APRIL 8, 2003|Two days in Aspen and I'm finally getting the rhythms of the place. Things start a little late, a hot dog stand stays open until the small hours and features a variety of crepes, a bakery serves eggs benedict and has a Fox crew filming a bit on a snowboarder, and all of the wait staff at the local restaurants seem to be from either a European country or Down Under. Inside the Wheeler Opera House, home to the world class Aspen Shortsfest's twelfth incarnation, lots of people mill around in the aisles before (and during, and after) the screenings, schmoozing, dishing, flirting in at least forty different dialects. A few older women walk around in rhinestone-studded ski suits that probably haven't seen the business end of a lift (nor would probably be terribly safe if they had), a few younger women look a lot like they just stepped off the pages of an Italian fashion rag (weather be damned, micro-minis are in, bless 'em), and, being a ski town, a great many people are staggering around on crutches. After the late screenings, folks stumble to their cars between two less-pissed pals (or, in one case, between his wife and grown daughter), shout at the top of their lungs in what appears to either be very Cockney English or very drippy Dutch, and marvel for what is probably the thirtieth time that day at the beauty of Aspen in the late wintertime.
This afternoon, the third day of the festival, finds me at the Wheeler to listen to Professor Russell Merritt, professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley and co-author of Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney; he's there to speak about Disney's "Tiffany Line" of animated shorts in the thirties: the brilliant, if perverse and anti-Semitic Silly Symphonies. Part of the fest's "Planet Cinema" educational seminars, Prof. Merritt's "Here Comes the Bogeyman!"--Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies and the Lulling of the Innocent is ninety minutes of pure joy. His insights on the evolution of animation (as squeezed through the particular obsessions of Disney) run the gamut from the melding of classical music with popular to the cannibalistic implications of "Three Little Pigs." An engaging speaking style married to a smooth familiarity with the topic, Prof. Merritt opened with an informative introduction before giving way to Skeleton Dance, the first Silly Symphony. He then returned to introduce six other of the vintage shorts, sent with special dispensation from the Walt Disney Studios, some of them seen in their uncut form for the first time in seventy years. "Planet Cinema" is indicative of the kind of quality programming that Aspen Film Society's virtuoso Executive Director, Laura Thielin, is able to attract and conceptualize.-Walter Chaw
Skeleton Dance (1929, d. Walt Disney, music. Carl Stalling, principal animator. Ub Iwerks): Premiering at LA's Carthay Circle in June of 1929 with Murnau's
Four Devils,
Skeleton Dance is a non-linear, non-narrative piece featuring the spaghetti-jointed look made legendary by Uncle Walt's and Iwerk's
Steamboat Willie (1928). A marriage of the sort of wacky dance that was popular entertainment in that period and Stalling's ability to blend classical tunes with popular arrangements (an act made memorial by Mickey and Leopold Stokowski shaking hands),
Skeleton Dance is mainly Grieg's "March of the Dwarfs" reduced and rollicking. It's cinema history and, fascinatingly, may have inspired in part the opening images of Eisenstein's (who called Disney the most interesting filmmaker working in the United States)
Aleksandr Nevsky.
*** (out of four)
Babes in the Woods (1933, d. Burt Gillett, music. Bert Lewis, principal animators: Norm Ferguson, Dick Lundy, Hardie Gramatky, Ben Sharpsteen: Premiere The Roxy, January 1933 with MacFadden's Second Hand Wife): Merritt is quick to point out that this short continues two of Disney's childhood fear "experiments"--the fear of consumption and the voyage from hearth to danger and back. More, this loose retelling of the Brothers Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" represents what is essentially a "New Deal" allegory, with an army of interchangeable soldiers riding to the military rescue of the lost children. With a witch whose design will recur in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the piece enthrals for its frightening images and for a moment when the young boy, transmogrified into a spider and chained to a wall, risks his life to save his sister. ***1/2
