There’s Drama, There’s Excitement, There’s Harmony

1948’s Melody Time could have easily been the sequel to Make Mine Music. They follow the same format of animated shorts set to popular and modern music, 1940’s modern, some of the shorts leaning toward the abstract and some telling a straight story. This less-ambitious-than-Fantasia concert film format succeeded for Make Mine Music and it’ll succeed again for Melody Time.

A narrator sets up the sequences and the love story Once Upon a Wintertime kicks off the film. A really sweet Mary Blair styled short about 2 pairs of lovers, one pair human and the other rabbit, is a gentle little tale. But what is most memorable about it is the gorgeous art. Damn it, Mary Blair, why you so talented?

Bumble Boogie is great in all its abstractedness. Animated to a jazzy version of Flight of the Bumblebee, a little bee is just trying to escape the music. The surrealism could have easily been a part of the Pink Elephants scene in Dumbo, and the breakneck speed of the animation is only rivaled by the breakneck speed of the music. Fun fact: this was an abandoned scene from Fantasia and could have worked perfectly as juxtaposition against all the pomp and pageantry of the film.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed tells the story of the titular hero roaming The United States planting apple trees, in song of course. Miss Blair hit it out of the park again with the art direction. There is so much great, poetic imagery. As the piece comes to a close and orchard of apple blossomed trees melds with the pink, dusk sky to lead an old aged Johnny to Heaven. It’s just breath taking.

Little Toot is sort of a letdown after all we saw coming before it. The story of a rascally little tug boat is cute and all, but that’s about it. The animation is your standard, albeit quality, Disney animation. If it wasn’t for the tight harmonies of the Andrews Sisters telling the story, Little Toot would be rather stale in comparison to this line up.

Thankfully Trees picks up the feature with a poem about the life of a tree. Sounds dull, but it moved me. The short is beautifully animated and gave me a lot of deep thoughts about how important trees are. To be fair, I might have been on my 3^rd glass of wine when watching.

Blame It on the Samba plays like a reject from the Good Neighbor movies but that doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun. Donald and Jose Carioca are mixed a samba cocktail by the Aracuan Bird. There is live action footage of an organist and she’s phenomenal! Her fingers move at lightning speed and there is actually minimal animation going on around her. She didn’t need it, the playing is that captivating.

Finishing up the film is Pecos Bill. It’s got fun music and animation but I can’t help but feel that if they wanted to end on American Folklore, they should have ended it with Johnny Appleseed. The wacky animation is fine, but Appleseed’s imagery has so much more atmosphere and story is way more powerful.

If I had to pick a favorite of the less-ambitious-than-Fantasia concert films, I think Make Mine Music has a little more going for it but Melody Time is definitely worth a watch.

Never Saw Such a Dismal Pair

Being the huge Disney fan that I am, I often get asked what my favorite Disney movie is. That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child. That is if I had children. It’s my Sophie’s Choice as I like so many of them for so many different reasons. On the other hand, if you were to ask me what my least favorite Disney movie was I now have a firm answer: 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free.

What’s strange about me not liking it is that this package film contains one of my favorite Mickey Mouse cartoons, Mickey and the Beanstalk. I get great nostalgic feels from this one, I remember it was always paired with Dumbo when it aired in syndication. It has some really great character moments with Mickey, Donald Duck, and Goofy, a fun villain in Willie the Giant, and tells a classic fairy tale. Telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, Mickey and pals are on a quest to rescue the Magic Harp from Willie and restore happiness and the harvest to Happy Valley. The Harp falls under the underrated Disney beauties list, she’s gorgeous! But what I didn’t know was that in the feature film, this short is bookended by a really creepy birthday party for a little girl that only attended by Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. While I appreciate the snarky comments made by McCarthy, the whole endeavor becomes really odd. Does this little girl have no friends her age? Where are her parents? The live sequence last too long and all you want them to do is get to the damned cartoon.

Preceding Mickey and the Beanstalk Jiminy Cricket sets the stage for the story of Bongo, a circus bear who longs to live in the wild and gets his wish by breaking free while traveling on a train. He meets a female bear by the name of Lulubelle and they both form an attraction to each other but he also has to win her hand from a rival male, Lumpjaw. Lulubelle chooses Bongo by slapping him. Yes, slapping him. Square in the face. Bongo misinterprets this bit of violence because in the bear community a slap is how one shows affection. We are treated to a marathon length song about smacking the one you love. Lulubelle accidently slaps Lumpjaw and he takes her away as her own. After Bongo realizes the slap means I Love You, he challenges Lumpjaw. Spoiler Alert: Bongo wins and can finally slap Lulubelle. This is all lovingly narrated by Dinah Shore. Not only is this whole slapping thing really weird and disturbing, but the short as a whole is a little boring. I think my head scratching from all the slapping is what kept my interest.

This is one jumble of a mess of a movie. Mostly, the package films of the 40’s work pretty well, but Fun and Fancy Free really feels disjointed. The connecting threads don’t make sense and the first half is a total snooze. Glad I saw it, but I probably won’t be watching it again for quite a while.

