"Disney+David" Episode 5: "Dumbo" 1941. Right. This is a peculiar one for me, because my thoughts on this film feel like they're either constantly evolving or in a state of flux. I'm giving a review, yet I never feel like I've come to a conclusion on it and I'm not sure why...
I think it could be something to do with the fact that this movie, especially for animators, is considered an untouchable classic, yet I've never felt as strongly connected to it as perhaps I felt I should have. There's obviously much to love here, yet I vacillate back and forth.
And this indecision is compounded the more I learn about the circumstances in which it was produced, the challenges, the compromises, the controversies...it all adds up to a bit of a pickle for me, which probably says more about my own predilections when it comes to Disney.
So I guess there's no other way to reconcile these opposing forces, both coming from the film and from myself, than to make like the little fella himself and just...jump in and fly. So here goes.
First things first: Historical. The bulk of the Story and Animation side of this production was completed just before the 1941 strike, and for some of the employees Dumbo would be their last film at Disney. But Walt had bigger money problems than the internal to worry about...
Both "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia" had been costly box office failures. For all the innovation he'd brought to the big screen, the uncertainty of war and Walt's own hubris had put his studio in the hole. Here he is, pictured, wondering why people didn't like that black centaurette:
This was pre-Disneyland, pre-endless merchandizing, and so the studio needed an unadulterated hit or else the golden age of Disney would have been literally the only age to speak of. Their whole future was banked on the adaptation of Aberson and Pearl's simple children's book
It wasn't just Dumbo being pushed off the cliff here. The story of this movie is one of underdogs, both in front and behind the multi-plane camera. The studio was spying certain bankruptcy at the bottom, and they just had to trust that their magic feather was going to work.
And this leads me to the most dramatic contrast between "Dumbo" and its lofty predecessors...its style. In order to keep their costs low, Walt and his team had to seriously downgrade their ambitions to a more manageable level, from the detail to even the amount of colours used...
The backdrops are far more simply rendered, with far less dynamism baked into the shots. If my beloved multi-plane camera was employed it was mostly to follow moving objects in lateral tracking shots or pans. Very few other cinematic techniques employed.
Backdrops were painted very sparingly in watercolours, and, though they fit the movie's circus-set primary colour aesthetic, you'll find none of the kind of rich, almost obsessive detail that was applied to Jeppetto's workshop or every cobblestone of Pinocchio's town...
In Pixar they have a term for when an artist goes overboard on unnecessary detail, it's called the "beautifully shaded penny" problem, wherein someone squanders precious resources shading a prop that will never be seen. Dumbo is the "simply shaded penny" of Disney's golden age.
And if innovation was applied, it was in the name of cutting corners. For instance, turning story sketches into photostats to be used as backgrounds in the finished film. Every conceivable cost-cutting measure was taken to deliver a product that could make a profit.
Even my favourite Disney feature, the employment of visual effects like water droplets, bubbles, mist, smoke, flame...these were greatly toned down from the meticulous realism of Monstro's crashing wake to something more manageable (and also, by its nature, old-fashioned)...
Now does every Disney movie need this kind of handsome embellishment? Certainly not, and it DOES totally fit "Dumbo" as a purposeful, stylistic choice. But, speaking for myself, I think I was so utterly spoiled by what had come before that I did feel a sting of disappointment...
And maybe I'm editorializing, but I even feel like I can sense Walt's own disappointment in there too, his deflation at having to reverse his big artistic tidal wave and paddle in shallower, well-tread waters. And there's a reason these waters feel so familiar...
Meet Team Dumbo, a collection of Walt's veteran animators and story guys he came up with during his humbler, "Silly Symphony" shorts days. The A-team, the team these veterans had helped to train, were diligently working on the more ambitious "Bambi", leaving "Dumbo" the B-team...
These guys had cut their teeth on Mickey and Goofy and a far broader, more flexible style of comedic animation, nothing like Walt's modern vision of a "living cartoon". They were perfect for the more basic, stripped down style, but within the studio these were the underdogs.
And you can tell from the opening scenes onwards that this film feels far more like a feature-length "Silly Symphony" episode (more on that later). The style, the shading, even the basic rules and internal logic harken back to the era Walt thought he had evolved beyond...
Two big examples. First is how they incorporate Casey Jr, the train, into the opener. For one thing, it begins wit a most traditional establishing wide. An untethered Walt would have flown his camera past or through every animal cage before landing at the head of this line-up...
Recognize Casey Jr, by the way? He's the anthropomorphized train who cameo'd in "The Reluctant Dragon"'s sound recording sequence. Casey is pure "Steamboat Willy" physical silliness, stretchy, jello-like, and totally unexplained. He doesn't even have a driver.
It's as good as place as any to throw in my favourite multi-plane camera shot, since there are just so few that stand out on a visceral cinematic level. This one is likeable enough, especially with the train's silhouette adorning the Grant-Wood-esque hills and mountains.
There's nothing about these sequences that are visually inferior by any means, it's just not the quality that I had come to expect. When judged as an elongated "Silly Symphony" short, it feels gorgeously elevated, I just am painfully aware that it could be so much more stunning.
