LINCOLN, MOVIE (REVIEW)

LINCOLN MOVIE (REVIEW)

 

I read my first Lincoln book as a teenager and my interest in this fascinating person has only grown over the years since then.They say more books have been written on Abraham Lincoln than anyone except Jesus.  I have continued to read and learn, and have been to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. So for the last two years the film I was most eagerly awaiting was LINCOLN, by Steven Spielberg, no less.

 

My first overall impression was that this is indeed, a Spielberg picture, encompassing the best and worst of that tradition. He has chosen to focus on the last months of Lincoln's life, when, newly re-elected, he added the passing of the 13^th amendment to the constitution to the momentous task of concluding the civil war. The film is a political thriller of the fight to pass the amendment which would abolish slavery. And we will meet a less iconic, more human (and deviously political) “Honest Abe.”

 

There have been similar movies about political machinations like ADVISE AND CONSENT, THE BEST MAN and others that were, frankly, more involving and, well, better. Spielberg is here at his antiseptic best. I always remember the scene in THE COLOR PURPLE, where Whoopi Goldberg enters Danny Glover's home for the first time. It's a total disaster of a mess, a pig sty of a mess. She walks through the garbage and things but you never saw such an organized mess. It was designed rather than have a chaotic haphazard look to it. You could see the nice path made out for her to walk through. Similarly the opposing forces in the political debate here are antiseptic, too civilized to capture the harshly negative politics of the day. This renders us passive spectators rather than riled up observers. Even a well done courtroom drama has more engaging drama. LINCOLN las a long drawnout middle that could have been expanded in scope or cut altogether.

 

If I had my way Mr. Spielberg would have more Academy Awards than he has now, for JAWS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, JURASSIC PARK and others. But there is something about his dramas about reality that I find lacking. He tackles great subjects but then Spielbergs them down. What is most important is what we bring to these “serious”  movies of his as an audience. He unwittingly counts on our feelings toward his subjects to ease his path as storyteller. He counts too much on our preconceived ideas and just tells the story, reinforcing our views, rather than earning any increased feelings on our part.

 

For me the best example of this is SCHINDLER'S LIST. My recollection of seeing the film is of sitting there most of the time with tears running down my face while consiously thinking “This isn't really very good.” The tears were a result of what I brought with me to the theatre on his subject and not as much earned by him. He merely played the violin accompaniment to my preexisting feelings. He should have magnified, intensified those feelings, not exploited them. He did not do on the subject what THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK or JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG were able to do. It is as if he is in awe rather than master of some subjects, and LINCOLN unfortunately falls into that category. 

 

There is an early scene in LINCOLN where common soldiers meet him and I found it extremely moving. But it was to be the only such scene, and being the second one in the film, I now think it was mostly due to what I had brought with me to the theatre. I have seen a good many PBS documentaries on Lincoln including Ken Burns' THE CIVIL WAR series that were more moving and informative on Lincoln than this film, which could have been called LINCOLN LITE. Maybe Spielberg assumes a knowledge of Lincoln on the part of the audience that is unrealistic. Who knew about Lawrence of Arabia before seeing that film? But we got a seemingly complete profile of the man.

 

Example: Lincoln was tormented by his marriage. His politically supportive wife was emotionally unstable. They have only one huge fight scene that must seem shocking to viewers unfamiliar with Mary Todd Lincoln. She went on spending sprees nearly bankrupting him, which is here unmentioned, yet a major cause of their fights. She was a Southerner who believed in the Northern cause, abandoned by most family and friends but this is not mentioned, though it would make her more sympathetic. Both of these points could have been covered quickly in dialogue. The loss of her son in the White House a few years earlier is mentioned, but in a soap opera manner.

 

Instead, she is this character who is often “just there.” She's in the spectator section of the House of Representatives while they debate the amendment, doing and saying nothing, just watching or frowning. She has a very personal conversation with her elder son in the hallway of the White House in front of the usual office seekers and lobbyists. It's a calm scene that could have easily been held in private, but she wouldn't have been as much “on.”

