From First to Worst: A Personal View of the Disney Animated Films (1 Viewer)

[Ernest Rister]

6. CINDERELLA

The problem with villains in the later Disney films is that they rarely inspire deep emotion in the audience because they never do any real harm to our protagonist. They may threaten harm, like Shere Khan in The Jungle Book, or they may hurt a close friend or relation of the protagonist in the last act, like Hades in Hercules, but the greatest Disney villains are the ones who truly take it to our heroes and cause them pain. This is where great drama is born.

Cinderella and the five Golden Age features understood that to take you on a complete emotional journey, your protagonist was going to have to struggle, and the greater the struggle, the greater the victory. This simple pillar of story construction is forgotten occasionally in Disney animation - Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas has no palpable relationship with our native American Heroine, and he is too overtly buffoonish to be taken seriously as either a character or a dramatic presence within the context of the film. The Sword in the Stone lacks a central primary antagonist altogether, ascerbating the episodic nature of the story. The Horned King in The Black Cauldron and Shan Yu in Mulan are both fearsome-looking warlords, yet they lack personality and are actually peripheral antagonists (the true antagonist in Mulan is the society Mulan is trapped within, the true antagonist in The Black Cauldron is Taran's own thirst for adult respect).

In a sense, 1950's Cinderella was "Snow White II". In order to revive the status of the animated feature, Disney returned to what audiences had responded to with his Golden Age features. Like Snow White, lurking at the center of the story was a young girl victimized by a cruel and jealous woman. The relationship is personal, and both characters are locked in a struggle defined by hope versus hate. Just as Snow White was made great because of the witch, Cinderella works so well because of the Stepmother.

The Wicked Stepmother (or, the "Lady Tremaine" as she is known in the film) is one of the rare Disney antagonists audiences come to truly loathe. She is driven by her parental zeal to promote the interests of her two birth children, while her step-daughter, Cinderella, highlights every flaw her own children possess. Tremaine's children are awkward, spoiled, plain, and crude. Cinderella is graceful, compassionate, pretty and tactful. Tremaine dreams of upward mobility for her own offspring, and sees the natural gifts of Cinderella as a threat.

Tremaine is a marvel of sustained abuse. The story of the film in the Disney incarnation is built around the struggle between Tremaine's cruelty versus Cinderella's spirit. Cinderella is sustained by her hope that someday, things will improve for her. Tremaine is the force contstantly attacking that hope. Because Tremaine is shown harming Cinderella throughout the film, your response to her becomes visceral. The climax of the film, with two mice struggling to carry a key up a flight of steps, manages to achieve a level of suspense usually reserved for a Hitchcock film. Indeed, there are strong hints of Hitchcock's Rebecca throughout the film, with the Chateau serving as a sort of Parisian Maderlay, and the Stepmother echoing the bitter resentment of Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers.

After the near-financial collapse of the Disney studios in the early-40's, linear animated features fell by the wayside in favor of "package films" -- animated features comprised of several individually-produced shorts packaged together into one film. When Cinderella debuted in 1950, it marked the first long-form animated narrative film from Disney in almost eight years. The film was viewed as a great risk because of the then-fragile financial status of the Disney studios and the track record of Disney animated features at the box office, Snow White notwithstanding.

Accordingly, the film was produced with a lack of frills. Expensive multiplane shots are few and far between, and aside from the human leads, characters are drawn in a broad style lacking the detail that made Pinocchio such a costly endeavour. Bambi's animation was arduous and time-consuming because much of the motion came from the animators' own imagination. With Cinderella, Disney decided to solve costly staging problems by shooting a live-action version of the film first, based on the existing storyboards, which was used as motion and lighting reference. For these reasons, Cinderella lacks surface glamour and is rarely discussed among animation buffs. The best character animation in the film is reserved for the suporting cast, such as the mice and Ward Kimball's giddy feline villain, Lucifer.

