Old Disney Classics

[Marky_198]

I'v been collecting the Disney Classic on dvd for a while now.
I know all of them very well, but notice new things everytime I watch them.

Yesterday I decided to watch Bambi. Bambi has never been one of my favourites. As a child I have seen it a couple of times but I just was much more interested in other movies like Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid.
But the experience I had yesterday was overwhelming. Bambi might be the most beautiful animated classic of them all. It's just one big piece of art. Astonishing beauty and the music brought me to tears.
It's like a wonderful painting with a haunting story. I also was so surprised about how mature the story is. This movie is not suitable for kids at all! I think you have to be older to understand this movie completely. The artwork is like a dream and doesn't even come close to other classics. This is a really mature movie.

But what I also noticed is the peace in this movie.
For example the opening sequence, it's like 10 minutes of astonishing nature beauty. Just an impression of nature. You see the animals doing their thing. You get sucked into the atmosphere, the beauty, their life.

And then I started to think, a lot of old Disney classics had that.
And that's what I miss in the new movies. There's no time for scenes like that anymore. Everything has to be rushed, people get bored easily.
Every scene has to be filled up with words.
And jokes for that matter. Every scene has to have a reason, to lead somewhere.

The sequence in Pinocchio when Jiminy Cricket is discovering Gepetto's house with all the clocks and machines is wonderful too. Just a long sequence with music and beauty. No words needed.
No rushed dialogues.

I also love the scene where Aurora walks through the forest and sings. If you look at it, she doesn't do anything for 10 minutes, just walking and singing, dreaming. The scene doesn't lead to anything, but it doesn't always have to.

If they had to, they could tell all these things story wise in 1 minute.
That's what I really miss in the new movies. It's like they are afraid to have silences in between or something.

[Marky_198]

Another thing that bothers me is that Disney is presenting the movies nowadays in a completely different way than what they actually are.

That's probably why I never watched Bambi for the past few years, as I had this childish modern image in mind. The merchandise pictures of Bambi with the pink butterfly on his tail.

But also other films like Snowwhite and Alice in Wonderland are presented with new covers, merchandise, like modern films while actually they are very old fashioned movies, with old fashioned voices, story lines and character designs. And I mean old fashioned in a good way here.
They are presented as modern cartoons while actually they are old fashioned masterpieces.

I know some people who were truly shocked when they watched the actual movies. Not because they weren't good or anything, they just expected to see a whole different style of film.

It's time Disney presents their classics for what they are and maybe whole new groups of audiences will rediscover the classics.

[PrincePhillipFan]

I completely agree with you, Marky. There's something of the older "old fashioned" classics from the 1940s to 60s that I prefer than many of the other Disney films. Like you said, the films don't feel the need to rush along the story. Maybe it's just because I have a longer, more appreciative attention span than other people of my age, but I prefer the older stories' slower pace and take their time to develop the plot.

I also agree that there is something about the older film's look that I really love. I love the soft watercolor look of Snow White, Pinocchio, and Bambi, and the sharp angular design of the characters and backgrounds in Sleeping Beauty. Something about the way were they were inked and painted and designed back then really sets them out differently to me.

Also, maybe it's just me, but can anybody tell the era of when the movies were made by the sound of the character voices? I'm not saying that they're bad voices (I love the original voices for the characters and wouldn't want them to change), but there's just something about Ilene Woods's voice for Cinderella, Kathryn Beaumont's for Alice and Wendy, and Bill Shirley's for Prince Phillip that just seem very 1950s-ish to me.

[akhenaten]

i notice that too...maybe the way films were made were influenced by the social condition of its time and the aevolution of technology and storytelling in filmmaking. movies in the 70s are awfully quiet for the most part...and the late 90s till now r loud n ever in motion.i'd say most of my artwork r influenced by the early disney films...that showcase beauty trough multiplane static backgrounds with minimal animation.

as for distinctive voices..i was going through a FRIENDS dvd marathon and i think lisa kudrow would make a distinctive voice ...she has a vulnerable but intelligent vocal quality. listening to it with ur eyes closed really helps. i hope they'd cast her in something soon.

[Marky_198]

Yes, the voices are also a big part of the time, feeling, character of the film.

I absolutely agree, the sound of the voice of Bill Shirley is what represents the 50's for me. Although I'm just 25

So I don't understand that they try to sell the movies today as modern, new movies that have to look as if they were made yesterday.
I can't watch Cinderella and Snowwhite anymore, because there is such a gap between the original film, characters, way of story telling, designs and voices, and the way Disney makes the film look today.
Cinderella for example. When I watch it, it just feels like a big clash. 2 styles, eras mixed. The bright colours, modern look, modern cover while all the other things are really old fashioned. Disney should stop presenting the films as something they're not.

When I watch the vhs tape of Cinderella (which I recorded on dvd and the quality is great actually) everything falls into place again. The look of the film matches the time, story, characters, voices again. It's a shame the new generation has to miss this.