 

For a film about slavery, there's not much here about contemporary feelings on the subject- you're for it or against it as a legislator. There is no mention of the riots in New York City where citizens hung black people at random, blaming them for the civil war, which was so graphically shown in Scorcese's GANGS OF NEW YORK. Mary Lincoln has an assistant, a lady-in-waiting black companion she presumably confides in but that isn't really shown. We know that Lincoln was against slavery from an early age, but had no encounters with black people until as President he met Frederick Douglas and came to see that equality between the races was not limited only to their souls, but to intelligence, ability and all else as well. Instead if showing one of these meetings with Douglas, we see Lincoln in an awkward scene with his wife's assistant on the front steps of the White House that doesn't add up to much. Maybe this scene most shows the film's lost opportunities.

 

All that said, there is much to praise as well. The art direction and set decoration, photography (light your house with 1865 lighting and that's what you'd get too) and the editing works well. The costumes are good without being showy. Lincoln's pants are not crisply pressed, I noticed, and look lived in. He walks like someone who had done a lot of physical labor in his life and as someone who had immense burdens to bear. The civil war is background and well served with just two scenes- the opening battle scene, and an amputation scene not easily forgotten. But sadly, this is the first teaming of John Williams and Spielberg where the music is pretty blah and boring.

 

 

Daniel Day Lewis does a magnificent job portraying the great emancipator. He holds the film together, and plays it differently than others who have tackled it. Perhaps, like Hamlet, Lincoln will be interpreted according to each generation's focus and needs. He plays a person rather than icon, though Lincoln speaking four-letter words is a humanizing surprise. Maybe Gregory Peck did Lincoln better in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but that's another issue. We know that Lincoln had a high-pitched voice for a six foot-four tall person, but at times Day Lewis seems to be doing Lincoln by channelling Walter Brennan. No President suffered personally as much as Lincoln- war, wife, colleagues, grief, or aged as much  in office. I would have liked to have been told he was only 56 when he died. In his last photos he looked 76.

 

The supporting cast is excellent. I don't know why Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War didn't have a larger role in the film. He was the closest thing to Dick Cheney in the 1860s and an interesting character. When fired by Lincoln's successor he barricaded and armed himself in his office and refused to go. Lincoln was surrounded by people who thought him an unworthy President, a hick in office, and this makes Lincoln's job all the harder and his accomplishments all the more remarkable. This film is based on the best-seller TEAM OF RIVALS by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is all about that burden he bore.

 

This brings us to Sally Field as Lincoln's wife, the only weak actor in the film. I'm not a big fan of the scenery-chewer in any event, but she's Sally Field reprising most roles we've seen her in rather than Mary Todd Lincoln. A little less NORMA RAYE and a lot more STEEL MAGNOLIAS would have served the film better.

 

When it comes to reviewing films I've always thought It's unfair to review the film it could have been rather than the film that was made, but this one is a cinematic disappointment despite some fine things in it. I don't know what younger audiences  will make of it. Maybe they'd prefer the Vampire Hunter Lincoln? They will likely be bored by the drawn out details of the political battle (the film is almost three hours long) but any who do go will learn something about the man and his times. I read about one screening, where as the end credits started rolling someone shouted out in the audience “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we're free at last”, commenting on the film's length. It was reported that many in the audience greeted his remark with applause.

MEETING BOB CLAMPETT

Bob Clampett was an impressive figure in animation. As a teenager he helped his aunt, Chaflotte Clark design a doll of the new cartoon character Mickey Mouse, which she took to Walt Disney at his studio not far away. He liked it and her design became the first Mickey dolls. The doll encapsulated two interests of the young Bob Clampett, to which he would devote his career: animation and puppetry.

 

When Warner Bros cartoons began, young Bob Clampett joined the new studio, led by Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising, who started the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. By the later 1930s Bob became a director, and the wild madcap style of cartoons was born. He created Porky Pig and Tweety and Sylvester, and worked on other Warner characters. His Bugs Bunny was on the wild side, especially during the war years.

 

When you think of Warner directors names like Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng come to mind, but before them there was Bob Clampett. Theyworked for him and learned their craft under his guidance and influence. The Warner cartoons we've  known from television are all after 1948. The network TV deal was to show post-1948 cartoons. Bob left Warners before 1948, and so his cartoons have not been as widely seen as those of other and later Warner directors. Nonetheless, they are a major part of Warners animation.

