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

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

haaa, i've actually been thinking about returning to these polls to finally do one for the package films! i've seen a few of them recently thanks to Disney+ and yeah they all seem to at least have some moments of bonkers trippy inspiration and masterful, labor-intensive, full animation. also some really square, boring dross imho. but yeah i should track down a copy of make mine music and get on this....

We had Make Mine Music taped on vhs, watched the parts I liked - Peter and the Wolf and the Singing Whale - over and over. But my problem with the package film is that they are really uneven, and I had more fun watching taped compilations of the shorts.

they are uneven but the heights are very high

I've realized as an adult that a bunch of the individual pieces from the package films were things I initially saw *in school* because teachers had access to filmstrips of individual shorts

this was cinderella, obviously, for the songs and the zuckerberg/lucifer prophecy

the zuckerberg/lucifer prophecy

the whatnow?

https://yarn.co/yarn-clip/c3a79d14-93b4-4e5e-bd17-258f0ae9acfb

Lady and the Tramp and Cinderella are two of my all-time faves – I think they’re both pretty great, and I like their (comparatively) light and welcoming vibe. Sleeping Beauty is an animation triumph, but kind of a snooze (pardon the joke). Alice in Wonderland? It’s OK, I guess; surprised to see it dominate this poll. Haven’t watched Peter Pan since I was a kid.

if sleeping beauty's story/characters were anywhere close to the quality of the animation, it'd be inarguably in the top 3 all-time disney, maybe one of the most celebrated films of its era.

Word!

Sleeping Beauty is the first movie I remember seeing in a theatre. It's my favorite of this era by far. I don't really care about the weak characters. The fairy godmothers are good enough.

The problem with Alice is that they shoehorned a generic villain into it. The first half hour is great.

Love the music / sound design in Alice

Recently watched several of these with my 5y old daughter.

She liked Alice but I don't get its appeal at all. Not only is a major example of the 'it was all a dream' type of terrible story endings, it's really all one extended fever dream. Every character she encounters is impossible to reason with. Perhaps it is all a poetic take on various psychological issues but I find it way to frustrating to enjoy.

Sleeping Beauty has lovely art and I enjoyed the one joke with the fairy godmothers arguing over the colour of the dress. It would have been better if the movie had more jokes than the one joke.

I remember liking Peter Pan a lot when I was a kid. It didn't age well. Peter is a pretty unlikable jerk, the bits with the Indians are bad & it's also pretty dated in its treatment of the female characters. But all of the scenes featuring the crocodile were excellent.

Haven't watched the other two yet.

I hate to be that guy re: source material, but the Lewis Carroll book is so famous (and I’ve read it so many times), it’s kind of hard to get into any adaptation.

(re: Alice)

Jan Švankmajer's Alice is an amazing film, one of my favourites, it has lived in my head since I first saw it 30 years ago. The Disney one is a absorbing fever dream, agreed, I do not need a gripping plot or dialogue from a Disney film, the visuals and (especially) the music are what I'm here for (this sounds like the arguments I have with people about Antonioni) so it will always rank as my #1.

The Tim Burton Alice is the fucking worst, could not get through more than half an hour.

XXP

I’d say the two kings bickering in Sleeping Beauty holds up pretty well.

One of my favorite elements of Cinderella is the king who really wants a baby (grandchild) – it’s such a nice (and “against the grain”) touch.

oh wow, i couldn't *stand* the Sleeping Beauty kings! different strokes.

I watched all the disney animated features up to y2k-ish in chronological order about 2 years ago.

Peter Pan was one of the most fun, and i anticipated its offensiveness . Lady and the Tramp otoh was *shockingly* offensive.

I much prefer Svenkmajer's Alice to Disney's, found the Disney version boring.

The Little Mermaid was one of the contenders, but Karel Kachyna's Little Mermaid is also insanely beautiful. Likewise Beauty and the Beast/Cocteau.

Disney Alice for me as an adult now is all about the art (and the music).Background artist Mary Blair brought that gorgeous modernist style that is so different from their classic “house” style & every time I watch it I just get lost in those gorgeous colors & illustrations

Also it was the one I rewatched the most as a kid because of the humor & weirdness of it

sleeping beauty is just so gorgeous and ornate and brilliantly done that i can forgive the weakness of the story and some of the characterizations. i remember how surprised i was when i read the original fairy tale and discovered that the princess originally fell asleep for a hundred years (as opposed to the movie, where it seems to be only for a couple hours).

"All one extended fever dream" and "every character she encounters is impossible to reason with" should be elements in any decent Alice In Wonderland adaptation imo.

One of my favorite elements of Cinderella is the king who really wants a baby (grandchild) – it’s such a nice (and “against the grain”) touch.

He needs a successor to the bloodline, this is king stuff 101

He’s specifically enchanted with the idea of a baby, though (that’s why I put “grandchild” in parentheses; to acknowledge that obvious point). He wants to play with a baby, lavish love upon a baby. This is not a traditional way to portray a king.

(...or a man in general, really!)

It's weird, this thread is mainly making me want to watch Sleeping Beauty again, but on, like, an IMAX screen. Maybe with the dialogue muted or something. But I would love to see those woods and the dragon fight just sprawling across the screen.

― Doctor Casino, Sunday, February 2, 2014 11:13 AM bookmarkflaglink

So I finally caught a film screening of this, in 70mm at the Museum of the Moving Image on Saturday! And I gotta say... it was great! The big screen really favored all the background and deep-focus stuff, even if the character animation shows a few shortcuts that would not have passed muster before WWII. But probably the real benefit was just seeing it with an audience; the energy in the room really changed my whole response to the extended comic antics with the fairies. And I'd remembered there being like four tedious scenes of dumb nonsense with the comical kings, but it's really just one scene, and that mostly played well too!

ALL THAT BEING SAID... it's still not as "magical" as it ought to be, IMHO. The genuinely strange, uncanny, fairy-tale wonder and danger of Snow White definitely shows up in the art, and in the most vivid sequences (basically the last act). But the sheer quantity of goofy midcentury newspaper-strip antics, even with the jokes landing better, kinda takes something away for me. Really, we're already on the slide towards cartoons full of dumb contemporary references. Although I'd probably enjoy an extended discussion of the fairy material as a commentary on the purported automation and ease of housework within the postwar domestic ideal. There's at least one line by the fairies that makes it explicit they expected audiences to "get" this though I can't recall what it was.