[Marky_198]

Ps. Here in Holland it's even worse.
Not only we get the restored coloured versions, that look like modern yesterday made films which is a clash with the whole style of the movie, design and overall look and we get dvd covers that have nothing to do with the movie and give people the idea it's a modern movie so they will be shocked when they see the actual movie, but they also re-dub the voices all the time. And over the years they sound cheaper, the acting gets worse compared to the first Dutch dubbings, so they do absolutely everything in their power to ruin the original.

Even I as a Disney fan was mislead by Disney and started to believe Bambi was childish. Luckily I rediscovered they movie for what it really is.
Unfortunately many people won't.

[Escapay]

can anybody tell the era of when the movies were made by the sound of the character voices?

Try watching early 1930s live-action films, when sound was still in its early years. Most female voices will sound the same: either high-pitched and childish ("Gee, Mr. Kent, that'd be swell!"), or sultry and mature ("Give me a whiskey, ginger ale on the side...and don't be stingy, baby.")



Albert

[2099net]

Marky, how do you know what the films ORIGINALLY looked like?

I quote again from the Wikipedia Technicolor entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor

Technicolor became known and celebrated for its hyper-realistic, saturated levels of color, ...

That alone makes me think the restoration colours, while perhaps not perfect, are more accurate than the colours people are used to from VHS viewings.

[Marky_198]

Marky, how do you know what the films ORIGINALLY looked like?
.

I don't. But I DO know that the look of Cinderella on dvd now is extremely modern and doesn't match the style of the designs, characters, story, and it looks like a huge style/time clash. Anyone can see that.

[ichabod]

*ahem*

Cinderella screen cap

Original Production cel setup

[akhenaten]

icabod..did u get mixed up with the two?the latter seems like a screencap and the former one a setup..i need clarification .but with that proof...im glad i liked the restoration.altho some cel flaws that weren't cleaned wont hurt.(like in bambi)

[disneyfella]

I might be in the minority here, but I applaud the loving restoration that has gone into these films. Disney has taken great care to restore every frame of its films as close to the original brilliance as possible.

Unfortunately, film restoration is only a thing of the 90s which means that the film versions we grew up with and remember frame by frame are actually inferior copies than those shown on premiere night.

I DO, however, agree that Disney should stop marketing these films as brand new movies. I like how Warner Brothers uses original poster art as the cover of their classic DVD releases. I think, though, that only collectors buy those Warner discs and every family buys the Disney discs.....maybe Disney has the right idea with trying to promote the films to more than just one demographic.

Hopefully, in the future they will return to producing quality DVDs geared toward the collector (i.e. Atlantis 2-disc Collector's Edition, Snow White Platinum Edition, etc.) and then the marketing/art and everything can indicate that indeed these films are time capsules and representative of a different era. Even more so that these films were so important that they had an impact during that era and have become icons regardless of the decade it is rereleased in.

[UmbrellaFish]

I DO, however, agree that Disney should stop marketing these films as brand new movies. I like how Warner Brothers uses original poster art as the cover of their classic DVD releases. I think, though, that only collectors buy those Warner discs and every family buys the Disney discs.....maybe Disney has the right idea with trying to promote the films to more than just one demographic.

That's an interesting thought. It makes a lot of sense actually.

And notice the better releases cames out when DVDs were new and Disney knew families were more likely to buy the video tapes. It makes sense. Tood bad TLM couldn't have came out in 2002...

[2099net]

icabod..did u get mixed up with the two?the latter seems like a screencap and the former one a setup..i need clarification .but with that proof...im glad i liked the restoration.altho some cel flaws that weren't cleaned wont hurt.(like in bambi)

https://www.cartoongallery.com/Webstore ... id=9000892
this is the page with the cell art on

[Jules]

Those comparisons are striking, but wasn't the shooting of an animated film expected to slightly change the colour information? If so, then the film on DVD shouldn't look like the original cel setup.

Nevertheless, I'm fond of Disney's restorations. I think my least favourite is that of Peter Pan - not because of the colours (which I believe caused many animation historians to almost swoon in horror) but because of the softness of the image. Though then again, that isn't something inherent to the restoration but to the DVD mastering I guess.

[Marky_198]

maybe Disney has the right idea with trying to promote the films to more than just one demographic.
.

That's not what they're doing right now actually......they're only promoting to little girls at the moment.

[Marky_198]

The shooting of an animated cell changes the colour information, so the cell should not be what you see on the screen.

It's also the lighting of the cell photography that makes the movie look alive.

Lighter, darker areas in Cinderella's hair. Hundreds of little details, nuances, little shadows, lighter/darker areas.
Not one patch is the same colour. The restoration doesn't have any of that. Her hair is just one big orange patch, with no contrasts whatsoever.
It basically looks flat, bright and dead.

I think the 101 Dalmatians restoration looks horrific too. No atmoshere left whatsoever.
The evening scenes look like daylight, Cruella's coat is one big yellow patch. Everything looks flat. No depth, no atmoshere.