Three Little Pigs (1933, d. Burt Gillett, music. Frank Churchill, principal animators: Norm Ferguson, Fred Moore, Dick Lundy, Art Babbitt. Premiere Radio City Music Hall May 1933 with Mervyn LeRoy's Elmer the Great): Possibly the most famous animated short ever made, Three Little Pigs posits the titular porkers as all ass and cheeks--babies soft and round and living on their own. A conceit that recalls Lewis Carroll's granting of a suckling piglet to the monstrous Duchess, the pigs and their status as food product (note the consumption family pictures on "Practical Pig"'s wall: Father is link sausage, Mother suckled by a large litter) suggests again Disney's fixation on consumption while the short departs from the haven/danger/return formula slightly. The highlight of the piece is a scene in which the Big Bad Wolf dresses as a Jewish peddler, complete with stereotypical Jewish accent and elongated nose. Replaced in later releases by a typical "dumb kid"--an early LaserDisc release saw the accidental combination of the Jewish peddler with the "dumb kid" voice. Bad to worse--the disc was pulled soon after release. Rarely seen now in this form (even the Walt Disney Treasures DVD release features the censored version), Three Little Pigs was translated into multiple languages, was a smash sheet music hit, and provided Disney with a theme song in Churchill's "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf." ****
The Flying Mouse (1934, d. Dave Hand, music. Frank Churchill and Bert Lewis, principal animators: Fred Moore, Ham Luske, Bob Wickersham, Handie Gramatky. Premiere July 1934 at Radio City Music Hall with Walter Lang's Whom the Gods Destroy): A disquieting tale of a mouse who wishes to fly, but is unprepared for the freak-rejection that come with his leathery bat-wings--the short is most interesting for a blue fairy that grants the mouse his wish. One of the earliest experiments by Disney's animators to create a compelling human form evolved away from the noodle-looseness of his animal and caricature creations. Realistic joints that much harder to animate, the picture is less a revelation than a landmark--but fascinating for its hints of future work, and echoes of past (a quartet of dancing bats recalls the skeletons of Skeleton Dance). ***
Who Killed Cock Robin? (1935, d. Dave Hand, music. Frank Churchill, principal animators: Ham Luske, Norm Ferguson, Dick Lundy, Clyde Geronimi. Premiere June 1935 at New York's Rivoli with Zoltan Korda's Sanders of the River): An unbelievably ferocious satire of Jim Crow justice, the power of sexuality, and the intrusion of the low, Who Killed Cock Robin? is one-of-a-kind and, as such, didn't see the light of day for about seven decades. Departing from the nursery rhyme (revived memorably for me in the eighties by a Thrill Kill Kult tune called "Do You Fear (For Your Child)"), a crooner-modeled Cock Robin courting a Mae West-modeled strumpet is smitten by an arrow fired not by the sparrow, but by a sexually deviant Cupid. The resultant courtroom scene takes on the broad dimensions of a minstrel show with one of the defendants a Stepin Fetchit blackbird, the other a low-talking New York street tough, and the last a Cuckoo. Seduced by the struttin' Mae West construct, the owl judge declares the case hopeless and sentences all the defendants to death by hanging. A Greek chorus contributes a sardonic refrain and Disney Studios crafts one of the most disturbing and incisive bits of sociology that it ever, to this day, has. ****
Music Land (1935, d. Wilfred Jackson, music. Leigh Harline, principal animators: Dick Lundy, Grim Natwick, Les Clark, Dick Huemer. Premiere October 1935 at Radio City Music Hall with William Wyler's The Gay Deception): A sort of "Romeo and Juliet" tale of a little saxophone from Jazz Land falling for a violin from Music Land and the resulting musical feud it inspires. Notable again for its use of popular and classical music, Music Land is notable, too, for the way in which the soft round animation of the earlier shorts continues to evolve into a more angular, more sculpted figure. The mother of the heroine (a cello, it appears) reminds a great deal of the Grande dames of Disney's feature films: slightly caricature in its features, but basically human and gaunt in form and movement. Slight--especially in comparison. **1/2
The Old Mill (1937, d. Wilfred Jackson and Graham Heid, music. Leigh Harline, principal animators: Cy Young, Bob Wickersham, Stan Quackenbush, Bob Stokes, Jack Hannah. Premiere November 1937 with Herbert Wilcox's Victoria the Great): An example of Disney pulling his best character animators out to work on his features while the "bullpen" takes over the Silly Symphonies, The Old Mill is a stunning example of the background artist's craft. Its wordless tale of a collection of outsiders (another Disney theme) taking shelter in the titular ramshackle mill is one that compels for its sweeping artistry while underwhelming with its non-anthropomorphized animals. They are the stuff of the feature's backgrounds as, increasingly, Uncle Walt used Silly Symphonies as a training ground for his "B-list," the relative anonymity of which (and that of his "A-list" as well) the cause of mass defections towards the end of the decade of the thirties (the most damaging of which was Carl Stalling to the Warner Bros. stable). Beautiful and oft-screened, The Old Mill is more an aesthetic pleasure than a narrative/thematic one--and best appreciated with a man of Prof. Merritt's qualifications in attendance. ***
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