I voted for this beatbox cover of "Trouble" to win Response of the Year ...

http://www.youtube.com/v/XyKJfRpu8_E?version=3&autohide=1&autohide=1&feature=share&showinfo=1&autoplay=1&attribution_tag=92rpBqaJDoNVgNs_0V35HA

Legends of the Screen: Robin Hood

There have been few stories adapted for film more often than Robin Hood.  Off the top of my head, Cinderella and Snow White are perhaps the only ones that can rival the legendary screen favorite.  The first film to feature our favorite outlaw came out in 1908, with a few more silent film appearances before Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckled through the 1922 production.  Since then, he has starred in dozens of films and tv shows, from technicolor spectacles to slapstick comedies to gritty reboots and animated fantasies.

Of course, the legend itself has been growing for the past 600 some-odd years.  How is it that one story can have lived for so long and remained so popular?  Well, here's a hint: it's not the same story.  Even looking at the short time Robin Hood has lived on film, there are wildly different characterizations and values for each version.  Some elements remain the same, but each story has a different message.  What is so amazing about Robin hood is that his morals and adventures do not tell us so much about the hero as the values of the culture when that particular portrayal came about.

Let's journey back to early Medieval Britain, the birthplace of our hero.  Some maintain that Robin Hood, or Robbehood, or Robyne Hude was indeed a real person in the 13th century, but whether he was or not certainly makes little difference in the grand scheme of things.  The legend almost certainly encompassed more than whatever grain of connection could be tied to any actual Robin that may or may not have existed.  The earliest incarnations of Robin Hood are as a yeoman, a free man of common birth, a champion of the everyday people.  Robin Hood was a hero of the people and closely associated with MayDay celebrations, where his first connection to Marion, Lady of May, was made.

It was not until the 16th century that his status was elevated to make the hero noble, eventually becoming an Earl, and then stalwart contemporary of King Richard.  His criminal life was now justified by the vacuum created by the absence of the King and the his burgeoning loyalty to the crown turned the stories from revolts led by ordinary landowners to a lesson in steadfast support of the conventions of courtly life.

As time went on, the severity of his support for the crown gave way to lighthearted comedy: Robin became a mastery of trickery, often being duped himself.  His antics were recorded as ballads featuring different members of his Merry Men or various enemies he would encounter.  The more farcical stories played down the stiff and saintly aspects of earlier versions of the legend.

The Victorian era brought new aspects of Robin Hood.  His relationship with Marian rose in prominence and status, embodying the victorian ideals of courtship and softening the grittier nature of the stories.  This was also the first time that Robin was portrayed as a Saxon pitted against Norman corruption, noted in the immensely popular novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.  Robin could now boast a firmly English lineage that spoke to the national pride of Britain.


It would indeed be madness to review all however-many productions of Robin Hood there are, but I will do some of the most iconic (though by no means necessarily best quality) versions, starting with the 1922 Fairbanks version.

Robin Hood (1922)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952)
Robin Hood (1973)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
Robin Hood (2010)

Star-Struck: Seven Brides For Seven Brothers

Bless that Beautiful Hide

Let's pause to consider the weight of the moment where I finally finish a series I've started.  It may have taken, what- a year(!?) to review the four movies in this particular vignette, but gosh darn it, the momentous occasion has arrived at last.  Now if I could only find that documentary on El Grupo, I could overcome the infinite stall on my Disney project...

Anyways- onward ho!  So it's 1954 Hollywood and we are somewhere around the zenith of the technicolor musical spectacular.  Lavish productions with massive budgets and elaborate staging were constantly vying to outdo each other, so it's kind of interesting one of the most popular and enduring musicals of the era was none of those things.  SBSB (SB squared??) was a modest project in all aspects, receiving little attention during its making, and was constantly being cut to feed the bloated Brigadoon that carried most of MGM's "serious" hopes.  Perhaps it was that lack of desperation to impress, to imprint every aspect of SBSB with a sense of IMPORTANCE that caused it to soar where it's overwrought cousin bombed, despite things like it being painfully obvious that the directors weren't even trying to hide the fact that the entire film was shot in a studio warehouse.

