Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Well, after going to see the enjoyable but flawed Maleficent, it felt like the right time for a viewing of this classic. And this may surprise some, but this was in fact – barring, possibly, as a baby – the very first time I ever saw Sleeping Beauty. I’ve seen bits and pieces, of course – clips of Maleficent’s big entrance, that most persistent of earworms ‘Once Upon a Dream’, which rather makes me think Disney should lift melodies from great composers more, Prince Philip’s kiss of true love – but I am almost certain that this was the first time I’d seen the full film. The most exposure I had to Disney’s version of Sleeping Beauty has been through Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

It may be a result of this lack of experience, but I had a lot of misconceptions about the film, and honestly I think they’re pretty widespread. For one thing, with Aurora being part of a trinity of the most iconic fairytale princesses with Snow White and Cinderella, the film feels like older Disney than it really is. Sure, Cinderella is 1950 and Sleeping Beauty is 1959, the same decade, but for all the continued involvement of the Nine Old Men, the Disney of Alice in Wonderland and the Disney of Sword in the Stone feel rather different, and the difference is visible here, not least because there is a clear attempt at a distinct, stylised, sharp-edged style, especially in the opening sequence of crowds gathering for Aurora’s christening.

Other misconceptions I had included that the main character was Aurora, or even King Stephan – really, quite oddly, the central figures of the narrative are the three fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, who are also the only characters who really get any development. I was also under the impression that one of Maleficent’s main problems was that unlike this film, it shows Aurora as asleep for only a matter of hours whereas the real story has the princess sleep for a hundred years. In fact, the same problem exists here – Maleficent leads Aurora to prick her finger and fall into an enchanted sleep, which she remains in only for as long as it takes the fairies to free and arm Philip and get him to his love.

I understand why this has been done – like many modern readers, the Disney writers clearly had a problem with the idea that the princes wakes when total stranger arrives and kisses her, which is hardly true love. Maleficent even dismissed the idea that two young people who meet once and are attracted to one another can be said to share ‘true love’s kiss’ a day later. All of which, of course, is more pleasant than the infamous older versions in which the prince impregnates the enchanted sleeper without her even knowing about it and accidentally wakes her by sucking on her fingers and extracting the splinter that had caused the enchanted sleep. Creepy, man.

But from my point of view, even this very 50s view of romance seems creepy. Aurora is messing about with the cute woodland creatures, the owl and squirrels very much like those who will feature prominently in Sword in the Stone using Philip’s coat and boots to pretend to be a prince, and seeing this and chuckling to himself, Philip steps in and takes the place of the cutesy animals. Rather than screaming and getting out the mace, Aurora finds this charming and loveable.

But the fact is that the romance, 50s or not, is functional and the plot still works. It is also tempting to be influenced by Maleficent and imagine that ‘Good’ King Stephan was actually a very nasty piece of work who had set Maleficent against him, and that Maleficent herself was sympathetic, but as I said in my review of that still-enjoyable film, one of its main flaws was that it had to write its own story rather than successfully managing to weave into the classic narrative. Thus the fairies were different and it was Maleficent herself who provided the ‘true love’s kiss’ get-out, and the ending was a complete departure.

Intriguing as the reinterpretation was, the cartoon Maleficent is wonderful, easily one of Disney’s top villains – and they do villains so well. She is evil because that is her nature, not because of her twisted backstory. She turns into an awesome dragon, rather than transforming her henchman. Her scenes are not without humour – as when her minions reveal they have been looking for a baby for fifteen years. And her devilish, elegant, regal design is a thing of brilliance.

Too bad Aurora and Philip are so bland – and I have real difficulty perceiving Aurora as just-sixteen when she looks 25. But again, it’s the fairies who are the film’s true centre, and they are very clearly defined, especially the likeable, fussy Merryweather. Diablo also gets remarkably good characterisation for a bird with a very minor role.

It doesn’t feel Disney is showing its greatest strengths here. The musical centrepiece is Tchaikovsky’s. The animation, while fine, is less ambitious than it was decades before, with repeating parts and some lazy colouring. The story relies on a very brief love affair, bland heroes and a sleeping beauty who sleeps for less than a day. Yet it just about hangs together on its quirkier strengths, as well as the better-chosen borrowed parts. But it is less impressive than many Disney classics. 

The Fox and the Hound (1981)

Really, the gap between the Disney Golden Age and the ‘Renaissance’ was rather short. Where the Golden Age ends is a matter of debate – some say it was with Walt’s death in 1966. Some extend that to include 1967’s The Jungle Book, as he had been involved in the early stages and it’s a well-loved film. A few say that it was until Hanna-Barbera’s limited animation techniques took the audience from the big screen spectaculars to the churned-out TV shows, which was circa 1960. Others say it ended when the studio hacked away most of its staff in 1958, making Sleeping Beauty with a much-reduced budget. And some – albeit very few – let it stretch all the way to this film, when the remaining Nine Old Men started a project but let the younger generation finish it. If the Renaissance started with The Little Mermaid, then even if we stop at The Jungle Book, the films that fall through the net are, excepting The Black Cauldron, very much animal-centric. Mice in The Rescuers and in Basil; cats in The Aristocats and Oliver & Company, then the fox of this film and Robin Hood, which facially look almost identical. Then there’s Pooh, but that first theatrical release is really a collection of shorts. Not many films.