 

Bob left and went into television in its earliest days. He had a puppet show starring his new characters Beany and Cecil, who later became stars of their own  animated TV series. I firs thad contact with Bob when he sent me an issue of FUNNYWORLD, Mike Barrier's fine animation magazine. I didn't have the Bob Clampett issue and my friend Steve Schneider, the great Warner Bros animation enthusiast arranged for him to send me a copy. Correspondence with Bob followed  His letters had his Beany and Cecil characters on his letterhead, but he often drew his own air mail symbol on the envelope made up of drawn rabbit ears, an homage to his Warner Bugs Bunny days he wrote as  “:Hare Mail.”

 

 

 I didn't actually meet him until we were both at a convention in Boston later in the 1970s. He was the animation guest of honor and everyone enjoyed his presentation of his cartoons and his stories of the early days of animation. One very interesting piece of film he showed was a test for a feature animation he wanted to make, JOHN CARTER OF MARS. It was a fully finished test in color that was very impressive. The closest thing to it, to give an idea of what it was like, are the realistic SUPERMAN cartoons that the Fleischers did. Unfortunately he was not able to get the large budget such a feature would require.

 

I got to meet and talk to Bob at that show and we spent some time together with his engaging wife Sody. He was to do a radio interview the next day and invited me along, so we did it together. I found him similarly generous in the years to come. I know that he championed Hugh Harmon, who was still alive, and I thought highly of Bob the man as well as his talents. I know that he helped students who were interested in animation as they relayed his generosity with his time and contacts to me.

 

On a visit to Montreal he asked if I would be interested in looking after his interests in Canada, His animation show was still playing and there was always some merchandising being done. It was a dream assignment and I welcomed the opportunity to get to work with him and to know him further. As these things often happen, he died suddenly before we could really get going.

 

Now the hard part to write: Some of the people at Warners that Bob worked with would take pot shots at him in their later years, which I consider to be cheap shots. I have a letter between Chuck Jones and Tex Avery filled with such shots each wrote. It is my belief that they stem not from facts but from jealousy.

At the time Chuck was qwriting and animating his horrible Sniffles cartoons at Warners, with their rotten timing and boring characterization, there was no inking that ne would become, as I regard him, the best director animation ever had.  He was learning, as were the other “later” directors while Bob, tough younger than Chuck, was directing and making better films.

 

Whenever I would talk to Chuck about the early days, he would end up overcome by anger at management and anyone in authority over him. There were no grays in his portraits- all black and white and what angered him most was that they made more money than he did. This would come up over and over. And so I don't think it's unreasonable to think that he saw Bob as one of those people. On another point, Bob had the guts, the courage and the talent to strike out on his own, leave the Warner womb      and made a success of his own characters on his own. Those who badmouthed Bob never had the guts to do it themselves.

 

Remember that Bob was in on the ground floor of television. More people saw his work in a given week than ever saw a Warners cartoon. Until the early 1960s, Warner cartoons could only be seen in theatres, on a catch as catch can basis. The only Warner cartoons seen on TV before the 1960s were the pre-1948 cartoons that had been sold on a station by station basis-- including Bob Clampett's Warner cartoons. The public knew Bob Clampett as a household name, seeing his name on his own TV show, on merchandising and on old Warner cartoons on TV. How galling this must have been to jealous minds.

 

 I once asked Chuck, who by the 1970s was finally a household word himself, with all the accolades and recognition he deserved now coming to him, if he could put the past in the past and enjoy the present. I didn't have the nerve to put it so bluntly, of course, but I expressed my sadness at his not seeming to be able to enjoy his “new” career as an animation icon and its status. He said he couldn't forget the past (and I suppose its imagined injustices) and we never spoke of the old old days again. We still had some fine talks and good laughs to be sure and I think I should write about those soon.

 

Still, when I see on the internet that some people are saying that Bob wasn't well liked by his co-workers in the old days. I think some clarification, opinion and context is appropriate. I never saw or experienced anything other than a warm, funny and generous person. We spoke of the old days at Warners many times, and he only spoke well and highly of Harman and Ising, of Carl Stalling and Leon Schlesinger, and yes, of Chuck, Tex and others. Any time spent with Bob was relaxed, positive in nature and golden.