Techincal issues aside, the film is a terrific piece of entertainment. I sometimes marvel at how the old Disney studios could take a ten minute story and expand it to 90 minutes without a sense of undue filler, how they could take one of the most familiar stories in the world and still manage to thrill you, even though you've known the ending to that story since you were four years old. Cinderella represents one of the best achievements by Disney from the perspective of pure storytelling. Audiences in 1950 certainly agreed, and the Cinderella gamble paid off. The film was a box-office smash and it allowed Disney to revive long-form animated narratives again. It was a film Walt was justifiably proud of, and because of the great drama between the Stepmother and Cinderella, it remains one of Disney's most popular films to this day.

(Platinum Edition DVD release rumoured for Fall 2005)

------

(to be continued)

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

I'm loving it, Its been so long since I saw Cinderella and your write up has me jazzed to eventually see it again when it hits DVD.

This doesn't have much to do with Cinderella itself, but I remember the first time I heard an ad for Cinderella 2, was when I really knew that some people at Disney had gone insane. I just thought that a Cinderella sequel would be pointless and bad and that it didn't need to be made, because the first one told all the story that needed to be told. I thought it kind of like making a sequel to Titanic.

Yay for Cinderella and thumbs way down for even the idea of making a follow up.

 

[Ernest Rister]

7. THE THREE CABALLEROS

In the early 40's, to counter America's entrance into WWII on the side of the British and Allied Forces, Adolph Hitler made overtures to Mexico, asking the nation to consider joining the Axis powers. By doing so, Hitler surmised, Mexico could "reclaim lost territories" in the American southwest. Hitler also made overtures to countries in Central and South America, inviting them to take up arms.

America was already fighting a war on two fronts, one in the Pacific, the other in Europe. In a propaganda effort to help stave off Nazi influence, America's Center for Inter-American Affairs approached popular filmmakers in Hollywood, asking them to produce films that would promote positive feelings between the three Americas. The filmmakers were guaranteed a subsidy to help cover costs, and were given free reign. One of the filmmakers who agreed to the proposition was Orson Welles, who went to South America to film It's All True. Another filmmaker who took the bait was Walt Disney.

The first film Walt made for the CIAA was Saludos Amigos, which was little more than a travelogue of Walt in South America, interspersed with a few shorts themed to the journey. The short feature proved to be popular beyond Walt's expectations, earning three Academy Award nominations and solid business at the box office. Emboldened by this, and the safety net of a government subsidy, Walt Disney produced a follow-up, The Three Caballeros, a film that stands today as the most eccentric, bizarre, and strange motion picture ever produced at the Disney studios.

A debate rages to this day about the place of American Federal Tax dollars used to subsidize and produce works of art. Some believe art should support itself or be funded through private donations, others believe artists should be free to express themselves without compromising their work. The Three Caballeros is an example of post-Fantasia Walt Disney working with a federally-subsidized safety net, and the result was an animated feature film with no plot, no story, a film that defies adequate description.

The film comes on like a package film. It begins with Donald receiving a film projector for his birthday, and as he opens more presents, each box contains a short cartoon. We expect this structure to continue throughout the movie, but after the second short cartoon, Walt pulls the rug out from under the movie, and soon, Donald has been pulled into a book about Brazil by his South American parrot friend, Jose. From this moment on, the film is a never-ending romp of music and imagery themed to South and Central America.

Even within such a loose free-forming journey, the film manages to become even stranger, taking a giant hard left turn in its third act and becoming an unexpected explosion of outright surrealism - the final 15 minutes play like a Latin American fever dream.

You either take The Three Caballeros on its own terms, or you leave it, depending on your personal tastes for experimental, visionary filmmaking of this kind. Like George Duning's Yellow Submarine and Disney's own Alice in Wonderland, the film is a celebration of imagination and whimsy.

