"Let's start at the very beginning...a very good place to start."
So sang Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music and so shall I do here. For each 'series' of decades, I will begin as far back as movies began (or at least, as far back as I have seen those movies) and move forward until I get to the present decade.
I've decided to start with Disney because I still love Disney movies and many of them were an integral part of my childhood. I'm going to stick with the animated films for now. There are still several Disney films that I haven't seen, so don't be surprised to find some that aren't reviewed. Also, I realize that the first film on this list isn't really a '40s' film, but it came out in 1937, and, as it was the only Disney animated film of the 30s, that's close enough for me.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White revolutionized cinema at the time it came out. Disney was already established as the creator of many animated shorts, but no full-length animated feature had ever been attempted before. To be honest, Snow White was never one of my favorites, but I recognize it for it's cultural and historical significance. However, as an actual story, I think it falls flat in a number of ways.
First, Snow White herself isn't a very interesting character. She is more like an archetype of a princess than an actual character. She is merely someone to whom things happen and never someone who makes things happen (a problem Disney struggled with and never really fixed until 1989, and then they may have gone too far). It doesn't help that her voice, provided in falsetto by the too-old-at-the-time-to-play-a-young-princess Adriana Caselotti, comes across as particularly grating and annoying. The Prince, a character so nondescript that he doesn't even warrant a name, is even worse, appearing as only a plot device and never as a real character (again, a problem Disney struggled with, but managed to rectify by 1956). As a true character, Snow White fails. We worry about her because the dwarfs worry about her or because the witch scares us, not necessarily because she has been developed as someone worth worrying about.
Speaking of the dwarfs, these are characters we remember. Each dwarf has a distinct personality, from Grumpy, the grouch with the heart of gold, to Doc, the unofficial leader of the group, who hilariously butchers everything he says. But herein lies another problem. The film has a hard time balancing the serious with the silly, and spends too much tome focusing on the silly, especially silliness that has little to nothing to do with the actual plot. The dwarfs' bath and the yodel song are all classic silly moments, but don't really have much of a point. Furthermore, they feel out of balance in a movie that is likely to have youngsters rolling on the floor with laughter at one minute and hiding behind the couch at another.
This leads me to another point, which I will constantly come back to and that is the 'Disney Villain Heist'. This means that often the villain of a Disney movie will often steal the show out from under the hero or heroine's nose. The Evil Queen here is no exception and leaves her mark as the first of her kind - the animated villain who is both terrifying and entertaining. I would argue that as the Queen, she is at her scariest, a malevolent force of darkness whose beauty seems at odds with her cruel words. As the Witch, there is a sense that her true nature has come out. The transformation scene is certainly one of the highlights of the film and a pretty unnerving scene at that. Below is the scene for your enjoyment (in multiple languages!).
That said, in spite of its weaknesses, Snow White manages to retain a lot of the charm of a fairy tale and the Evil Queen and the Seven Dwarves make Snow White a memorable start to the Disney decade, even if its titular character does little to make it so.
Favorite line: The irony of the an ugly old Witch saying, "Now I'm the fairest in the land!"
Pinocchio
Disney's second feature, released in 1940, is a vastly superior film in almost every way. For starters, Pinocchio gives kids a hero they can relate to. Pinocchio is young, for one thing, and not a beautiful princess, like Snow White, but an ordinary boy who has to go to school and listen to his father, as most kids do. His desire to please his father and his struggles with the temptation to take easier, 'funner' paths are all aspects that make him more relatable to children. Pinocchio simply comes across as a more realistic character. Furthermore, every character he comes across, with perhaps only a few minutes of screen time, leaves an impression on the viewer. Even extremely minor roles, such as Gepetto's pets, Figaro the cat and Cleo the goldfish, who have no speaking lines whatsoever, are given personalities.
It is also interesting to note that the villains are as numerous and varied as the heroes, from the comically clever Honest John to the frightening and threatening Coachman to the purely animal Monstro the Whale. I also like the fact that the villains are never really punished for their undoing. For all we know, Honest John continues to lead youngsters astray, Stromboli continues to torment puppets and even the Coachman is never caught for basically kidnapping and enslaving small boys. But that makes Pinocchio feel all the more relevant, for in life, 'villains' or bullies come and go and sometimes they overcome us and sometimes we conquer them and more often then not, they go on uncaught.
The songs here actually benefit the story, especially the timeless 'When You Wish Upon a Star', which has become sort of an anthem for Disney. Also, the animation feels crisper and more colorful than Snow White. The underwater scenes in particular, when Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket go in search of Gepetto and come against Monstro, look ahead of their time. The climactic whale chase is a superb blend of suspense and action and leaves the viewer (at least, the kid viewer) breathless for the emotional finale.
Pinocchio proves that the success of Snow White was no fluke and that there is a bright future ahead for animated feature films. In that realm, Pinocchio remains an early classic and rightfully so.
Favorite line: Words to live by from the Blue Fairy - "A lie keeps growing and growing until it's as plain as the nose on your face."
Fantasia
Making a movie like Fantasia is a risky move for any studio, but it was even more so for the fledgling Disney studio. Unfortunately, the experiment didn't pay off at the time, but now, the film has gathered quite a following and many consider it to be one of the greatest films, let alone animated films, of all time. I am included among those. On the whole, the animation is flawless and far ahead of its time. Take the Nutcracker sequence for instance. At times, the animation is almost photo-realistic, especially during the dance of the winter fairies.
Admittedly, some segments are better than others. The segment set to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is my least favorite and features the most cartoonish animation (yes, even more cartoonish than the dancing hippopotamuses, arguably the funnest segment), with only a few exceptions (the Pegasuses and the centaurs come to mind). Also, I've always felt that the presence of Mickey in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, perhaps the tent-pole segment, felt somewhat out of place, as though the entire segment, while good on its own, doesn't quite fit in.
The strongest segments by far are the darkest ones. For me, the Rite of Spring segment, or as it is more commonly known, 'the one with the dinosaurs', was always one of my favorites. I had an obsession with dinosaurs as a youngster and with volcanoes for that matter and so that segment was right up my alley. I see now that it is one of the clunkier and less evenly paced of the segments and the slow-moving beginning pretty much brings the entire film to a crawl, but I still enjoy it.
My second favorite segment is the finale, the Night on Bald Mountain. Disney has rarely ventured into such dark, terrifying material. The stark imagery of ghosts, demons and naked harpies as well as the macabre atmosphere make this one of the creepiest, most daring pieces of animation put to screen. The second half of the segment, the Ave Maria, makes it even more powerful, demonstrating, to me at least, that no matter how powerful the forces of darkness are, good always prevails.
All in all, Fantasia is one of the high points of animation history and of film history in general. It is a unique film in Disney's collection and one that they should be proud of.
Favorite line: None! There is no spoken dialogue here, beyond the introductions to each segment.
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