DISNEY'S LIVE ACTION MOVIES

While Walt Disney's animated films get almost all the attention, some of the live-action films he produced have  become classics as well. The best ones offer not only good entertainment, but solid story-telling, fine characterization and acting and great directing, such as most of the films of Robert Stevenson for Disney.

 

Here are Disney's best live-action features I would suggest seeing again past childhood for a good time as well as for film craft study. True-Life Adventures and other documentaries and mainly animal films are not included.

 

SONG OF THE SOUTH  (1946) Great entertainment and James Baskette deserved his

        Academy Award for his portrayal of Uncle Remus (and the voice of Bter Fox.)

 

TREASURE ISLAND (1950) Still the best fillm version of the book, largely due to Robert Newton`s Long John Silver.

 

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) Solid in every way including top design

         of sets and the Natilus.

 

OLD YELLER (1957) Everything comes together in an irresistible gem of a movie with

         fine performances throughout.

 

DARBY O`GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE (1959) Fantastic effects that blend into

         the story seamlessly unlike today`s  excesses. Sean Connery`s real first film that

         got him the James Bond role and Albert Sharpe is superb. Fall in love with Ireland.

 

POLLYANNA (1960) A perfect ensemble cast, design work, a fine message and

         Academy Awarded Hayley Mills in the title role.      

 

THE PARENT TRAP (1961) A Fine script, and a delight in every way. Maureen O'Hara

         and Brian Keith shine.

 

MARY POPPINS (1964) Walt Disney' s live-action masterpiece. It has

         everything films have to offer. Totally original in the ways My Fair Lady was not.  

         They was robbed.

 

 

Honorable mentions:

 

SO DEAR TO MY HEART (1949) Anything with Beulah Bondi and Burl Ives is a

          winner.

 

THE SHAGGY DOG (1959) Fluff elevated to great fun.

 

THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN (1959) Darn good tale well told and well done.

 

BABES IN TOYLAND (1961) Training ground for MARY POPPINS has some good

           things in it.

 

A TIGER WALKS (1964) Good ensemble cast and the darkest un-Disney type movie.

 

THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE (1967) Cut the excess and you have a fine musical

            with great numbers (“There are Those” etc.)

See the full gallery on Posterous

Can you help the bats find their way to the castle?

Here is another Winnie Witch and the Giant Potato activity sheet for
your kids! Or yourself if you are young at heart.

MEETING NED BEATTY

I met Ned Beatty, the actor, at one of our animation exhibitions in Montreal. He and his daughter came to see the show one summer day in the 1980s. It's always a surprise to see someone well-known come to a regular public show or event. The best way to handle it is to give them their space and almost pretend you don't know who they are- this is their personal time and they are not “on.” Still, when I would attend one of our shows to see how it was going, I would talk to attendees about animation or the exhibits if they wanted to. Ned Beatty was not only interested in animation (he showed up) but also knew quite a bit about it, which was nice to learn as we talked.

 

My favorite Ned Beatty role had to be his Academy Award-nominated performance as Arthur Jensen in NETWORK (1976), one of the best films ever made. It was disappointing to see him not get the Best Supporting Oscar for it, especially since that film brought Best Actor, Best Actress and even Best Supporting Actress to other deserving cast members of NETWORK. He is, of course, also responsible for many other fine roles in other fine films.

 

 

MEETING NED BEATTY

I met Ned Beatty, the actor, at one of our animation exhibitions in Montreal. He and his daughter came to see the show one summer day in the 1980s. It's always a surprise to see someone well-known come to a regular public show or event. The best way to handle it is to give them their space and almost pretend you don't know who they are- this is their personal time and they are not “on.” Still, when I would attend one of our shows to see how it was going, I would talk to attendees about animation or the exhibits if they wanted to. Ned Beatty was not only interested in animation (he showed up) but also knew quite a bit about it, which was nice to learn as we talked.

 

My favorite Ned Beatty role had to be his Academy Award-nominated performance as Arthur Jensen in NETWORK (1976), one of the best films ever made. It was disappointing to see him not get the Best Supporting Oscar for it, especially since that film brought Best Actor, Best Actress and even Best Supporting Actress to other deserving cast members of NETWORK. He is, of course, also responsible for many other fine roles in other fine films.

