With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney had established two story prototypes between which he would all but alternate for subsequent animated features. In 1937's Snow White, the titular heroine trusts that Prince Charming will one day steal her away from life's ills; in 1940's Pinocchio, a misfit innocent is navigated by his surrogate conscience (Jiminy Cricket) through an unkind world back to the parental figure he left behind. Disney didn't really return to the Prince Charming myth until the fifties, when he began a run that includes Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan (a movie about a swashbuckler's repeated rescue of the damsel in distress who fancies him)--Pinocchio's template just seemed to have more resonance in the war years.
Moviegoers embraced Dumbo, one of Disney's cheapest and most profitable pictures, after they dismissed Fantasia. (Uncle Walt was always far fonder of experimentation than his audience.) It's Pinocchio with animals--long nose and all. The story begins with disappointment, as Mrs. Jumbo, a circus elephant, does not receive the special delivery she was expecting from Mr. Stork. A few days later, she is compensated with an adorable baby elephant nicknamed Dumbo by the sewing circle for his oversize ears. When the circus crowd teases her son relentlessly, pulling and poking at his flaps, Mrs. Jumbo has a tantrum with stigmatic consequences: she gets locked-up in a trailer marked "Mad Elephant."
Timothy, a mouse, befriends the down-in-the-dumps orphan and makes it his mission to raise Dumbo's self-esteem and status as a performer. In the film's saddest moment, Timothy takes Dumbo to see his caged mother; Mrs. Jumbo dips out her trunk between the bars and cradles Dumbo in its sling. All three cry and so do we--Disney manipulated us with such deftness you kind of shrug off his questionable motives in admiration, like an emotional checkmate. Base childhood anxieties work the gears of Dumbo, and Dumbo the character, whose muteness--to paraphrase DVD commentator John Canemaker--clears a path for our symbolic projections: not only maternal loss, but also distinguishing physical traits, and clumsiness.
The film is dotted with memorable sequences (the celebrated 'Pink Elephants' fantasy, not to mention the stormy roustabout routine, are stronger detours into surrealism than the majority of Fantasia), and its comedy and drama have an edge lacking in today's entertainment for children; with topical references to The Little Engine That Could, media personalities, and afro-jazz, Dumbo is one of the few early Disneys that lives in its era. Many an authority on the subject cites Dumbo as the Disney studio's finest hour (literally: at 64 minutes, it's the shortest of Disney's theatrical releases), but I find it a bit too undemanding to belong in the same company as flanking projects Pinocchio and Bambi. What does a picture in which an elephant learns to fly at the conclusion lack if not sophistication?
Released but two weeks later than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Platinum Edition, Disney DVD's Dumbo: 60th Anniversary Edition has nothing on the Snow White set in terms of either completeness or presentation, although it's by far the best repackaging of Dumbo yet. While a layer of sooty grain hampers the 1.33:1 image throughout, the transfer is vividly detailed and coloured. As for the audio, the mono stems, mastered in 5.1 to the angst of purists, sound brittle, if plumper with bass than one thought possible. It's not unreasonable to suspect the broadest effects--rain, wind, thunder--of having been re-recorded from scratch.
Disney's gone sequel crazy: trailers for Peter Pan II, Cinderella II, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (co-starring the voice of Jennifer Love Hewitt, here brazenly hawking the direct-to-video production as a must-buy electronic babysitter) greet your first spin of the disc. Somehow I can forgive the abovementioned cash-grabs before Dumbo II, which is previewed elsewhere, within Dumbo's bonus materials. Animation historian Canemaker's screen-specific commentary track comes off as scripted, but boy, does it strike a nice balance of anecdote and analysis. Canemaker gives every single applicable Disney artist his or her due in rich biographical accounts that tend to end in tragedy, and his reading of Dumbo's subtext is fresh enough to keep us listening.
Scrolling down the (bombastic) supplemental menus you'll find the following selections: Michael Crawford's take on "Baby Mine" in music video form; "Celebrating Dumbo", a featherlight tribute to Dumbo from the ubiquitous likes of Leonard Maltin and Roy Disney; seven "Dumbo Art" galleries, complete with how-to narration on browsing them--"Story Development" contains storyboards so gorgeous they belong in a museum; "Sound Design", an excerpt from the under-seen The Reluctant Dragon wherein Robert Benchley watches a very staged approximation of Dumbo's Casey Jr. coming to aural life; the "Original Walt Disney TV Introduction" for Dumbo, running one-minute and shot in black-and-white; "Dumbo's DVD Storybook", read aloud if you so choose; "Look Out for Mr. Stork" and "Casey Jr." sing-alongs; and "Publicity Materials"--Dumbo's (bad condition) 1941 and (mint condition) 1949 trailers. A DVD-ROM section links to Dumbo's website and another version of the storybook. Finally, the disturbing Silly Symphonies The Flying Mouse and Elmer Elephant play as rough sketches of Dumbo's themes.
One of Disney's greatest classics, Dumbo is the timeless inspirational tale of courage, loyalty, and triumph. Now celebrate the 60th anniversary of th...More at eCOST.com
Walt Disney s fourth full-length animated feature, Dumbo remains one of Disney s greatest masterpieces -- a heartwarming and inspirational tale overfl...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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