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Cabinets of cinematic curiosities: A critical history of the animated ‘package feature’, from fantasia (1940) to memories (1995)

2006; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680600916843

1465-3451

David Scott Diffrient,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1. In my ongoing research of feature-length episode films produced throughout the world, I have compiled a lengthy filmography, and found that approximately three-dozen anthology, omnibus, portmanteau, and sketch films were made between 1914 and 1940. These early examples of an overlooked narratological genre include D. W. Griffith's Home Sweet Home (1914), Carl Theodor Dreyer's Leaves of Satan's Book (Blad af Satans Bog; 1920), Charles J. Brabin's While New York Sleeps (1920), Marshall Neilan's Bits of Life (1921), Fritz Lang's Destiny (Der Müde Tod; 1921), and Paul Leni's Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett; 1924), as well as revue-style musicals like The Show of Shows (1929), Happy Days (1930) and Paramount on Parade (1930) and multi-director ensemble films such as If I Had a Million (1932). 2. The word ‘kitsch’ is derived from the old German verb kitschen, which literally means, ‘to collect rubbish off the street.’ 3. For an in-depth discussion of the many European artists and illustrators (including Heirnrich Kley, Gustave Doré, Honoré Daumier, Franz von Stuck, Arnold Böcklin, and Caspar David Friedrich) who directly or indirectly inspired the animators’ work on Fantasia, see Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe (London, John Libbey and Co. Ltd., 1999). 4. For more information on Jorn's attempt to deconstruct the deep/shallow antinomy, see Peter Wollen, Raiding the Icebox: reflections on twentieth-century culture (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1993), 145–148. 5. Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: a history of American animated cartoons [revised edition] (New York, Plume, 1987), 29. 6. Like most short subjects at that time, cartoons were seen as less important than longer narratives. Often perceived as ‘add-ons’ to a theater's bill of attractions, short films like ‘Flowers and Trees’ nevertheless contributed to box-office revenue and increased the studio's standing in the critical community—journalists and even academic representatives who appreciated Disney's attempts to go beyond personality-based animation and affect an occasionally abstract, art-for-art's-sake visual style. 7. Amy M. Davis, The Rise and Fall of Fantasia, in Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds) Hollywood Spectatorship: changing perceptions of cinema audiences (London, British Film Institute, 2001), 65. 8. Michael Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons: American animation in its golden age (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999), 249. 9. According to Charles Solomon, incense would be sprayed into theaters during the visualization for Schubert's Ave Maria, gunpowder for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and so on; but Disney—acknowledging that clearing the scents out between episodes would present a problem—wisely decided against this bit of ballyhoo. See Charles Solomon, The Disney that Never Was (New York, Hyperion, 1995), 123. 10. Ibid., 246. After conferring with his many writers on staff, Disney began assigning individual segments to various supervising animators, who were reminded throughout the production process that what their boss most wanted was beauty, not the belly-laughs for which his cartoons were best known. 11. Disney actually hired Fischinger in 1939, hoping that the German filmmaker could bring his unique abstractions to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor; however, as Michael Barrier writes, ‘After nine months at the studio, Fischinger left at the end of October 1939’ due to artistic differences. Although the finished segment does not feature Fischinger's work, its double exposures and distortions, if not its flying metronomes and starbursts, are nevertheless similar to his less clumsy attempts at cinematic cubism. For more information on this unusual collaboration, see Barrier, 254, and Allan, 11–114. 12. These words are taken from Helmut Farber's article, ‘Fantasia—Neuester orbis pictus,’ cited in Allan, 172, n22. 13. Barrier, 252. 14. Ibid., 279. 15. Quoted in Allan, 104, and Solomon, 121. 16. Some of the ‘items’ to be added in future releases of Fantasia would have included Weber's Invitation to the Dance, Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela, and Debussy's Clair de Lune, the latter a piece that was indeed completed and eventually included in Make Mine Music. 17. Jean Mitry, The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, trans. Christopher King (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2000), 263–264. Even many of the contemporaneous positive reviews of Fantasia were conditional; as in Richard Mallett's article in Punch (August 6, 1941), where the critic calls it an ‘interesting patchwork.’ 