For Walt, I think the lack of a point in the film was the point. Disney was attempting a work of entertainment free of narrative constraints, using the art form of animation and the sounds of latin music to enthrall his viewers. He continued to produce works of animation reliant only on music and bold visuals throughout the 40's in his package films, such as "Bumble Boogie" and "Trees" in Melody Time (1948), "After You've Gone", "All the Cats Join in" and "Without You" in Make Mine Music (1945). I find these works endlessly fascinating as they are so outside the mainstream of typical Disney fare, belying Walt's reputation as nothing more than a producer of innocuous children's films and known fairy tales.

The Three Caballeros is an undeniably bizarre film - but it is one I continue to champion. It contains some of the most striking visuals ever seen in a Disney film, and the musical score remains one of the most eclectic and powerful in the Disney canon. Ultimately, I admire the film for the same reasons I enjoy watching Gene Kelley and Donald O'Connor hoofing it up in the "Moses Supposes" number in Singin' in the Rain. Why does Singin' in the Rain stop dead in its tracks to show Kelly and O'Connor having some fun, dancing around a room? The real question is why not? The Three Caballeros is Walt Disney dancing, for no reason other than the joy of doing it.

(DVD released as part of the Gold Collection. DVD contains trailer and bonus cartoons.)

 

[Bon]

Heh! You certainly won't catch me defending it. But I find it interesting that you've picked out those segments in Fantasia 2000... those same three would probably be my favourites also. And I can certainly relate to your love of The Emperor's New Groove.

I continue to be amazed by the world's love of Beauty and the Beast. Personally I found it quite frustrating when I saw it a couple of years ago at IMAX- fantastic musical score, individual moments of greatness, but ultimately, such a mediocre and inconsistent overall effort. Has Ernest ever posted his review of the film here on HTF? It sums up my feelings perfectly.

-Bon

 

[Jerome Grate]

A good friend of mine gave my kids some old Disney cartoons on VHS, and I saw Bambi for the first time in years and I have to say (now forget it's vhs) but the quality of the film is outstanding. I have Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Seven Dwarf. I plan to show the kids over a few days these movies as well as make my own observations about the quality of the film. I saw at the end of Bambi how they created the stunning 3D effect of the forest as well as watching nature films to copy the movement of deer. Way ahead of it's time then, to bad the only time Disney exhibited this innovation was with Pixar, and that was it.

 

[george kaplan]

And I continue to be baffled by those who don't love it. It is truly one of the great Disney flicks. When I read Ernest's remark about villians I immediately thought of this film, as this is one of Disney's best villian's in my opinion. The film has great music, a great story, wonderfully animated and with great characters and funny dialogue. But to each their own.

I am about as close as you can come to being a completist when it comes to Disney animation. I've bought almost everything available, even the mediocre stuff, thinking that if nothing else, my 3 year old son might like it. But the Three Caballeros is one of the very few I've passed on. Just a complete bore to me. And it's not that I can't appreciate the more bizarre animation. I do own Yellow Submarine, Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, etc. I just find the Three Caballeros not just boring, but irritating. Donald is good on his own, but with these other two - yech. Their segment in Melody Time is the worst part of that movie too, adding an equally irritating organist. But again, just one man's opinion.

 

[Marvin Richardson]

Well, of the ones I've seen or remember seeing, here's my list (I own the ones with an *).

01. Fantasia*
02. Beauty And The Beast*
03. Bambi
04. The Lion King*
05. The Jungle Book*
06. Dumbo*
07. The Emperor's New Groove*
08. Aladdin
09. Peter Pan*
10. The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad
11. Pinocchio*
12. The Many Adventures Of Winnie-The-Pooh*
13. Lady And The Tramp*
14. The Little Mermaid*
15. 101 Dalmations*
16. Cinderella
17. Fantasia 2000*
18. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs*
19. The Rescuers Down Under
20. Sleeping Beauty*
21. Tarzan*
22. Alice In Wonderland*
23. The Rescuers
24. The Fox And The Hound
25. Lilo And Stitch*
26. Atlantis: The Lost Empire*
27. The Aristocats
28. Mulan
29. The Sword In The Stone
30. Hercules
31. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
32. The Black Cauldron
33. Pocahontas
34. Robin Hood
35. Dinosaur*

 

[doug zdanivsky]

Hmm.. Why is Hercules so down on everybody's list?