The second big example is when Mr Stork is on his cloud looking at a map that shows him where to deliver his baby, only to lower the map to reveal that the word "Florida" is literally etched into the real land mass below. Pure "Silly Symphony" logic, an old school visual gag.
In fact, the inclusion of the storks themselves in the opener is one of a few minor changes from the book brought on by the film's two Story Artists, Dick Huemer and Joe Grant, who Walt tasked with stretching the paper-thin plot into a feature-length film.
One of the other ways in which "Dumbo"'s production differed from other Disney features was that Walt did not simply scale back the visual style of the film, but also his vice-like involvement in every creative decision, trusting the lion's share to Huemer and Grant primarily...
And Huemer and Grant had come up in shorts alongside Walt, so chose to structure the film like a succession of short sequences strung together into the larger narrative. They even playfully submitted their treatment to Walt in the form of "chapters" ending on cliffhangers.
By teasing Walt with each new chapter, they sold him on a deceptively simple formula, to make "Dumbo" feel both episodic in nature, but also a page-turner. They even drew tiny doodles on the manuscripts, including strategically placed tears!
Story guy tangent: I know this is pretty cute as a faux-disclaimer at the end of an act break, but I'd like to see ANY Story Artist worth their salt hand in a card like this in lieu of a full treatment in today's industry. A writer, maybe, but we'd get spanked!
This lean approach to the storytelling meant that the Story process for "Dumbo" was incredibly fast by the studios standards, in fact it was almost entirely boarded and animated before the studio's strike, when some of its artists would walk out those doors for the last time.
A by-product of this emphasis on contained sequences rather than a fully interconnected narrative is that Dumbo gets passed through a series of different donor characters who help him along the way. He has no dad, but a bunch of surrogate dads, from stork to mouse to crow...
The largest donor character has to be Timothy Q. Mouse. He's clearly the studio's attempt at replicating the success they had with Jiminy Cricket in "Pinocchio", a guardian in the dressed up tiny animal mould, though nowhere near as charismatic.
Fun fact, the character was originally a robin in the book, but it was a shrewd call from the Story guys to transpose that role onto a mouse, the stereotypical thing that elephants are supposed to be startled by.
I must admit that his proximity to Jiminy both in his stature and application did cause me to judge Timothy a little harshly on first viewing, though, much like the rest of the film, he has since grown on me a little as I write this. And I think it's for how he's NOT like Jiminy.
Jiminy gets kinda dragooned into being Pinocchio's conscience, but Timothy flat-out volunteers for the job for no other reason than he feels empathy for Dumbo's plight. He sees the other elephants shunning him and just wades right in.
And, unlike Jiminy, he never gives up on him. He defends him at every turn, and he's even ride or die with him when it comes to that final plunge. This radical acceptance, which at first felt like lazy plot, did eventually endear me to him through its sheer emotional power.
By the time he gets to his impassioned speech to the crows, Timothy's pretty much won me over through sheer sincerity. He's not as funny as Jiminy, or as striking a design, but there's something raw and unpretentious about a guy who just wants to help. So yeah, he can stay.
But hold up a moment, you cry. You've left out one mighty substantial character in this here thorough review you got goin' here. Indeed, I have. But I guess I've been saving him til last, him being this movie's one truly indispensible asset....
It's...sniff, sniff.....THIS LITTLE GUY! D'aaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Truly, this movie, more than "Snow White", more than "Pinocchio", even more than most modern Disneys even, belongs to its titular character. The way he's designed, the way he's conceived, the way he's acted, MAKES this movie. So much cost was cut, but he is priceless.
Outside of his ridiculously cute design, I could encapsulate all of Dumbo's appeal into the film's most canny story choice: Dumbo doesn't speak. I LOVE that he doesn't speak! Everything about him is conveyed with his expressions, his wide curious eyes, his bashful body language.
In fact, sometimes he's just a trunk, sometimes he's just a pair of ears, the sheer restraint on the part of the film-makers to keep him mute throughout the course of the film (he begins as a baby but could have grown up, "Bambi"-style), pays off in alcoholic bucket-loads!
Wordless, he can be naive without seeming foolish like Pinocchio sometimes did. He's genuine and sweet in all things. He's a baby, so we project all of our feelings onto him. And, crucially, the dialogue is reserved for those who champion or judge him. HE reveals EVERYONE ELSE.
I don't believe that Disney has managed to achieve this level of sheer adorability and pathos for any other character, before or since. The closest any other studio would get to this are the two similarly mute characters of Wall-E and Gromit for Pixar and Aardman respectively.
In that way, it's almost like Dumbo is this film's "special effect". Interestingly, Walt went with a story about an elephant to save on detail and colour too. The fact that they were grey meant that the Ink and Paint club only had to develop a couple different shades.
But who needs extra shades when you have a performance like this? Seriously, name a better piece of acting in the whole damn Disney canon. It's just beautiful and tender and WRENCHING and perfect. Your heart just breaks for him.
Yes, Dumbo truly is the solid foundation upon which this film is built, or perhaps a better way of saying it is that he's this film's "wings", helping it soar even when other elements threaten to bring it down to Earth...
So...let's talk about some of those elements shall we, and we'll see if Dumbo can't pull us back up again...
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