going back and watching some of these as an adult I was struck by how much some of these films are split between scenes that drive the plot and then extended songs/gags. Like I had forgotten how much of Snow White is literally just the dwarves clowning around. Cinderella's problem is that the songs/characters aren't really up to par with previous stuff. Bibbity-Boppity-Boo is an okay song I guess but the sequence hung on it isn't particularly memorable.

I'm okay with that format in Snow White, since building up the mutual affection between Snow White and the Dwarfs is kinda key to the plot; it's a reasonable way of making a feature-length production out of a pretty straightforward little fairy tale. But the more of these I see, the more I like Pinocchio, whose Bildungsroman structure can support any number of imaginative episodes without feeling padded.

agree it's easy for the gag sequences to feel like padding

Pinnochio is so fucking dark (my daughter did not dig it, unsurprisingly)

I'm a tad annoyed I missed the start of these polls because around the same time my sister and I were going through a lot of these films (though mostly ones we'd already seen). We were laughing quite a lot at the cat and mouse stuff, especially when they take their hats off looking miserable.

i more or less agree w/ the poll results: always found cinderella pretty boring, though i'd rate peter pan a little higher. rewatched alice a few weeks ago and it's still as gorgeous and dazzling as ever.

Pinocchio is terrifying. Turning into a donkey, the child catcher who takes children to the island: 'they don't come back as boys!'

have more recent reissues/rereleases of Peter Pan done about the "what makes the red man red" stuff? do they cut those scenes or leave them in?

why would they take them out

I don't really respect companies that try to excise their racist pasts

The best possible way to approach this issue, imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_oEOdIBOpU

well they're still refusing to make Song of the South available

The best possible way to approach this issue, imo

yup. there's similar bits prefacing various Warner Bros and Disney collections

Finished with Cinderella. I admit, it picked up a good bit once the animal friends started making the dress ("leave the sewing to the women!" though - eyeroll), and there are some good emotional highs and lows: Cinderella's gratitude for the dress, suddenly turned to her misery due to the cruel assault of the stepsisters. The magic stuff is cute too. But still, it plays very weird now, not unlike Sleeping Beauty, in that the fairy tale's core retains storybook simplicity (the Prince is a total blank, Cinderella is just a pure-hearted victim, they have no dialogue together at all) but every other aspect gets puffed up and elaborated into family-friendly Fifties versions of comic relief and antics ("your blood pressure, sire!"). In the process, the margins basically take over the story; it really should be called The Mice.

Some of those sequences work well; I loved the King and the Grand Duke bouncing up and down on the bed arguing, and the dress-making really was a charming little sequence. But more than a couple minutes at a go of cat-and-mouse stuff just feels cheap (oh yay the mouse got out from under the dish, OH NO THE CAT BROUGHT THE DISH BACK DOWN AGAIN), and meanwhile we have a protagonist who does almost nothing to advance her own story, and a love interest who's never seen in close-up. For all that I resent politically in the 90s films, I think they have a better balance of these elements - Aladdin, in particular, really takes the time to introduce both its main characters, though perhaps the comic relief/charm offensive scenes aren't as timeless. (It's also fifteen minutes longer, to be fair.) Snow White, for its part, just stays more or less consistently true to its storybook vibe and is much stronger for it.

Re: the horror-show aspects of Pinocchio, agreed totally... there was some great discussion back on Disney animated features: the golden age (1937-42) .

Waiting for an adaptation of Cinderella that preserves the Grimm version, complete with one of the stepsisters cutting off part of her foot to make it fit the slipper, and with the doves pecking out the stepsisters's eyes during Cinderella's wedding to the Prince.

Would watch; another thing missing here is a proper comeuppance for the wicked step-family, though naturally we can imagine their grumbling.

I seem to remember yet another version of the story--the Perrault?--where either the stepmother or one of the sisters, having fraudulently tried on the shoes,, is forced to dance until she dies of exhaustion.

I disagree that the Sleeping Beauty prince is a total blank, he seemed startling to me compared to the ones in Cinderella and Snow White.

No, you're right, he actually does have scenes on his own and stuff. It's still underwritten though, or maybe I'm just really attached to my hypothetical movie about a guy growing up under the shadow of a baffling arranged marriage, and a girl who's been raised knowing nothing at all about it. I mean there's totally a story there, but it's like "Oh, and by the way you're a princess!" "Oh neat, but go back to what you were saying before about the cake!"

Sleeping Beauty Prince actually has a bit of agency/stuff to do - Cinderella's is a total void

xp

also, friend just linked me this great article on Cinderella variants: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2015/03/13/392358854/a-girl-a-shoe-a-prince-the-endlessly-evolving-cinderella

I seem to remember yet another version of the story--the Perrault?--where either the stepmother or one of the sisters, having fraudulently tried on the shoes,, is forced to dance until she dies of exhaustion.

― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko), Wednesday, April 22, 2015 4:49 PM (2 hours ago)

you are prob thinking of the grimm version of snow white, which ends with the wicked queen being subjected to this fate at snow's wedding. and it's a happy ending!

Cinderella is great fuck the haterz in this thread.

Showing the "What Makes the Red Man Red" sequence to my class tomorrow as part of teaching Peter Pan (the novel). Very interested to see what kind of discussion it generates.

just saw a 70mm print of sleeping beauty sitting in the fourth row of my local theater, which was blessedly free of hecklers and talkers. prob one of my top 5 movie experiences ever, honestly. was sitting in just the right spot to get blasted by the soundtrack and be able to enjoy every frame of the picture. the movie itself is just ridiculously elaborate and beautiful, feels almost like visiting a cathedral or something. hadn't seen any of it since i was very, very young and was surprised how emotional it made me just to hear the music again. that stuff really sticks with you.

sad moment: the theater director announced beforehand that disney wasn't going to loan out any more 70mm prints of this film, so this would prob be the last ever screening of its kind.

Does Cinderella know that she’s dancing with the prince during the ball? Or does she think he’s just some random hot hunk? And it’s not until the following morning that she overhears Lady Tremaine talking about “the prince” that she finally realizes it and drops the dishes in shock?

Following on from Disney animated features: the golden age (1937-42) , and skipping over the "package films" of the Forties, here's a little pack of postwar fantasies.

was dismayed to see that the '42-'50 era was not covered because HOLY SHIT imo the peak of the studio was '40-'55 or so, and those package films are a big reason why. The Three Caballeros has been in heavy rotation in my house for years, but thx to Disney+ other stuff from this era is now readily available and some of the sequences strewn across in Melody Time, Make Mine Music, Saludos Amigos, Fun and Fancy Free are top tier:

- Mickey and the Beanstalk is the best of the trio (Mickey/Donald/Goofy) shorts. Great physical comedy, combined with gorgeous visuals, the night-time beanstalk-growing sequence is perfect.
- my eyes practically fell out of my head when I saw Blame it on the Samba for the first time last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn22ofUCNvs
- Peter and the Wolf!
- Benny Goodman "After You've Gone": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OteJW-nraLw

The studio was downright psychedelic at this point, running riot with the ideas and techniques from Fantasia.

I know I'm in a minority of those sadly clinging to physical media at this point, but thankfully most of that era is available on Blu-ray via Disney Movie Club.

dunno why the youtube of Blame it on the Samba is labelled 1955 - that was 1948 (from Melody Time)

xps