I thouroughly enjoyed it. The soundtrack, the cast, the winks at Disney's own rampant commercialism..

To each his own, I guess..

 

[Lew Crippen]

Thanks for the detailed comments Ernst. Although I would not be able to rank any of Disney’s features above Snow White, you present sound evidence as to why you rank as you do.

This is at the core of why I love Snow White more than the rest. Of course were a bit more emphasis placed on other aspects of the film, I too might well rank differently.

But then these five films are all so magical, that pretty much any ordering is reasonable.

 

[Alex Spindler]

Just a few statistics:
Comparing Ernest's list to IMDB's Ratings (just for fun)
ER's List

SectionAge AvgAverageLowHigh
 1-1019527.36.37.8
 11-2019847.36.57.8
 21-3019757.16.67.7
 31-4019796.76.17.2
 41-4819726.55.67.2

IMDB's List

SectionAge AvgAverageLowHigh
 1-1019627.67.47.8
 11-2019747.37.27.4
 21-30197076.87.2
 31-4019726.66.56.8
 41-4819876.25.66.4

Not a great deal of differences. Both lists suggest in some ways that, "They don't make them like they used to", although Ernest's top 10 skews pre-60's much more than IMDB's does. And they don't share near the affection for Tron or The Three Caballeros. Their list also puts 90's favorites like The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast in the top 10.

 

[TheLongshot]

Well, I think Tron should be ranked that high, for its pure balls for its time, and its uniqueness. I also think Tarzan is in the right spot. Tho it has faults, there is far more that is right about the film than wrong.

I also think Robin Hood gets slammed much more than it should. While it is not a technical marvel by any means, I've always thought it was a bunch of fun.

Jason

 

[doug zdanivsky]

But the acting, man! The dialogue! Oh, the humanity!

 

[DonMac]

My Top-5:
1. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (The first and still my favorite. Amazing just how well-constructed it is; the time just flies by when watching it.)
2. PINOCCHIO (The high point of Disney's animation)
3. FANTASIA (Great - the sequel's main accomplishment is to remind us of just how great the original is)
4. BAMBI (It just amazes me that Disney made this and the above 3 films within only a few years of each other)
5. PETER PAN (Disagree with Ernest's low ranking - this is a true classic)


RE: MatthewLouwrens' analysis of Fantasia:

Although I agree with most of what you say, I disagree with you on your view of the Rite of Spring section of the movie. First, Stravinsky wrote it about primitive human tribal rituals that have nothing at all to do with dinosaurs. Second, I've always hated the way Disney chopped up Stravinsky's music - it's all played out-of-order in a way that shows a lack of respect for the musical piece (it was the most recent piece in the film and the only one by a still-living composer, so wasn't widely seen as a "classic" at the time). I still love the animation in the sequence, just wish they had not tampered so much with the music. (Amazingly enough, it's Stravinsky's piece in Fantasy 2000 - The Firebird - that also gets tampered with musically the most in that film, with the first 1/3 of the music just cut out entirely.)

And you left out Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, which had nothing to do with the mythical creatures shown, but was just about the feeling of being in nature in the country side. But at least they didn't tamper with the music there

 

[Ernest Rister]

Just for the sake of discussion:

"First, Stravinsky wrote it about primitive human tribal rituals that have nothing at all to do with dinosaurs."

Dance of the Hours has nothing to do with hippos and alligators, and it certainly wasn't a satire of ballet. The Nutcracker Suite isn't a ballet of thistles, goldfish, mushrooms and frost fairies. Toccata and Fugue was written for the organ, not as a symphonic piece. The only two pieces of the original Fantasia that adhere somewhat to their original intent are "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "A Night on Bald Mountain". Fantasia/2000 repeated the trend.