About the screencaps of Cinderella, this scene is the only acceptable scene in the movie, as it's dark and they couldn't ruin much here. "A dream is a wish" or the scene when she first enters the castle in that blue dress is awful for example. Looking directly at the cell ruins the movie. Flat, bright and dead.

[Jules]

Marky, are you sure you're not making a mountain out of a mole hill? I know it was me who actually just brought up the argument of the alteration of colours during filming, but you veered onto details like shadows on Cinderella's hair, and complained for the film looking 'flat and dead'.

Firstly, are you sure there originally were shadows in Cinderella's hair? Keep in mind that an inker is just going to paint in with flat colour (certain films excepted) ... so it's only logical that it must look, well ... flat. Same goes for 101 Dalmatians. Did you ever see a Walt-era film of the Xerox age feature shadows and chiaro-scuro effects painted inside the character outlines? It wouldn't have looked too good, for one thing (I think it would have lacked harmony with the rough outlines), so it was likely a stylistic choice. Secondly, 60s Disney was on a budget. You didn't get fluttering leaves and hundreds of butterflies and loads of bubbles and painstaking detail work on the cels which went beyond the routine inking and painting. The cels came out of the Xerox machine and the painters filled them in with bold colour. Forget about any shadows or airbrushing or drybrush and all that luxury. Walt Disney just couldn't afford it anyway ... not after the financial loss of Sleeping Beauty.

So that's what 101 Dalmatians should look like ... that's what Cruella's coat should look like - a bright yellow patch!

[PrincePhillipFan]

Try watching early 1930s live-action films, when sound was still in its early years. Most female voices will sound the same: either high-pitched and childish ("Gee, Mr. Kent, that'd be swell!"), or sultry and mature ("Give me a whiskey, ginger ale on the side...and don't be stingy, baby.")

I notice that a lot too when I'm sometimes watching a movie from the 30s on TCM, like the Thin Man. There were some differences, but I find it funny how often most female voices were like that in the very early 30s movies like you said.

[2099net]

I knew the issue of film shots not copying exactly the colours of the film cell would come up. And it is a valid argument. However, I strongly doubt it would affect the colours as much as people used to seeing the VHS copies of the movie seem to think it did.

I have several reasons for making this deduction:

[1] The cells weren't just put into place and shot. They were filmed under the optimal lighting conditions required to get the best reproduction on the film. By this I mean that the lighting and the time of the exposure would have been carefully calibrated and timed. Filming a Disney animated classic isn't like Joe Doe shooting a home movie – everything would have been carefully tested and worked out. Yes, I'm sure some colours did change – but I doubt they ever looked as washed out as the VHS.

Mainly because…

[2] Technicolor is known for garish colours, not muted colours. As I pointed out before, Technicolor was famous for producing hyper-color and over saturating colours. I've already posted a link to the Wikipedia article, but if that doesn't convince you, there's more evidence – see the "Glorious Technicolor" documentary on the Adventures of Robin Hood DVD which says the same thing.

If people and film sets could be filmed in Technicolor with the result of hyper-realistic, brash colours, why would it be harder to achieve the same results when filming a smaller area, frame by frame, under more controllable circumstances? It just doesn't make sense.

Final words on Technicolor, consider this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aviator#Style

… Many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor.

From Dictionary.com - emphasis mine: Saturated (of colors) of maximum chroma or purity; of the highest intensity of hue; free from admixture of white.

Now, Martin Scorsese happens to be one of the most cinema-literate directors alive to day. Perhaps THE most cinema-literate (which can be heard on all of his commentaries where he discusses his influences, and also it clearly shown on all the various film documentaries he makes), If he decided use artificial means to saturate the colours to emulate Technicolor, I personally believe one of Technicolour's main attributes was garish colours.

[3] In the days of Disney slapping films onto VHS, we never heard about specific restorations – no VHS was to my knowledge promoted as boasting a "new restoration". Admittedly, some Laserdiscs did. But its also important to remember techniques of restoration have improved significantly over the past 10-15 years. An example of this is the 1996 multi-million dollar restoration of Vertigo, which while state of the art at the time is no longer considered "good enough" as technology has moved on and more could be achieved should the film be restored today.

Film does fade its colours over time – see http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/film.html

All film is subject to fading, particularly integral tri-pack color positives, such as Ektachrome® , Ansco®, or Agfa ®. As with all other materials, this fading -- as well as other chemical and physical deterioration -- are impossible to stop entirely. With proper care, handling and storage, the rate of deterioration can be slowed and the usable life of a film can be extended significantly, over several decades.

Short of knowing if the film was restored (and if it was restored, what method was used) when making the VHS tapes, I'm inclined to think they simply took a transfer from their archived film which may have been stored in optimal conditions, but would have still have experienced some fading.

As for the blue dress at night, look at this Cell over a background (you can tell its a Cell as its lifted up off the background):

http://www.animationcelection.com/image ... lclose.jpg


Looks to me like the dress was always intended to be blue when viewed under the moonlight.