 

 

STILL THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL

I have often been asked which animated feature film is my favorite. As the years go by it is still the same one, and the choice is made easier than ever given today's assembly-line cookie cutter animation features. It is of course, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. The film is a masterpiece in every way, and its merits as a film and as an animated film have been written about ever since it was first released in 1937.

 

I take its merits as a given, but they are not what make this film my choice. It has something that no other animated feature since has had. Because it was the first Hollywood cartoon feature, it broke new ground and established new rules and expanded the horizons of animation to be sure, but there is something about the film that makes it an inspiration to all in animation.

 

When Walt Disney gathered his staff one night to tell them he was going to make an animated feature of the Snow White tale, they were hardly ready for the task at hand. This was like President John Kennedy saying, as he did, that the USA would land a man on the moon and return him to earth within seven years time. The USA was hardly ready for that task either, but they became ready, as Walt Disney and his staff became ready to accomplish their task.

 

While Disney cartoon shorts were acclaimed world-wide, and especially the Silly Symphonies were first-class experiments in constantly pushing forward the boundaries of animation, there was still a long way to go. The female character in THE GODDESS OF SPRING was a Snow White-like character but  was far from what Snow White would herself become, just as Disney deer in SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS were a fraction of what they would become just a few years later in BAMBI.

 

I like SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS best because it shows what I call “evidence of the struggle.” They were not good enough to pull it off when they started, but became good enough, even if  just barely so in some scenes, when it was completed. You not only see the drawings and the paint onscreen, it seems that you can also see the sweat.

 

They never took the easy way out of staging a scene or acting out a scene. A world-wide search for artistic talent brought hundreds of new people to the animation studio and the film was probably made by twenty key people and among them a handful of masters of animation. Had those people not been around, alive and available, the film could probably not have been made. Chief among them was, of course, Walt Disney himself, a unique force who cannot be overestimated.

 

I have spoken with people who worked on the film, including some of those top people, and they recalled the enthusiasm with which they worked on it, coming in on days off willingly, sharing their discoveries with one another and so on. They felt they were working on something important. Even decades later, they would speak of various Disney films and characters they worked on, but their voices, their expressions were often different when they spoke of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. It was a special time in their careers, possibly even their lives, maybe as wartime experiences are to veterans. And maybe you had to be there to really understand it.

 

There is no need to go into the impact of the film, an instant hit world-wide, the first to ever be dubbed into foreign languages, the highest money-making film in history etc etc etc. It stands alone as an artistic achievement, a new type of art. Their next feature, PINOCCHIO, for all its merits is, compared to SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS too polished, too  slick. By then they could achieve all they wanted. With the first feature that was in doubt.

 

For audiences, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS is magnificent entertainment. For those interested in animation, or in animation themselves, it is a wondrous experience. Here were some twenty-somethings engaged in something new, with no history or past to guide them as we have today. They invented it as they went along. They did it and did it well.

 

I recall animator Ward Kimball saying that at the premiere on December 21, 1937 near the end of the film where the dwarfs approach the dead Snow White he thought there was a technical problem with the film. The film was so long and hard to do that the final scenes were back from the lab that afternoon and cut into the final film, which was first seen by anyone in its complete form at the premiere (!) He heard a clicking sound on the soundtrack throughout the theatre and thought this sound glitch would harm the effect of the film on the audience. Then he realized that the clicking sound was coming FROM the audience. Women were opening their purses to take out their handkerchiefs to wipe away their tears at the moving scene.

 

“They were crying---at a cartoon!” he said in amazement so many years later. Animation entered a new era that night. It could not only make people laugh, but cry, like any live-action film. And soon, with FANTASIA it would also amaze audiences. All that we do since then is tell unlimited stories, explore styles and add new technologies, as SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS added the Multiplane Camera. We build on the one that started and did it all.

 

I have heard many stories from ordinary people who were deeply affected by the film and many for whom it ushered in a lifelong interest in or even caused a career in animation. I saw the film for the first time when I was six years old. I don't remember that viewing but was later told that when the dwarfs chased the witch near the film's end I got out of my seat and ran to the screen to join the chase.