Three Happy Chappies, with Snappy Sarepes

Have you ever wanted to see Donald Duck try his best to get tail feathers ruffled for a good 2/3rds of a movie before? Well, 1944’s The Three Caballeros is the film for you. You heard me right, for a good portion of this movie Donald is chasing women around south of the border.

The Three Caballeros is probably a more known in title than Saludos Amigos, and I’m sure that more than a handful of people think of them as the same movie, but being films about Latin America is pretty much where the similarities end (besides sharing Donald Duck and Jose Carioca). Where Saludos Amigos showcases the continent of South America during a goodwill tour with the Disney Artist, The Three Caballeros follow the complex storyline of Donald Duck opening birthday presents sent to him his pals in Latin America.

The feature starts simple enough with 2 short films; The Cold-Blooded Penguin, a cute story of a Penguin named Pablo from Argentina looking for warmer weather and The Flying Guachito , where a little boy from Uruguay races his winged donkey named Burrito. Caballeros really kicks in when Jose Carioca burst onto the scene with a rousing samba number in the Brazilian state of Baia. As Jose talks about the coastal state his silhouette is bathed in this gorgeous, warm pink light and we dip our toes in the pond of Surreal Land. There is a fantastic part of the sequence where a 2 man dance becomes a cock fight and back again. It is a great example of what I love most about animation, it is art in motion.

Upon returning from Baia Panchito Pistoles, a rooster representing Mexico, is introduced and we are treated to the Mexican celebration of Las Posadas via still paintings by Mary Blair. It’s quiet, it’s beautiful, and it’s touching. Then from here on out Donald Duck is in full horn dog mode as he tours Mexico on a magic Sarape! There is some really great Animation/Live action mixing in the sequences where the Caballeros learn about regional Mexican dances, which is odd since I’m pretty sure that Baia was not mixed, but the live actors were acting in front of a screen with the animation projected on it. Donald Dances with Women Patzuaro, he dances with women in Veracruz, and then he chases SEVERAL women on what seems to be the beaches of Acapulco but is most obviously a soundstage in some angles.

Donald seemingly falls in love with a singer representing the stars of Mexico and our foot now firmly planted in the Surreal Ocean. Donald moves his affection to a strange dancing flower woman hybrid and then falls for a Mexican woman conducting dancing cacti with her rider’s crop. Jose and Panchito join in the finale in an explosion of color and firecrackers.

The character animation in this one is fast and loose, almost Looney Toonsian. It’s a whole lot of fun to see them go off the animated rails a little but the very little story in it is a bit too fragmented. Are we watching an educational travelogue? Are we watching a cast of zany characters running around south of the border? Are we watching Donald Duck sow his wild oats whilst on a break from Daisy? What we do get is some really great imagery and fantastic music.

 

Aquarela do Brasil

1942’s Saludos Amigos is a bit of an odd duck in the Disney Animation Studio canon. It’s only 42 minutes long and a good portion of it is live action. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as I don’t have a great memory of the package films of the 40’s, but I thought this was a great little gem of Disney History.

We get to tag along with Walt Disney and a group of hand selected artist on their good will tour through South America. Sure, it reeks of the Good Neighbor Policy but it is so much fun to see parts of the world that were foreign to the eyes of a pre internet world. The Disney animation buff in me is totally delighted in seeing favorite artist like Frank Thomas and Mary Blair do their sketching and doodles in living color.

Playing more like a travelogue than an actual film, the shorts are tied together with the story of the animators getting inspiration from the surrounding lands and cultures. You’ve most likely seen the first 3 stories as standalone shorts and the animation, though consistent in quality, is no more groundbreaking than any other Mickey Mouse/Silly Symphony that was released in the past. We get to see Donald Duck being tourist in Lake Titicaca. We see the first installment of the Planes franchise in Pedro, the little mail plane who bravely flies through a storm over the country of Chile. We visit El Gaucho Goofy as he learns how to turn from an American Cowboy to a genuine Argentine gaucho with hilarious results.

The fourth short, Aquarela do Brasil, is where animation gets to do what animation does best: be wonderfully surrealistic. Translated to “Watercolor of Brazil”, a paint brush is animated painting landscapes of the country with each splattering of paint becoming something alive. A dash of blue paint becomes a flowing river. With a few drops of yellow a palm tree becomes an exotic jungle bird. Magically, a bunch of bananas are transformed to a flock of toucan with a mere splash of black paint. It’s beautiful, fantastic, and awesome. Once the scene is set Jose Carioca, the green parrot most associated with the Three Caballeros, is introduced to samba the night away Donald around the color streets of Brazil.

Not the best feature out there, and I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a must see to the casual fan, but if you have any interest in the Disney Animators of the 40’s, it’s a real treat. Bonus points for any anthropologist out there as all the live action footage has some great stuff from the native cultures of South America and Mid Century era Brazil.

“Recalling thrills of our love, there’s one thing I’m certain of. Return, I will, to old Brazil.”