18. Prior to its frame narrative, the images immediately following the opening credits for Ziegfeld Follies deconstruct the high/low antinomy spoken of earlier. The camera first swoops past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which is perched on a cumulous cloud. Then the shot dissolves to reveal another celestial façade, that of P. T. Barnum's circus. Finally, the camera approaches a proscenium stage bearing Ziegfeld's name. While the shot-to-shot arrangement of these three spaces in time visually imitates their chronological arrangement in history, we might note that the camera's subtle movement suggests that the latter building—a place of cheap thrills and lowbrow humor—ironically stands above Shakespeare's domain. 19. Matthew Tinkcom, Working Like a Homosexual: camp, capital, cinema (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2002), 55. 20. Bob Strauss, in his review of British producer Don Boyd's multi-director Aria, says the film is ‘like MTV, only with great music and intelligent ideas.’ Bob Strauss, Aria helps Don Boyd satisfy creative urges, Chicago Sun-Times (July 3, 1988). 21. Susan M. Pearce, Museums, Objects, and Collections: a cultural study (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 17–19. 22. Charles Eidsvik, Cineliteracy: film among the arts (New York, Random House, 1978), 180–182. 23. Page 19 of the exhibitor's manual for the Disney film Melody Time, distributed by RKO Radio, makes reference to the ways in which film can literally be handled in a tactile way, saying:Twenty-five graduates of the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind attended a showing of Melody Time, in color by Technicolor, as the guests of Walt Disney, at the Astor Theatre, during their Commencement Week. The group ‘saw’ the film with the aid of special programs in Braille; special cartoons of the Disney characters as drawn and perforated by Marian Daly, of the Institute; and a proctor to each four students. The students had voted the picture they would best like to attend.Because the film contains an episode about Johnnie Appleseed, the exhibitor's manual also suggests that theater owners ‘have a barrel or large stack of apples displayed as a basis for a quantity estimating contest.’ This resonates with the notion of plentitude so central to multi-episode films. Melody Time clippings file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Los Angeles. 24. Karl Marx, Capital: a critique of political economy (New York, Penguin Books, 1992). 25. Mark Wigley, Theoretical slippage, Fetish, 4 (1992), 101. 26. Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: the American science fiction film (2nd, enlarged edition; New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1987), 279–280. 27. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 205. 28. Barrier, 271. 29. Solomon, 114. 30. As outlined in an undated memorandum about Walt Disney Defense Films held at the U. S. National Archives (Office of War Information files), the studio agreed to make several films in support of inter-American affairs. These included: five agricultural films with narration translated into Spanish and Portuguese; five public health films supervised by experts in tropical medicine; a dramatic documentary about the Amazon Basin; a four-reel film of Disney's trip to South America (later used in Saludos Amigos); and at least 12 cartoons featuring South American settings and music. Walt Disney Productions, Box 1433, Records of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, General Records of the Chief Lowell Mellett, Record Group 208 OWI files, National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland. 31. Barrier, 372. 32. Ad mats for this ‘musical fantasy in ten parts’ proclaimed that it was ‘so new and different that in all show business there is no familiar term truly to describe its entertainment wonders!’ While this degree of hyperbole was not unusual at the time, and particularly not for episodic films that frustrated conventional wisdom and categorical imperatives, it should be noted that much of what is implied as ‘new’ has to do with the filmmakers’ ability to distill ‘a complete opera in the space of 14 minutes, 9 1/3 seconds.’ Drawing particular attention to the film's final episode, the presskit notes ask: ‘How long is an opera? Or, how big is a house? Or, how long is short? Albert Einstein, the renowned scientist, has an answer for all those questions, and he calls it ‘relativity’.’ See the Make Mine Music clippings file, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS, Los Angeles. 33. Leonard Maltin, The Disney Films (4th edn; New York, Disney Editions, 2000), 73. 34. According to production notes from the film, it was Prokofiev who approached Disney, insisting that he make a cinematic version of the ‘symphonic legend.’ The notes explain that, ‘During a visit to the studios, the famous Russian scrutinized and reviewed Peter and the Wolf at the piano with Walt and later confided to critics that he would entrust Peter's film future only to Disney.’ Make Mine Music Production Story, clippings file, the Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS, Los Angeles. 