 

I kept pestering my parents to take me to see it again and again, long after the theatre engagement had ended. To shut me up, my mother told me there was a fire in the theatre where it was showing and part of the movie got burned and that they were making part of it again. That worked, but I'm told I looked at the movie ads in the newspaper every dayfor years after that to see when they would be done.

 

The film came back to theatres again when I was twelve, to a theatre down the street, and I saw it many times. I  recall going one Saturday morning with sandwiches and sitting through four showings in a row. I remember well the “Whistle While You Work” cleaning up the cottage sequence. On the large screen I could follow a single bird or squirrel throughout the detailed scenes, focusing on one animal per screening.

 

It returned in 1967, six months after Walt Disney died. I had forgotten that the film ended with the castle in the sky, and that was a moving moment. A few years later I obtained a film print and the idea of seeing it whenever I wanted was hard to comprehend. We all studied and enjoyed it many times. I have had most of the features on film but none gives you goosebumps like this one does when the film's opening music begins.

 

 Some years after that I got on film the soup-eating song and sequence that was cut from the final film. I inserted it into our copy and showed it to people and it works so well. I think it has story points that help the film, and if something had to be cut, it should have been the long and frankly boring sleeping sequence which is about the same length. Knowing that Disney would probably rerelease it to theatres for its 50^th anniversary, about two years before that when I was at the Disney studio I met with management and tried to talk them into putting it into the anniversary prints of the film as a special draw and tribute. We had just started our computer animation and knew we could color the soup-eating sequence, which had only been pencil-tested complete with layouts and full soundtrack but no color. We could match the original characters' colors by computer and paint the backgrounds in Samuel Armstrong's style. Weeks later I got their decision, that they were hesitant, almost afraid to tinker with it in any way. Later they called to say they did agree with the other suggestion I had given them at that meeting, to rerelease SONG OF THE SOUTH to theatres again. This they did and it was a huge success, but that's another story.

 

Years later, at the Disney studio, I asked for the animation drawings for my favorite moment in the film, when Snow White kisses Dopey on the head at the end of the film after being kissed back to life herself by the Prince. To hold and see the original animation drawings was a magical moment.

HEY- anyone ever notice that she only kisses six of the seven dwarfs goodbye?

 

See SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS again but this time as an artistic breakthrough and achievement. See the young men and women doing their best and pulling off a great experiment, led by a man of vision and courage. Still the fairest of them all.

 

STILL THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL

I have often been asked which animated feature film is my favorite. As the years go by it is still the same one, and the choice is made easier than ever given today's assembly-line cookie cutter animation features. It is of course, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. The film is a masterpiece in every way, and its merits as a film and as an animated film have been written about ever since it was first released in 1937.

 

I take its merits as a given, but they are not what make this film my choice. It has something that no other animated feature since has had. Because it was the first Hollywood cartoon feature, it broke new ground and established new rules and expanded the horizons of animation to be sure, but there is something about the film that makes it an inspiration to all in animation.

 

When Walt Disney gathered his staff one night to tell them he was going to make an animated feature of the Snow White tale, they were hardly ready for the task at hand. This was like President John Kennedy saying, as he did, that the USA would land a man on the moon and return him to earth within seven years time. The USA was hardly ready for that task either, but they became ready, as Walt Disney and his staff became ready to accomplish their task.

 

While Disney cartoon shorts were acclaimed world-wide, and especially the Silly Symphonies were first-class experiments in constantly pushing forward the boundaries of animation, there was still a long way to go. The female character in THE GODDESS OF SPRING was a Snow White-like character but  was far from what Snow White would herself become, just as Disney deer in SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS were a fraction of what they would become just a few years later in BAMBI.

 

I like SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS best because it shows what I call “evidence of the struggle.” They were not good enough to pull it off when they started, but became good enough, even if  just barely so in some scenes, when it was completed. You not only see the drawings and the paint onscreen, it seems that you can also see the sweat.

 

They never took the easy way out of staging a scene or acting out a scene. A world-wide search for artistic talent brought hundreds of new people to the animation studio and the film was probably made by twenty key people and among them a handful of masters of animation. Had those people not been around, alive and available, the film could probably not have been made. Chief among them was, of course, Walt Disney himself, a unique force who cannot be overestimated.