The choreography and the cast are the major highlights of the film.  The two main leads, Jane Powell and Howard Keel, are paired as well as any leading couple I've seen on screen.  I really buy into their story- her longing for a real relationship coupled with her fiery resolution to nor settle for anything less, and his charm and bewilderment at meeting someone who could actually equal and challenge his way of life.  This is Howard Keel at his finest- all bravado, all swagger, all man, dominating every room he enters like some kind of stallion.  Men just aren't like that on film any more, (unless being portrayed as misogynistic meatheads) and I'm not saying that it needs to be that way again, but gaaah, it's something to marvel at.

The rest of the cast is pretty great too.  I love, love, love all the brothers in their skittles rainbow of colors. This movie may not be littered with glitter and feathers, but darn it, Hollywood knew how to use Technicolor and make it count!  Russ Tamblyn was adorable as Gideon and an amazing acrobat.  I loved to just look at Jeff Richards as Benjamin, even though he did pretty much no singing or dancing, though those sly choreographers keep that fact far from being obvious.  Plus he gets to marry the absolute knockout Julie Newmar in her pre-catwoman days.  Seriously, nobody has ever had a body like that woman.   And then there's Frank.  Fiesty, fiery, talented beyond all human reckoning Frank.  Tommy Rall was pitch-perfect here, and to see him explode on screen is breathtaking.

In fact, every sequence involving those guys dance is breathtaking.  It's all heavily rooted in ballet- many of the dancers came from that background, but its so brash and utterly masculine.  The barn-raising sequence is, of course the ultimate expression of this.  The grace with which the brothers woo their partners is equally matched by their barely-contained, testosterone-fueled desire to kick some butt.  And it's not just "let's have a choreographed fight where my high-kicks scare you off."  No, you know whoever calls them a pansy is going to get punched.  Really punched.  And then manfully laughed at.

The songs are pretty good too.  They may not be the best of any musical ever, but they are done well.  I love "Bless Your Beautiful Hide" and "Lonsesome Polecat" especially.  Overall, I think the reason why SBSB has sustained such popularity over they years is precisely because of it's cobbled together production.  Not to say that any piece of crap that is tossed out without care or attention is good, the people on both sides of the camera were obviously extraordinarily talented and gave at least some care to the film.  But it doesn't feel overworked, like everyone was standing on pins and needles because everything HAS TO BE PERFECT.  SBSB comes off as fresh, as sincere.  Now maybe not a single person felt sincerely about this film, but I find it hard to believe they weren't at least sincerely having fun making it.  Joy seems to permeate every frame.  And if that isn't the case, then I would suggest this really is the best-crafted film in history because there is not a thing that would indicate it.  Plus, you know, Howard Keel. *heart*

My Rating: 10/10
**********

The Disney Derring-Do: A Timeline

So I've decided to give a massively general overview of the chronology of Walt Disney Features: the ups, downs, general eras, etc.  I have (and will continue to) gone deeper into the specific backgrounds and ramifications of each individual movie, but I think a grand, sweeping overview of the general moods of each era might be good for those of you who haven't been.... let's say as invested as I am.

Walt Disney Animation goes back a long freaking way.  And yeah, I am going to be dealing (primarily) with the canon features, but what's a good roadtrip without detours?  In the very, very beginning, two brothers came to LA all dewey-eyed to set up an animation studio.  Walt was an animator and the creative brains, while Roy handled the business aspects and made sure Walt didn't throw all the money away (something that would prove to be harder than you might think).   Disney shorts would never be as bitingly broad or humorous as Tex Avery cartoons in the 40-50s or racy as the Betty Boops and others of the 20s-30s, but they were entertainment lavished with love for the art.  The absolute best of Walt's work would always have that transparant affection for his medium shining through.  And from that love blossomed an era of pioneering; most notably with sound on Steamboat Willie and color in Flowers and Trees, the latter a test run of the effects crucial to making the first feature-length project a viable option.

And with that feature film (obviously Snow White) we are ushered into the first definitive age of Disney Features: The Golden Age.  These five films boast Walt's deepest level of care and concern with the animated feature.  Never again would he be so personally invested in full-length animations, and no other movies would be as starkly and unabashedly sincere.  For it is in sincerety that the true success of Disney lies.  We kind of lose touch with that in face of this massive conglomerate, this impersonal, impenetrable brand that is Disney, but then there was no empire.  There was just a man who wanted to elevate animation and for everyone else to love it just as much as he, no matter what the risk.  Every single film was a monumental gamble: some paid off and some bombed, but it can never be said that he compromised his unique vision.  Ironically, the more care and attention Walt lavished on a film, the worse it seemed to fare in the U.S. box-office.  Pinocchio and Fantasia (the latter being the most artistically advanced animated film ever) were created using beautiful oils and brought animation forward in ways something even as monumental as Snow White couldn't have possibly imagined, despite their financial misgivings.  The studio was saved for another day by Dumbo, the cheap, but no less magical, wonder, though behind-the-scenes relations were forever marred by an animators strike.  Walt continued the tradition of following success with the opulent production of Bambi despite popular tastes indicating the cheaper fare was more palletable.  And frankly, good for him, though it probably caused Roy and the financial team no end of sleepless nights.  While I would not be opposed to films as charming as Dumbo, there is something to be said about a man who had the means to (and does) make commercial masterpieces, while still saying,"Screw the public tastes, I'll make what I like!"