"Second, I've always hated the way Disney chopped up Stravinsky's music - it's all played out-of-order in a way that shows a lack of respect for the musical piece (it was the most recent piece in the film and the only one by a still-living composer, so wasn't widely seen as a "classic" at the time)."

True, and music critics in 1940 took great exception to the alterations - but then every single musical piece in Fantasia received some sort of abridgement, alteration, or re-arrangement.

"I still love the animation in the sequence, just wish they had not tampered so much with the music. (Amazingly enough, it's Stravinsky's piece in Fantasy 2000 - The Firebird - that also gets tampered with musically the most in that film, with the first 1/3 of the music just cut out entirely.)"

Stravinsky himself blasted Disney after the film was released - if memory serves, I think he called Stokowski's treatment of his work and Fantasia itself an "imbecility". And yet, Straninsky was shown the piece in a rough form during a visit to the Disney studios prior to release, and there are many photogrpahs of Stravinsky holding up concept art for the piece and smiling from ear-to-ear. He walked in on one animator who - for whatever personal exploratory reason - was playing The Rite of Spring backwards for inspiration. The animator was mortified when he saw Stravinsky enter the room, fearing the great composer would be insulted by what he was doing. "Sounds good backwards, too!" Stravinsky reportedly said, smiling, before continuing on his tour.

The story most in dispute was Stravinsky's immediate reaction after seeing the rough version. "Ah, yes - that is just what I meant." he allegedly said. Stravinsky later claimed he never spoke those words.

The same day Stravinsky toured the studio, he agreed to sell Walt the rights to use The Firebird in a future version of Fantasia. When this fact was brought up, Stravinsy made the shocking claim that the day Stravinsky toured the studio, Walt strong-armed him, telling him that the Disney Studios were going to make an adaptation of The Firebird if he agreed or not, so he might as well get paid. The Disney family has always fiercely denied this story, and so, it was not without a certain pique that Roy Disney decided to use The Firebird in Fantasia/2000.

"And you left out Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, which had nothing to do with the mythical creatures shown, but was just about the feeling of being in nature in the country side. But at least they didn't tamper with the music there."

Matt may have ignored it, but I mentioned that it was a piece featuring moments of great beauty and poor taste, and "Beethoven's Sixth (Pastorale)" was indeed abridged in moments by Stokowski and Disney. Not by much - it's the longest single section in the film, and we're talking a few bars here and there - but it was abridged.

Fantasia/2000 continued the tradition, and also featured some tampering of the musical scores, such as the abridgement of The Firebird, and visuals that had nothing to do with the original intent of the composer. "Pines of Rome" is about the Roman Army returning to the capital city in glory - it has nothing to do with flying whales. "Carnival of the Animals" does not concern flamingos and yo-yos. Shostakovich's Piano Concerto does not concern the Little Tin Soldier. "Pomp and Circumstance" is not about Noah and the Flood, etc.

F2K did not meet the same critical response from music critics as Fantasia. By the new century, I suppose people are used to seeing classical music pieces in films used to express visuals that have little to do with composer's original intent. See the use of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring at the opening of Jade, Kubrick's use of "The Blue Danube" in 2001 and Beethoven's 9th in A Clockwork Orange, Coppola's use of Wagner in Apocalypse Now, Soderbergh's use of Claire de Lune in Ocean's Eleven, Oliver Stone's use of Barber's "Adagio for Strings" in Platoon, and on and on it goes. Even Fritz Lang quoted "Hall of the Mountain King" for his own purposes in M.