 

I have spoken with people who worked on the film, including some of those top people, and they recalled the enthusiasm with which they worked on it, coming in on days off willingly, sharing their discoveries with one another and so on. They felt they were working on something important. Even decades later, they would speak of various Disney films and characters they worked on, but their voices, their expressions were often different when they spoke of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. It was a special time in their careers, possibly even their lives, maybe as wartime experiences are to veterans. And maybe you had to be there to really understand it.

 

There is no need to go into the impact of the film, an instant hit world-wide, the first to ever be dubbed into foreign languages, the highest money-making film in history etc etc etc. It stands alone as an artistic achievement, a new type of art. Their next feature, PINOCCHIO, for all its merits is, compared to SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS too polished, too  slick. By then they could achieve all they wanted. With the first feature that was in doubt.

 

For audiences, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS is magnificent entertainment. For those interested in animation, or in animation themselves, it is a wondrous experience. Here were some twenty-somethings engaged in something new, with no history or past to guide them as we have today. They invented it as they went along. They did it and did it well.

 

I recall animator Ward Kimball saying that at the premiere on December 21, 1937 near the end of the film where the dwarfs approach the dead Snow White he thought there was a technical problem with the film. The film was so long and hard to do that the final scenes were back from the lab that afternoon and cut into the final film, which was first seen by anyone in its complete form at the premiere (!) He heard a clicking sound on the soundtrack throughout the theatre and thought this sound glitch would harm the effect of the film on the audience. Then he realized that the clicking sound was coming FROM the audience. Women were opening their purses to take out their handkerchiefs to wipe away their tears at the moving scene.

 

“They were crying---at a cartoon!” he said in amazement so many years later. Animation entered a new era that night. It could not only make people laugh, but cry, like any live-action film. And soon, with FANTASIA it would also amaze audiences. All that we do since then is tell unlimited stories, explore styles and add new technologies, as SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS added the Multiplane Camera. We build on the one that started and did it all.

 

I have heard many stories from ordinary people who were deeply affected by the film and many for whom it ushered in a lifelong interest in or even caused a career in animation. I saw the film for the first time when I was six years old. I don't remember that viewing but was later told that when the dwarfs chased the witch near the film's end I got out of my seat and ran to the screen to join the chase.

 

I kept pestering my parents to take me to see it again and again, long after the theatre engagement had ended. To shut me up, my mother told me there was a fire in the theatre where it was showing and part of the movie got burned and that they were making part of it again. That worked, but I'm told I looked at the movie ads in the newspaper every dayfor years after that to see when they would be done.

 

The film came back to theatres again when I was twelve, to a theatre down the street, and I saw it many times. I  recall going one Saturday morning with sandwiches and sitting through four showings in a row. I remember well the “Whistle While You Work” cleaning up the cottage sequence. On the large screen I could follow a single bird or squirrel throughout the detailed scenes, focusing on one animal per screening.

 

It returned in 1967, six months after Walt Disney died. I had forgotten that the film ended with the castle in the sky, and that was a moving moment. A few years later I obtained a film print and the idea of seeing it whenever I wanted was hard to comprehend. We all studied and enjoyed it many times. I have had most of the features on film but none gives you goosebumps like this one does when the film's opening music begins.

 

 Some years after that I got on film the soup-eating song and sequence that was cut from the final film. I inserted it into our copy and showed it to people and it works so well. I think it has story points that help the film, and if something had to be cut, it should have been the long and frankly boring sleeping sequence which is about the same length. Knowing that Disney would probably rerelease it to theatres for its 50^th anniversary, about two years before that when I was at the Disney studio I met with management and tried to talk them into putting it into the anniversary prints of the film as a special draw and tribute. We had just started our computer animation and knew we could color the soup-eating sequence, which had only been pencil-tested complete with layouts and full soundtrack but no color. We could match the original characters' colors by computer and paint the backgrounds in Samuel Armstrong's style. Weeks later I got their decision, that they were hesitant, almost afraid to tinker with it in any way. Later they called to say they did agree with the other suggestion I had given them at that meeting, to rerelease SONG OF THE SOUTH to theatres again. This they did and it was a huge success, but that's another story.

