Reviews of Melody Time (1948) and related work
- Entry: “Blame It on the Samba” (1948)
- Entry: “Bumble Boogie” (1948)
- Entry: “Little Toot” (1948)
- Entry: “Once Upon a Wintertime” (1948)
- Entry: “Pecos Bill” (1948)
- Entry: “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” (1948)
- Entry: “Trees” (1948)
Melody Time (1948
)
Seen in 2018.
Package film.
References here: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).
moving picture Disney animation fiction
‣ “Blame It on the Samba” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
A spin-off from The Three Caballeros (1944). A fairly good level of energy and visual imagination. The interaction between animation and live action, in particular, is better than average.
moving picture entry Disney animation fiction
‣ “Bumble Boogie” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
moving picture entry Disney animation fiction
‣ “Little Toot” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
moving picture entry Disney animation fiction
‣ “Once Upon a Wintertime” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
A couple goes ice-skating.
One of the loveliest pieces of animation from this era in the studio, it manages to tell a story that is not simply trite or absurd or a folktale, without dialogue or intradiegetic song, in the clean and flat style that would later come to be associated with UPA but animated on ones. Very cute.
moving picture entry Disney animation fiction
‣ “Pecos Bill” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
The mythological aspect, being much more exaggerated, is handled better than in “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” (1948). Like “The Martins and the Coys” (1946), this is a good example of Disney making one of its hyperfeminine leading ladies physically capable and exposing her to some rather extreme physical activity, in this case a violent landing on the moon.
moving picture entry Disney animation fiction
‣ “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
Bowdlerized Christian frontier mythology, with the native Americans happily joining in on a square dance.
References here: “Pecos Bill” (1948).
moving picture entry Disney animation fiction
‣ “Trees” (1948)
Seen in 2018.
The 1913 poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer.
One of the clearest and certainly the most self-conscious of Disney’s efforts to combine art forms in this era. This is a little ironic given that the nominal subject matter is the futility of art compared to nature. It’s heavily stylized but very pretty. Thankfully it does not make the poem’s Christian sentiments or anthropomorphization visually explicit.