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Walt Disney was an undisputed genius. That much is certain. His ability to take famous (and semi-famous) European fairy tales and morality stories and turn them into feature films of animation so beautiful is renowned, his early works considered to this date classic masterpieces of the artform. Rightfully so, too. Who am I to try and knock the great man (after all, he’s dead, and can’t respond!), so I can really only give you my thoughts on what is one of the studios most beautifully rendered films.

Peter Pan was conceived by Scottish-born playwright John M Barrie, and his first appearance was in a published version of The Little White Bird in 1902; his leading role status wouldn’t be seen until 1904, when Pan was written into a play featuring the now famous characters we all know and love, including Wendy, John and Michael Darling. Peter Pan appeared in numerous stories, in much the same way a serialised character like Sherlock Holmes would, in which the same character would get into various serialised adventures that ended up becoming the basis for the more modern take on the character. Part of the legend of the character was held that the part of Peter himself, when performed on stage, was played by a girl, rather than a boy, to try and keep the mischievous ambiguity of the character alive and well.

Pan creator, JM Barrie circa 1910

Peter Pan, along with the Lost Boys, Captain Hook, Smee, Tinkerbell and Tigerlilly, and finally the Darling children, became part of modern English folklore, a sort of mythology of childhood fantasy so eloquently expanded a few decades later by Tolkein and CS Lewis, among others. However, the underlying themes of Barrie’s stories were a little darker than the version we see today. More on this later.

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With the release of The Jungle Book in 1967, the end of an era was achieved. In a sad coda to the films production, Walt Disney, the man responsible for creating the Disney brand, died before the film was completed, from lung cancer. As the 19th official animated film in the Disney canon, The Jungle Book is a dramatic misfire of gargantuan proportions, lacking the subtlety and magic that had inhabited almost all of the previous Walt-produced features since Snow White. Lacking real narrative substance, substituting it for character instead, was a risk Walt wanted to take with this, his swansong as producer. It ultimately didn’t pay off, although only time has revealed this in the years between original release and today.

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Prison movies have a long and proud history in Hollywood. Films such as Cool Hand Luke and Stallones Lock-Up have all, at one point, kept us in rapt attention to the plight of the modern-day inmate. While Hollywoods idealised prisoner is traditionally the wrongly accused, or the murderer with a heart of gold, there are some films so perfectly realised by a filmmaker that they transcend the genre and become classics in their own right. The Shawshank Redemption, based on a Steven King short story (entitled Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption, published in Kings’ Different Seasons in 1982) appeared out of nowhere in 1994, and was given a generally lukewarm response by moviegoers around the world. Upon it’s release on home video and DVD, however, audiences warmed to the wonderful story of a man, accused of murdering his wife and her lover, who is thrown into prison, and the friendships he strikes up with fellow inmates. A few years later, the very same director gave another King work a shot at cinematic glory, with The Green Mile, a story set in a prison’s death row, and the men who guard those who have been sentenced to death. But the question remains, which of these two cinematic classics is the better prison film? Which would survive in solitary confinement? Which film deserves our critical version of a lethal injection? Strap on the handcuffs, jot down your last meal, and get set to find out!!

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God bless the ABC. For ages now they’ve been running classic movies on their second digital channel here in Australia, and it’s a great chance to be exposed to films that you might not ordinarily see. Recently they screened this pearler of a film from Paramount, starring a very young Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith, entitled Second Chorus, a comedic musical co-starring Paulette Goddard and big-band superstar Artie Shaw. Filmed in 1940, Second Chorus tells of two misfit college band trumpeters, Danny O’Neill (Astaire) and Hank Taylor (Meredith), who try to win over the affections of Ellen Miller (Goddard) when they spot her at one of their performances. Ellen, who is employed by a debt collection agency, uses her feminine charms to serve a summons notice to Danny about some costs for an encyclopedia he once purchased and never paid for. Both Danny and Hank arrive at the collection agency and swindle Ellen out of her job and into their employ, as their band secretary, a job that sees Ellen soon become defacto band manager.

Goddard, Astaire & Meredith in Second Chorus.

Danny and Hank both try to further their employment with legendary band-leader Artie Shaw (who, funnily, plays himself throughout the film, a nice touch!), but end up themselves being swindled out of a secretary by the famed musician. With Ellen now effectively out of reach, both Danny and Hank come up with various plans to try and win her back, although throughout the film, it’s fairly obvious which of our leading men she’s going to end up with. Throw in the plot device of a Shaw-led concert, a doddery bottle-cap manufacturer (a wonderfully deadpan Charles Butterworth) bankrolling the show and a whole slew of wonderful cinematic treats for the interested viewer. The key musical motif, the song Love Of My life, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song, and is a delightfully fitting (if somewhat belaboured) theme for the film’s sense of fun. Astaire gets to do his thing, dancing up a storm during a few genuinely entertaining musical numbers, especially the grand finale, where he tap-dance-conducts Artie Shaw’s orchestra, winning the heart of his girl. Did I give away the ending? Yep, but you all knew that anyway, didn’t you. After all, this is Hollywood.

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Ahh yes, the original. Caught a showing of this film a while back on local TV here in Australia, and thought it might be good to give you my opinion on it. For those unaware, Dirty Harry was the first in a series of five films depicting the escapades of Harry Callahan, a San Fransisco cop whose methods are unusually…. brutal. The Harry films embedded Clint Eastwood into the pop-culture conciousness, spawned a stream of now classic quotes, and gave us the anti-authority police officer archetype, the kind who “don’t take no crap from nobody” and who will bust your ass if you get in his way, in much the same way that he became the definitive cowboy figure from his pulp westerns under the guidance of Sergio Leoni.

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This film is a magnificent cinematic achievement. And that’s putting it lightly. Disney’s Pinocchio is a devastatingly lavish, luscious and delightful animated feast for the senses, both artistically and musically. Barely a frame of this film is anything less than perfection. It’s golden, a warm, frightening, often poetically made film filled with lovely characters and a sense of the sublime. This, quite simply, is Walt Disney at his absolute finest. As each of these classic films are released on DVD and BluRay as part of the Platinum Series, I keep being blown away with just how… well, awesome each of these early films actually are. A lot of people give the Disney Corporation a bit of grief these days about their overt commercialisation, and their somewhat cavalier attitude towards their inherited legacy of animation. And to some extent, perhaps that rightly so. After all, Disney have successfully whored their product out in a variety of ways that has effectively distilled their wares into nothing more than soft-core family-oriented slop: direct-to-video sequels of their most enduring and popular characters, for example, is only one instance that I can cite where they’ve tarnished their massive history.

Pinocchio dances for Figaro... Thanks to Geppetto.

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The title of this article is wrong. I got to thinking about the Titanics I had seen on film, and I realized there were at least four of them that have featured in semi- (or pseudo-) historical cinematic retellings of the tragic events of April 14-15, 1912. (This is not counting Titanic cameos: Time Bandits, Raise the Titanic!, and recent goings-on on Doctor Who.) So the awful pun that popped into my mind when said mind contained but two Titanics (James Cameron’s and the Titanic lionized in today’s rant, the Titanic of A Night to Remember: Hello, Bi-tanic!) morphed into Tri-tanic when I recalled Germany’s early Nazi-era go at the story (S.O.S. Titanic, essentially a diatribe against the shortcomings of capitalism: a very odd film, to say the least), and finally hit the shoals of nonsense and sank when I remembered the Titanic of 1953, starring Barbara Stanwyck, as a four-way Titanic pileup, or, of course Quar-tanic.

Boo! I found you!

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