Popular music receives filmic interpretation all the time. Duning's Yellow Submarine is a spectacular example of animators interpreting the Beatles, and the entire music video format - with the exception of concert videos - thrives on visual interpretation of a song.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm only saying that the Fantasia experiment is specific -- it a visualized representation of the ideas and images inspired by a group of artists listening to classical music, it was not an attempt to faithfully reproduce what the composer had in mind while writing the music. I respect the opinions of people who are upset that the musical pieces were compressed, altered, re-arranged, or what have you, but if you object to the idea of visual accompaniment that has little to do with the composer's own intent, then you object to the Fantasia experiment itself. That is certainly your right, and many people before you have made the same critique, so don't feel alone.

In my opinion, Fantasia is a remarkable achievement, and the following statement is going to get me into some hot water...While a composer owns his work, he does not own the ideas and visions and dreams that his work inspires in other people. Fantasia explicitly states that the visuals were created by artists inspired by listening to classical music. The road show version of the film even begins each piece by placing the animators' visual in context with the original composer's intent. The tribal dances in "Rite of Spring" are mentioned in the intro to the Fantasia interpretation. This does not let Disney and Stokowski off the hook, but it should be pointed out that they never tried to hide the fact that their visualizations were their own, not the composers.

Cheers,

ER3

 

[Ernest Rister]

"But the acting, man! The dialogue! Oh, the humanity!"

There's a golly-gee innocence to Tron, in both dialogue and story. Many people compare it to Star Wars, but I think it has more in common with 30's films like The Wizard of Oz, King Kong and The Adventures of Robin Hood, also not the most realistic films ever made in terms of dialogue and acting. I don't fault Tron for what it is not, I admire it for what it is. Would a serious "Blade Runner"-esque attempt at realism improve the film? Maybe, but then you sacrifice some of the giddy retro charm. Again, these are my own personal rankings, I don't pretend to speak for anyone else.

Cheers,

ER3

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Whether it was deliberate on the part of the animators, in my mind at least, there is some kind of logical connection between the composer's idea and the visual element in Fantasia - even if that is buried under more whimsical animation ideas. There is a hell of a lot of artistic interpretation in the original film, but there is some small degree of connection to the composer. It's like an acknowledgement or mark of respect - We're going our own way, but this music inspired us and we will at least pay tribute to the ideas at inspired the music. That is largely abandoned in 2000, and I believe that makes the later film weaker.

Anyway, I've made my point enough. People may disagree with me, and that's fine.

 

[george kaplan]

Well Ernest, it's just a matter of opinion, but to me, the acting in The Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Robin Hood are the stuff of Olivier Shakespearean monologues compared to the acting in Tron (which is more akin to Gilligan's Island or Beverly Hillbillies in quality, IMO).

 

[DonMac]

Ernest Rister wrote:

Personally, I have no objection to the animation used for any of the segments in Fantasia, I just hate it when they altered the original music, in particular, what was done to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The music should be left untampered with and the visuals then set to it - but not the opposite way, with the music altered to fit the visuals. (I can understand why Igor Stravinsky was probably okay with what Disney was doing during the animation process and then only upset after it was finished - because only then would he had heard how they had chopped up his music!)

Despite my criticism of this, though, I still love Fantasia and think it's one of the greatest films ever made.

 

[doug zdanivsky]

Like I say, I remember seeing it as a kid and enjoying it..

But, again, it shows it's age, and I was dissapointed.. Cringing even..

Same thing when I got Top Gun on DVD..

"you can be my wingman anytime"..

Gaaaaawwd... :rolleyes

 

[Ernest Rister]

On the flip side, I remenber seeing it as a kid and disliking it intensely. Seeing it as an adult, I loved it. Almost 15 years after the theatrical debut, Disney released an "Exclusive Archive Collector's Edition" Laserdisc of the film, and by that time, vernacular like "bits" and "bytes" and "memories" and "ram" were all familiar. Back in 1982, no one had a clue (no pun intended) what the film was referring to with such terminology. Seeing the film in a decade where such concepts were pivotal to even a middle-school education, my appreciation and understanding of the film multiplied exponentially. Of all the modern films that are called ahead of their time, Tron stands head and shoulders over them all.