The Fox and the Hound was one of the handful of prominent Disney films I’d actually never seen – it doesn’t have the best reputation and I never caught it as a child. But getting more interested in animation history as I was, it became inevitable I was drawn to this historic film, which kick-started the careers of an incredible number of animators, but totally fractured the American animation scene – making it in many ways much more exciting. The big names involved here are remarkable. Most famously, it was the film that made Don Bluth leave Disney to form his own studio – though it seems an odd time to call Disney ‘stale’, when at last young animators would be given a chance to try something new (for all its faults, The Black Cauldron is certainly that). It’s also perhaps ironic that I think this film would have been rather better if Old Man Woolie Reitherman had gotten his way and kept the story closer to the book’s – although his opponent Art Stevens hardly represented the young blood. Tim Burton was on the staff, too, reportedly very bored, lasting another film or two but putting in work on his side-projects too. Brad Bird started his career on this film, but despite being labelled part of the ‘rat’s nest’ (of Mouse lovers) left Disney right after it to work on TV animation, with The Simpsons a few years ahead of him yet. His friend John Lasseter met him here, but stuck with Disney: his exposure to computer animation with Tron leading to another chapter of animation history. Another big name of computer animation and Tron collaborator Bill Kroyer (with future wife Sue) was also working on the film, but left because he didn’t like the look of The Black Cauldron – and went on to make the execrable FernGully. There were so many more: future Road to El Dorado co-director Don Paul; Brave Little Toaster helmsman Jerry Rees; Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline director Henry Selick; Tarzan head Chris Buck; RichCrest founder and director of the rather unimportant The Swan Princess Richard Rich; Tangled’s original director and visionary Glen Keane; the man who managed to make one of the most interesting characters in Aladdin a CG carpet with no face Randy Cartwright; Musker and Clements, who as directors took Disney into the renaissance, back into decline and with The Princess and the Frog back out of it yet again; and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron director Lorna Cook. That is an incredible list that spreads out across almost the entirety of the landscape of American big-studio theatrical animation in recent years.

For all that talent, though, this film falls well short of almost anything from classic-era Disney, and most of the films just listed. There are many moments of greatness – great shots, great little sequences, great acting moments, even great scenes. But they are too broken-up by misfires or simple bad delivery to make this a good film. For every little gem like the sophisticated animation of Widow Tweed shooing away birds (Bluth was working on Tweed– was this nugget his work? It’s nice to think so), there is the kind of thing you just don’t expect in a high-calibre feature production, like the rocks that are going to fall away when trodden upon being painfully obviously made simpler than the background so that they can be animated easily. There may be a bear attack that is remarkably visceral and scary, looking at moments right out of Watership Down, but there are also unfunny scenes with a caterpillar that would have been jarringly babyish in Tom and Jerry, thus seem far worse here. There are far too many instances of the pacing just going off, or there being no impact when something should have been struck hard, and I was gobsmacked when there was the most terrible jump-cut I’ve ever seen for no reason at all, totally ruining the atmosphere of one scene.

There are also grounds to complain about how this film has been damaged technically – for some reason, it seems to be the only Disney DVD that is not in its original ratio. There’s a lot of Academy-Ratio in Disney’s early work, but that’s because it was drawn that way and essentially letterboxed in theatres. This one, though, was originally most of the way to widescreen, but currently exists only in this pan-and-scan version. Not acceptable, Disney.

All the characters are also rather at arm’s length, too. Big Mama is probably the most likeable, and though she’s a slightly painful stereotype, that she’s voiced by Pearl Bailey makes that a little more palatable, as she’s almost where the stereotypes come from, and not in a mocking way. Even she can’t save the songs from being terrible, though – they’re too short, the music is absurdly low in the mix so leaves no impression and the desire to use country and western instrumentation leaves incidental music and songs alike an unmemorable blur. The most interesting character might be Amos Slade, and I give Disney credit for making an antagonist who isn’t an evil villain – hot-tempered and idiotic enough to shoot right at an old woman, yes, but just an ordinary man who after all loves his dogs in his way. Jeanette Nolan’s turn as Widow Tweed is likeable too, if ordinary – and it’s slightly bizarre her husband is also in the film as a grumpy badger. The fox and the hound, though, suffer from being shown as children and young adults: a very young Corey Feldman is a great young Copper, whose delivery of ‘I’m a hound dog’ is one of the best moments of the film, but Kurt Russell isn’t given enough to do when he’s grown. Mickey Rooney, though sounding remarkably like a teenager while over 60, just doesn’t seem to have any interest in his lines or character. Vixey is much-derided, but oddly enough Sandy Duncan’s vocal performance isn’t to blame – it’s not that bad if you close your eyes. The problem was with the lines written and the absurd flirty ‘acting’ the character animators gave her. Also, while at this point in Disney’s history it was quite common for the actors from Pooh to show up in different films, and they presumably thought they would never be so well-known they’d need to change their voices, only Pooh himself showing up as a sinister snake in The Jungle Book was as jarring as this film having Tigger as a woodpecker and Piglet as a hedgehog. The Jungle Book also has Owl, Eeyore and Roo as elephants, but their voices are less distinctive and their lines few – people even seem to mix up which elephant was Ralph Wright: I often see him listed as the grumpy elephant, but he was clearly the slobby elephant.