Alas, it was not to last.   In addition to the increasingly expensive films with increasingly little return or critical warmth, Walt had to contend with WWII and the loss of the European market, as well as the restrictions of wartime tastes for entertainment.  Pretty much the rest of the 40s were relegated to a series of package films; cheap shorts strung together in bastardized variations of Fantasia, but without the budget or scope.  These movies cost very little to make and got little in return.  I consider them a placeholder in the Disney chronology- keeping the name alive and the animators from getting rusty, but mostly just kicking around waiting for something better to come along.

And ironically, that something better started with the 2nd princess installment, Cinderella.  Through very few of the Disney films actually feature princesses, their overwhelming importance make it hard to see otherwise.  The Silver Age was not as innovative or vibrant as before, but the animation itself began to come into its own, being both more convincing and what we would now label "Disney-ish" in terms of design.  Of course, this is also the blossoming of the empire, with his ventures seeping into television, live action and the piece de resistance, Disneyland.  Walt was losing interest in strict animation, which is probably why the culmination of the Silver Age looked like and had very little to do with the man himself.  I am of course, referring to Sleeping Beauty, the child of Eyvind Earle more than anyone else, and the singularly most unified film in aesthetic pleasure that hase ever been released on film.   Gah, that movie is gorgeous.

And yet again we plunge into darkness, with one insidious invention, the Xerox machine.  Of course other factors were at stake, including the decline of Walt's health and void that the keystone left when he was removed.  But the root of every problem I have with the films from the "wandering years" can be trace back to the inherent nature of Xerox: cheapness, decline in quality, and just a complete lack of care.  The saving grace of Disney had always been always sincerity, but these films were more often than not sincere about absolutely nothing but slapping cells together to squeeze out another dime.  Now some were more hit than miss, but the overall morale from the 60s all the way to the 80s was a shambles.  Television and live-action films were the new bread-and-butter, while the animation department was sucking the company dry.  The department constantly teetered on the edge of oblivion and soured many up-and-coming animators on "The Dream", including Tim Burton, Richard Rich, and most infamously, Don Bluth.   Noone could seem to find a way out of the muck, and after a mass of convoluted takeovers, takebacks, backstabbings and betrayals, a system emerged to cycle three movies in production at a time, providing a steady backbone of purpose.

Now where the Renaissance began is pretty hard to pin down, almost as arbitrary as who was/is the evil poisoner of the Disney good name or who was responsible for its rescue.  Though hints of the future were prehaps glinting in its predecessors, it's universal that with the breakout renewal of yet another Princess film, this time the Little Mermaid and its broadway-style musical romance formula (that would be copied over and over again), the renaissance was in full swing.  Hit after hit danced their way to the box office and hearts of audiences, including myself.  These were the movies I first saw in theaters, the nourishment of my childhood.  Where the Renaissance ended is perhaps even more hotly debated than where it began: the first signs of waning were as early as Pocahontas, while the last major success was Tarzan, and I would even argue the department wasn't in its death throes for yet another two films.

Whatever the case, by the time Atlantis tolled the bell of doom and I was solidly in my teens, Disney was yet-again synonmyous with cheap "kiddie fare."  Pixar was on the rise and 3d amination was threatening to snub out traditional animation forever.  Every single film from 2001 to 2008 was more dispiriting than the last, and I had completely given up on even attempting to watch the new Disney releases after Brother Bear tore out my heart and stamped all over it.  Even the company announced they were closing their traditional animation department, making Home on the Range (Home on the Range!?  Seriously, that's how you wanted to go out?) their last 2d animated film.  The giant had finally been laid to rest, not with a bang, but a slow wheezing wimper to make room for more Chicken Littles.

