Cinderella / Alice in Wonderland / Peter Pan / Lady and the Tramp / Sleeping Beauty

[School of Movies 2015]

The much-needed success of Cinderella cemented Disney as more than just a one-hit wonder. Following this we delve into the absurd ramblings of Lewis Carol to talk about Alice in Wonderland. According to the Disney of the early 1950s royals will chase you down on black horses in the middle of the night, base the future of their family upon footwear, play croquet with live animals, hold complex legal disputes over jam tarts and cut your head off for the slightest offense. Either way don’t go anywhere near Buckingham palace.

Then we move onto the uncomfortably racist peter Pan, before Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty. These were the last gasps for ink and paint animation. If you look at the lustrous colours and brush strokes you will see a distinct difference from the more pencilled xerox process that ran from 101 Dalmatians all the way up to The Little Mermaid. It's a charming little story about a dog that gets ignored over a new baby and falls in with a vagrant, and a beautiful girl who sings to owls, says 18 lines and then falls asleep causing the social and economic upheaval of an entire kingdom. But delve deeper and the America portrayed in Lady is a very personal idealized one to Walt himself, and Sleeping Beauty was an immense risk tied up in the making of the parks that was one of the most successful movies of the year, yet still failed to meet its expectations. 

Guest:

Daniel Floyd of New Frame Plus