 

Years later, at the Disney studio, I asked for the animation drawings for my favorite moment in the film, when Snow White kisses Dopey on the head at the end of the film after being kissed back to life herself by the Prince. To hold and see the original animation drawings was a magical moment.

HEY- anyone ever notice that she only kisses six of the seven dwarfs goodbye?

 

See SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS again but this time as an artistic breakthrough and achievement. See the young men and women doing their best and pulling off a great experiment, led by a man of vision and courage. Still the fairest of them all.

 

THE ILLUSION OF LIFE, THE ANIMATION BIBLE

The number one book on animation is THE ILLUSION OF LIFE: DISNEY ANIMATION (1981). By legendary animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, it is required reading in most animation courses and has been reprinted many times and is still available. More than a mere “how-to” book on animation, of which there are many (of varying worth) this book gets into the most important aspect of animation: how an animator thinks, or rather should think when approaching and doing animation, character design and so on. They knew that animation is born in the mind, not in the pencil.

 

The book took many years to write and research, and during this period, Frank and Ollie asked people they knew, myself included, what they thought should be included in the book. The result was a balanced wide-ranging book that is worth re-reading every five years or so. There is a lifetime of learning in this book, and new insight and understanding comes with such a revisitation as our own experience and artistic maturity grow.

 

It took a few years for the book to find its reputation. Letters I received from Frank and Ollie sometimes reflected their frustration with their publisher on some points during the book's ear;y years, but the its virtues and reputation eventually overcame those considerations.

 

There is a funny story that occurred a couple of years or so after the book was first published. Both Frank and Ollie were going through my collection of original Disney animation artwork at my place in Montreal. They signed any artwork that was their own, and made comments on others that were quite interesting to witness: “Oh, there's one by XXX. He wasn't very good but I never saw anyone work as hard as he did and he became a lot better afterwards.” was one memorable comment. 

 

Then, all of a sudden, they let out a whoop and a holler, as they used to say, when they got to a drawing I had of Snow White's bed. “YOU'VE goit it!” they said.They got all excited and explained that they had known that there was just one finished detailed drawing of the bed that the dwarfs carved for Snow White in an elaborate sequence that was not finished for the final film. They had wanted to use it in their book but could not find it in the studio archives. Then they started to laugh at the irony that they searched high and low for it when a phone call to Montreal would have located it for them. 

 

Frank and Ollie went on to write three more books on animation that were noteworthy in their own right, but their first, THE ILLUSION OF LIFE, is the one that will likely forever remain THE book on animation.

REMEMBERING JEANETTE THOMAS

A few days ago I received a letter from the family of Frank and Jeanette Thomas to say  that Jeanette had passed away. Frank, of course, was one of the top Disney animators, known collectively as the Nine Old Men, and Jeanette was his wife for over 60 years.

 

With her passing comes the end to one of the most fascinating and wonderful chapters in animation. Frank had a lifelong friendship with Ollie Johnston, another of the Nine Old Men, a friendship that began before either had gone to the Disney animation studio. Aside from the animation aspects, their friendship was one of the great won. I was privileged to know them for over 25 years and remember the last time I visited the four of them, Ollie showed me their new website. He had insisted it be called Frank an Ollie, because the way people called them it always sounded like “Frank and Dolly”, and “I'm not a Dolly!' he laughed.

 

I cherish the time I spent with Frank, Jeanette, Ollie and Marie, be it in person, on the phone or through letters. They were so sympatico together yet were four distinct, individual personalities that complemented each other perfectly. When you spent time with them you came away enriched by their knowledge of animation and just feeling good in general. You can feel this in the documentary feature FRANK AND OLLIE (1985) which is the best film ever made about animation. It was made by Frank's son Theodore and is required viewing in every animation course I have given since its release. I'm pleased to see it has now finally come to YouTube. Frank, Ollie, Jeanette and Marie are all featured prominently.

 

We talked about animation, of course, of specific films, scenes and charcters and of Walt Disney and others at the studio, but talked of other things as well. All four were generous and open, definite and strong in their opinions.

 

All four are gone now, but they leave us with not only great works that will last for many generations to come, but also a truly wonderful example of human friendship that will last an eternity.