35. This arrangement of the episodes in the film's home video and DVD presentations is different than that of the film's original theatrical release. According to a reviewer writing for the Hollywood Reporter (April 17, 1946), Make Mine Music begins with ‘The Martins and the Coys,’ a comedic recounting of a mountain feud, which has since been cut from the home video version because of its gunplay; from that point most of the remaining episodes are presented in a different order. Coincidentally, this critic, like his peers at Variety, refers to Make Mine Music as a ten-act ‘revue’ or ‘vaudeville show’—terms that Disney had assiduously tried to avoid. 36. The presskit for the film includes the following justification for staging a short, one-act opera whose miniature size belies its grand ambitions: ‘Willie, the Operatic Whale is a rounded, compact little epic, with all the elements of drama, suspense, humor and magnificent settings that are traditional in the masterpieces of opera. Moreover, the miniature music drama has the quality of imagination and fantasy which the film world expects and always gets in a Disney creation.’ Make Mine Music clippings file, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS, Los Angeles. 37. Parker Tyler, Magic and Myth of the Movies (London, Secker and Warburg, 1971), 51. 38. Hermine Rich Isaacs, The Dark Brown Taste, Theatre Arts, 30(6) (June 1946), 343. 39. David Scott Diffrient, Narrative mortality: killing bodies and killing time in the horror anthology film, Episodes and Infinities: critical approaches to anthology, omnibus, portmanteau, and sketch films (doctoral dissertation; Los Angeles, UCLA, 2005), 275–330. 40. Susan Stewart, On Longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1993), 172. 41. Ibid., 100–101. In an earlier episode of Melody Time, set to a boogie-woogie version of Rimsky-Korsakov's ‘Flight of the Bumblebee,’ the music itself is made to emulate nature (for instance, notes transmogrify into flower petals, caterpillars, and cobras). Yet, even in such an anthropomorphic state, this product of human creativity cannot manage to trap the titular insect. The idea that something natural, such as the evasive bumblebee, can be attacked yet never fully captured by something artificial, resonates with the critical interrogation of kitsch and its ‘nefarious’ maneuvers. 42. See Lowell E. Redelings, New Characters Make Debut in Disney's Melody Time Picture, Citizen News (July 30, 1948); The New Pictures, Time (June 7, 1948); and Disney Name, Color, Music will Aid BO, Hollywood Reporter (May 19, 1948). 43. Marie Mesmer, Film Review, Daily News (July 30, 1948). 44. Viewers can ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of Bruno Bozzetto's animation vis-à-vis other artists’ work in another episodic film, Mondocartoon (1989), an omnibus compilation bringing together contributions from over a dozen of the world's biggest names in animation (including John Lasseter, Bill Plympton, and Marv Newland). 45. For instance, Bozzetto's take on the miniature/gigantic dialectic of humans and insects in ‘The Birds and the Bees’ evokes the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ sequence in Melody Time. 46. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (M. H. Heim trans.; New York, Harper and Row, 1984), 251. 47. Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: the aesthetics of consumerism (New York, Basic Books, 2000), 7–8. 48. Charles Solomon, An Ill ‘Wind’ Blows Into Town, Los Angeles Times (May 24, 1980). 49. Ibid. 50. Donald Richie, Tokyo (London, Reaktion Books, 1999), 44. Beyond the realm of animation, Japan has a rich history of live-action episode films, with such titles as The Kiss (Kuchizuke; 1955), A Certain Adultery (Aru mittsÛ; 1967), and Zipper and Tits (Fasuna to chibusa; 2001) giving a sense of the thematic material and carnal imagery to be found in these pictures. 51. For instance, The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968), a black-and-white horror anthology directed by José Mojica Marins (who also stars as the titular crypt keeper), begins with an episode entitled ‘The Dollmaker.’ One of the central images of this episode, which concerns four men who rob and rape the daughters of a dollmaker, is of a collection of eyeless dolls lined up on a wall—their serial arrangement suggesting the manner in which we consume the film's discrete narratives. 52. Celeste Olalquiaga, The Artificial Kingdom: a treasury of the kitsch experience (New York, Pantheon Books, 1998), 47. 53. Ibid., 74. 54. A staple at sci-fi and comic book conventions thanks to its S&M imagery, and second only to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) in terms of its popularity on the midnight cult film circuit, Heavy Metal has nevertheless been referred to as a ‘brutalist Arabian Nights’ by critics who abhor its juvenile humor and chauvinistic positioning of scantily clad women. Anon., Bad Trip, Newsweek (August 10, 1981), 69. Just as the 1981 theatrical release of Heavy Metal was accompanied by a book, The Art of Heavy Metal: the movie, which added to its mystique, legitimation, and commodification (it eventually became one of the most bootlegged films of the 1980s prior to its release on videotape and DVD), so too have there been similar souveniric and material traces of film in the realm of merchandise (for instance, the above-mentioned salt-and pepper-shakers promoting Fantasia). 55. Olalquiaga, 76. 56. Ibid., 80, 89, 98.