Only... not so much.  Disney bought its one-time partner Pixar and with the flood of new animators pouring in, reopened the doors for at least one last film, a princess film, no less: The Princess and the Frog.  Within a year, it was followed by the convoluted production of Rapunzel Unbraided, eventually known by the equally snarky title, Tangled.  And that's kind of where we sit now, at the edge of something, whether it is the cusp of a new era or the final teeter before sinking over the edge, it's really hard to tell.  But I'll tell you one thing: I'll be there every step of the way.

Star-Struck: Showboat

Ev'rybody's Sure to Go!

It must be admitted that I had a really hard time choosing between Show Boat and Seven Brides for the number 1 spot.  They are both the peak of their forms: Show Boat as a beautiful tearjerker and Brides as a raucous comedy.  Picking one basically says one style is better than the other, and my preference changes with the hour.  So, since this series is qualified as the best Howard Keel films, I'm going to reserve no. 1 for my favorite performance by Howard Keel.  And that, my dears, you will have to wait for until next time.  

Showboat went through several incarnations before the 1951 version I am reviewing, starting with a novel by Edna Ferber.  It's a bit of an epic tragedy spanning decades and following the fortunes of a family-run show boat business on the titular Cotton Blossom, especially the beautiful and talented Magnolia "Nolie"Hawks.  By the time we get to our film, a lot of the "harsher" themes had been dramatically softened or straight-up removed: racism, miscegenation, poverty, and the ending was brightened considerably.  Sometimes it is hardly noticable and at other points it completely screws the plot.  The biggest case is the casting of Julie LaVerne with a white Ava Gardner over the black Lena Horne and removing many strong hints to her genetic background when the studio balked.  Ironically, the segment pointing out the injustices of miscegenation (interracial marriage) was sanitized to the point of making no sense for fear of.... showing an interracial couple on film.

None of that to say that Ava Gardner did not portray her part well.  In fact, she was the best performance of the film.  I grew up not ten miles from Smithfield, NC: her birth and final resting place.  I am no small fan of Ava, and she was heart-wrenchingly captivating from the beginning to the final frame.  Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson team up for the first time here, him as the charming, roving gambler and her as the helplessly naive and smitten Nolie, who serves as a somewhat more successful foil to the spiraling shambles of Julie when both woman are eventually abandoned.  Keel is true to form as the dashing sly fox- the man who swoops in and tempts you to run away even though you know its not going end well.  

Of course, the real show-stealer is the song Ol Man River, performed here by William Warfield.  The whole sequence, panning down the "Mississippi" as the Cotton Blossom takes off is just completely beautiful.  Best part of the film, hands down.  Can't help Loving Dat Man, is, of course, a classic.  I've hear Ava Gardner's original recording of her songs, and while she might not have been as technically proficient as Annette Warren, her dub, I like her version.  The staging of pretty much all the numbers is more cinematic than the 1936 version and I am glad a lot of the extraneous songs were clipped.  Even so, there are still nearly enough songs to weary you out; it teeters right on the edge.  Making Ellie and Frank a Fred 'n Ginger style team rather than a couple of hoofers was also a nice touch for the screen and their numbers are so well done I don't mind that they kinda drag the pacing down a bit.

Showboat is a marvelous film in just about every way possible.  The lush Technicolor cinematography, aided in the best way by wildly fabulous costumes, the beautiful score and amazing showpiece song, and the cast (looking only like Golden-era actors could look) gave thoroughly solid performances all around. I think it is the better than the 1936 version, it feels more like a cinematic experience, not so much a recording of the play.  The numbers are rearranged and tailored to suit a better pacing and scenes are shot so that I don't constantly feel like it's just a stage I am looking at.  It's an achingly beautiful film that begs you to smile through your tears when life seems hopeless, because there might be something better waiting for you 'round the next bend.

My Rating:
10/10**********

Star-Struck: Calamity Jane

When I Get Home, I'm Fixin' to Stay!

I originally planned on doing 5 films for this Star-Struck, including Annie Get Your Gun in the last position, but in my review it became more and more apparent I couldn't really list it as a greatest.  Now there are certainly reasons to see it, being Keel's first lead role, having the wonderful sparring duet I Can Do Without You and I do give props to Betty Hutton for doing her best with a tumultuous casting.  However, the metamessages of "ain't those injuns just so quaint and dumb" and " you can't expect your man to love you if you put your personal strengths ahead of his pride" plus the general backstage nastiness behind the production really sours my viewing.  This story was done almost identically 3 years later in Calamity Jane, and better, so that is the only one I shall review.  'Nuff said.