The designs also seriously lack in originality. Tod the Fox (from Beatrix Potter to The Plague Dogs, foxes always get called ‘Tod’, which after all does just mean ‘fox’) is as I said much like Robin Hood. Along with a squirrel more or less transplanted, the sparrow looks a lot like Wart’s bird form in Sword in the Stone, and Big Mama is basically Archimedes puffed up and given a feather boa (Archimedes being another time one can spot a Pooh actor). Apart from the bear, whose closest relative may just be Fantasia’s Chernabog, about the only piece of fun in the design stages is how young Copper’s brow has too much skin for his head. Ultimately, The Fox and the Hound is a let-down. It’s fine having two cute little animals make friends while destined to be torn apart, but the drama that stems from that must flow well, voice performances must tally with animation and, as we get with Simba, we must have reasons feel like the small, cute child version and the adult are single, unified characters. And in the end, while I liked the conclusion that sometimes, fate just does tear people apart, it needed to be more strongly underlined. Perhaps this is the result of ‘too many cooks’ – people forget the little things that matter, like really making an audience care for characters and what happens to them, and getting the details just right.

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

I’ve been meaning to write my thoughts on The Sword in the Stone for a little while, as – being one of the few Disney films we had on VHS – it was one of the animated films I watched the most as a young child. Since I had the happy experience of waking up on a Christmas morning and turning on the television to see it there, bringing back waves of nostalgia, I thought now was as good a time as any.

There are many ways in which this film has influenced my psyche. My love for all things strigine surely derives in part from the loveably grumpy Archimedes the Owl. Wart’s voice actor(s) inured me to the idea that if you are young, attractive and sympathetic in a world full of people with English accents, it makes perfect sense for you to sound American – long before I had any idea about accents at all. And though the film’s art perhaps had the opposite effect on some, I think it may on some level have been the film’s firm assertion that human-animal romance is weird, comic and doomed that steered me well away from furry propensities, whatever effect Thundercats may have had on my young mind.

The Sword in the Stone is an adaptation of one of the Once and Future King books, and takes a stab at Arthur’s youth, a subject that Malory doesn’t cover. In this version, Uther is dead and his bastard child (it can be inferred, though all we know from the film is that he is an orphan) Arthur has been fostered by a noble household, working for them as a lackey and hoping to one day become a squire. He is clumsy, scrawny and accident-prone, though, and is referred to by his surly foster brother Kay as ‘Wart’. Everything changes when Wart meets Merlin, who decides he will tutor the boy, moving into the castle and teaching him various things by turning him into different animals – which gets him into various scrapes, one leading Merlin to take part in a Wizards’ Duel with the barmy Madam Mim. When it becomes apparent that the boy’s ambition falls far short of his potential, Merlin loses his temper and gets ‘blown to Bermuda’, but quite on his own, Wart manages to find the Sword in the Stone in London and pull it out, securing his future as King of England.

Like many Arthurian stories, this one is set when many of the stories were written down – in Medieval England – and not when they were set, making Arthur English rather than a Breton. I’ve never worried about anachronisms in Arthurian stories, though, as they’re all based on very fanciful myths and legends and it isn’t as though what’s in Geoffrey of Monmouth is by any means a universal tradition. Besides, the film (and book) embraces anachronisms and makes a point of it – indeed, Merlin’s return from Bermuda is so jarring the style of humour preempts that of Aladdin by decades.

The plot is very thin, and arguably nothing in the story really affects the final climax, but this is really a series of setpieces and works very well for an animation: it’s great seeing (some of) the Nine Old Men really having fun with animation, from underwater scenes to birds in flight to magical transformations, giving a real exuberance to the story. It’s all helped along by the slapstick humour, much of which is based on the Tom & Jerry idea of predators deserving to be painfully foiled.

Sword in the Stone isn’t the best-known Disney film. Its songs are too character-based and situational to get onto the various Disney compilations. It doesn’t have great revelations of characters or tragedy to give its story weight. But as a light comedy, it’s almost peerless, and the animation was fine enough Disney recycled it several times in their usual way that generation after generation find shocking and scandalous, as though it was a great deception and Disney (or at least, director Wolfgang Reitherman) were horribly cheap. As Floyd Norman pointed out, he did it because he wanted to, not because he had to, or because it cut costs. He actually liked reusing favourite sequences in different films.

Disney has revived its tradition of fairytail princesses. I’d like to see them revive stories centred on preteen (human) boys like The Jungle Book and Peter Pan. That tradition died with The Black Cauldron, and it’s a shame. The Sword in the Stone is remembered primarily for Merlin (he alone shows up in the Kingdom Hearts games), but there’s much more to it than just him. Funny, sweet, witty and exuberantly animated, it’s a very fine piece of Disney animation.