101 DALMATIANS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
Walt Disney took a new turn in full-length animated films when he released 101 DALMATIANS in 1961. Until that time, gothic fairy tales were the norm for this genre. When Walt nearly sank the studio in 1958 with the disastrous release of SLEEPING BEAUTY, he turned to different material, a different style, and a different feel. Some of the results were pretty forgettable, but the first, 101 DALMATIANS, was fresh and clever, an original, a novelty.
The film has gone into a national re-issue for the first time since 1985, and for me it is still a beautifully drawn, charming, and entertaining film. The story is narrated by a male Dalmatian dog (you know, the firehouse dog, the white short-hair with the black spots), who first plots to mate his human "pet" and then has to save his and his mate's puppies from the wonderfully off-the-wall villainous Cruela de Vil. The story is set in London and the English countryside; the accents are English except for the two songs Pongo's human sings, which is odd, but the songs are short. This is not a musical, but the Pongo's human is a professional songwriter.
The story is one that ought to amuse adults, except perhaps for those of the most severe sort. It offers satirical notes of a surprisingly sophisticated level. However, children seem to have changed in thirty years, what with the restricted attention spans and an unrelenting diet of mayhem and violence, so that much of the under-twelve element in my audience was pretty bored by the film, except for the chase sequence that dominates the last third of the movie; even there, the children stopped fussing and chatting only during the most explosive or pratfall-filled parts.
Two story elements broke a long Disney tradition. No one's mother dies. And the villain does not have a villainous cat. In fact, the only cat in this doggy movie was Sargeant, who is instrumental in saving 99 Dalmatian puppies from Cruela's cockney henchmen.
The art style is a kind of loosely constructed watercolor that I associate with the late Fifties and early Sixties, and which I, as a former denizen of that era, find very attractive. The backgrounds are rather luscious and detailed, but in a way a world away from the great 1930s animations like SNOW WHITE.
The movements are smooth and natural. In fact, so skill were the Disney animators in capturing gesture and movement, that body language tells part of the story, even as it does in live-action films.
Cruela is, of course, a lot of fun, a kind of satire of the wicked-stepmother prototype so basic to Disney and to fairy tales. The outward signs of her interior evil are probably more obvious and more in line with general thinking than they were 30 years ago. She smokes cigarettes, polluting the air with a bilious miasma of smoke, and scattering her ashes and butts with a vicious abandon. She wears huge fur coats; she loves fur and hates animals. She drives a gas hog that could easily be the origin of the bumper sticker "As a matter of fact, I do own the road." (Cruela's voice was supplied by Betty Lou Gerson, who sounds like Tallulah Bankhead on speed.)
Television comes in for a certain amount of satire, too. One charming sequence has Pongo, his mate, and their pups watching a Rin Tin Lassie shoot-em-up; the pups are great in their reactions and their engrossment in the TV. Later the cockneys Horace and Jasper are so wrapped up in a game show called "What's My Crime" that they make a major mistake. There is also a scene of the pups watching an old cartoon with dancing flowers; I've seen that cartoon, it's real, and I wonder how the Disney people got it to play on their cartoon TV in that pre-computer era; it really looks like the original. (There's also a moment of a car plowing through heavy that looks like a innovation in animation for the time; maybe someone can fill me in what it was I saw -- it was not conventional cel animation.)
The film is short, under ninety minutes, as were most of the animated films, but may be too long for most young children. I'd say it's about the right length for adults and mature children.
I can recommend 101 DALMATIANS, but I'd look for a cheap matinee and I'd prepare to be tolerant about audience noise.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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