Calamity Jane was written for Doris Day by the brothers Warner to appease their box-office sweetheart after she was passed over for the title role in AGYG.  The movie is unabashedly similar to Annie from the basis on a historical female sharpshooter down to the appearance of Howard Keel.  However, Calamity takes the nasty-minded edge off Annie's themes and gives them a much-appreciated softening.  Here the "Injun" mentality is not as embarrassingly in-your-face, if only because their caricatures are largely brushed to the side as a casual fact of life outside the bigger storyline.  The main focus is the love quadrangle with Day as Calamity, hopelessly smitten with Lt. Danny, a man everyone cannot help but notice has no interest whatsoever in Calamity.  Both Danny and Calamity's old chum, Bill Hickok, fall for showgirl Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie) who comes to town looking for a chance at stardom.  While there are still some disparaging references to "female thinking," Calamity vastly improves on Annie because that the obvious reason Calamity and Danny can't be together is not because she is too manly to be loved, but that Danny is a superficial douche.  Sure, Howard Keel's character appreciates Calamity's makeovers, but he never asks her to give up any essential part of herself, and seems to fit best with her because of it.


I like Doris Day.  I like her voice, her on-screen cheeriness and the game way she went for her character.  Calamity isn't the glamorous role in the film you would expect a 50's starlet to be campaigning for, but it is the most interesting.  Bill Hickok is the most agreeable of Keel's film characters.  Often his charisma and charm must overcome his douchiness, the man you love in spite of yourself.  But here more than anywhere else he is the guy you really want the girl to go for, the guy that we ask why there can't be more of, and it suits him.  The supporting roles do well enough, I especially loved Dick Wesson doing his Francis Fryer routine.  Because a movie can always use a good drag number to liven things up.


The numbers are all quite good- Secret Love being the big Oscar-winning hit and a huge success for Doris Day.  The Deadwood Stage and The Windy City are catchy, although I will concede the one place Annie outperforms Calamity is in the feuding song: I Can do Without You, a bald copy of Anything You Can Do, cannot hold a patch on it's predecessor.  


Calamity Jane can borderline on silly at times with its 50's era sensibilities, but that doesn't stop it from being an absolutely enjoyable film.  For Howard Keel fans, I'd say this is his most likable character.  And it's a Doris Day western.  That kind of thing shore don't come 'round ev'ry day. : )


My Rating:
8/10 ********

The Disney Derring-Do: Bambi

Childhood Trauma: It's the Stuff of Life

Now I must admit I wasn't being entirely truthful in the timeline for Dumbo.  I'm trying to keep things as simple as I can- history can get really muddy if I let it and one of my objectives in these reviews is to try not to drag on with too many major references to films that were released after the one I'm reviewing.  Hindsight can be an asset, but it also kills a lot of the dramatic heft, and I loooove drama.  So here we go:  When Walt was still in his ambitious planning phase, sometime in the 30's, he acquired the rights to the story of a young roe buck.  The story had been slated for live action when author Felix Salten declared it too difficult a few years before.  Walt was eager to develop it and scheduled a release after Fantasia with a much less gristly and depressing story and what I consider important change from roe to whitetail to better distinguish the protagonist.  By 1940, the story was pretty much finalized, but two factors: the failure of Fantasia & Pinocchio and the already swollen budget of Bambi, a similar film, brought the project to a halt.  If Disney was going to survive, it could not release Bambi next- it would completely drain the funds and current box office trends indicated there would be very little return, effectively dooming the studio.  That's were Dumbo was actually shuttled in and out of production: to bring in quick revenue so Bambi could be financed.  I have got to hand it to Walt- yes, he could give the public exactly what they wanted, but ultimately he was going to make the movies that mattered to him.  Maybe not the best way to stay in business forever, but I think that is what makes the movies of the Golden Age so different in almost every way from the ones that will follow- at that time the man in charge was not obsessing over the bottom line, he truly wanted to make his medium something wonderful.  And maybe get some money out it too.  This is, after all, an American success story.

Armed with the revenue from Dumbo, we are back to the oil backgrounds that would become the standard for animation.  As in the animation, they are much more representational of the natural world than probably any other film, feeling more like plein-aire paintings than stylized illustrations.That is nothing, though, on the task the animators faced.  Looking at Snow White alone, I would have called them crazy, but somehow the animators pushed through to create the most realistic traditional animation I have ever seen.  Gone are the potato-sack deer, and in place are these majestic creatures that were unimaginably difficult to create.   Now there are still softer, more cutesy characters like Thumper and Flower, designed and developed to help offset the emotional weight of the story.  And they pretty much keep to the range of cute but not overly cloying.  It all depends on your sensitivity.   Wacky sidekicks aren't my thing, but I can handle these.  They are certainly needed considering the amount of utter terror and despair packed in.  If this version is "Disneyfied," I am pretty sure I never need to read the original book for my personal well-being.  Of all the movies in the Disney canon, there are only 3 I would suggest you don't show to younger kids.  Bambi is one of them.  Maybe we do baby kids too much, I'm not here to espouse my ideas on parenting, but I distinctly remember the sheer panic that lurked around every corner- the theme of man haunting me like the footsteps of DOOOOOM, and the most psychologically scarring part of all where the quails are whispering "don't fly, don't fly" until one goes absolutely nuts and I am screaming at the telly "DON"T FLY, YOU IDIOT!"  It may have happened offscreen, but I knew in my youth that bird got shot, and shot dead.  Though there are plenty of beautiful and sweet moments, the movie is constantly tinged with fear, and soon it feels like joy is simply a trick to let your guard down, proven by the heartbreaking realization that Bambi's mommy has died, and yes, yours will too one day.

Ack and somewhere in here, I need to talk about the music!  Calling Bambi a musical is somewhat misleading, there aren't but 3ish songs (unless you count the bird songs) and all are sung offscreen by a magic Disney Chorus.  Little April Shower is far and away the best with the rounds imitating the pattering of a rainstorm.  I do quite like Love is a Song, in fact I wish it could have switched places with I Bring You a Song because it it infinitely better.

Bambi is a beautifully done, technically ambitious film.  Though dotted with memorable vignettes that enchant with simple pleasures, it still has a strong undercurrent of darkness- too strong for my tastes.  It's a demanding film, especially for younger people, and with all that, it's not hard to imagine Bambi underperforming at the box office.  I've heard tales of mothers dragging screaming kiddos out of the theater- and I do understand them being bewildered at the studio that just put out films as far from each other as Dumbo and Bambi back-to-back.  It didn't help that the incredible newness and difficulty of this style slashed the production of cells from 10 feet of film to half a foot per day and ballooned the budget.  Not to say that it's all doom and gloom: this was a huuuuge boon to the animator's library, a place were you could go back and get references, either of the live footage collected or the animation that went into it.  Bambi ground out a lot of the hard work for realistic animal animation: for pity sakes, one shot of Bambi's mother was still being reused in Beauty and the Beast, some 50 years later.

So here we are, at the end of the Golden Age.  It seems like this is the best place to stop and reflect on some things that were ending and some things yet to come.  As I said earlier, Walt was driven to make what he considered the best his medium could offer.   Each film from this period has something that really distinguishes it: Snow White in the sheer amount of firsts and for proving animated features can be done and done well, Pinocchio in the lushness of its backgrounds and leaps in animation, Fantasia in the overall artistry and special effects innovation, Dumbo in the expressive character development, and for Bambi it's the culmination of technical proficiency.  That gave us 5 wonderful movies, but it also created a crapload of trouble.  The studio roller-coastered from success to bankruptcy, always teetering on the edge of oblivion.  The increasing demands on innovation coupled with tightening budgets caused disillusionment among the artists, who went on strike, effectively ending the genial extended family atmosphere at the studios and, I believe, destroying Walt's hands-on interest in animation.  When Bambi finished, Walt packed up with his closest animators to head south of the border for one final rally.  No film afterwards would see his hand so closely stamped on it.  A happier note, one coinciding with Walt's distancing influence, was the transition to animators supervising individual characters rather than sequences.  This allowed animators to develop more distinct styles, to the point where you can attribute types of characters to their animators by design and movement.  This is where the famous nine old men began to shine.  It happened some in Dumbo, more in Bambi, and would take root in the 50s.  I'll do my best from now on to add individual animation credits where I can, because I believe these are the real actors, moreso than the voice work in most occasions.  It's sad to say goodbye to a time as good as this, especially when I know the next few years are going to get pretty rough- next stop: Package Films.


Quote of the Film:
Don't fly. Whatever you do- Don't Fly!

My Rating:
7/10*******