In one of Disney’s first contemporary set films, a dalmatian called Pongo plays matchmaker for his “pet” Roger setting him up with the lovely Anita and her dalmatian Perdita. After the couples’ marriage, Perdita eventually gives birth to fifteen puppies. Puppies a fashion designer acquaintance of Anita’s, Cruella de Vil (what a name!) has her sights on. But when Roger and Anita are unwilling to sell them, she sends her goons Horace and Jasper to kidnap them along with eighty-four other puppies across southern England. Pongo and Perdita must rescue the puppies before Cruella does the unthinkable: kill and skin them for a coat.
Cruella de Vil and her evil machinations are easily the best part of the movie. She is one of the greatest Disney villains, with her crazy and diabolical goals. Of course a part of her evilness comes from how much the film stresses she wants to kill puppies but at the same time SHE WANTS TO KILL PUPPIES! She’s very graphic about it too. At one point she’s angrily urging Horace and Jasper to do it soon and she doesn’t care how: “Poison them, drown them, bash them on the head”. Christ, did I really just hear that in a Disney movie?! It also helps that she’s got a striking, wicked design; from her black and white hair, her thin features that just feel hanging off the bone, to her long mink coat. And she’s also pretty terrifying in her rage. There’s something frightening in the air whenever she shows up and you feel the danger with the puppies (likely because they’re only puppies!) whenever she’s tracking them, creating some very good suspense. When she’s chasing the dalmatians in the climax, the animators really take advantage of her anger and obsession resulting in a figure you would not want to be anywhere near. I think it may partly come from her voice which is provided by the very talented Betty Lou Gerson whose inflections and attitude have a certain boiler pot subtlety to them, unhinged and waiting to explode. And because she’s a very modern villain, a representation perhaps even satire of modern wealth and the fashion industry, she feels even closer to reality than someone like Maleficent for example. She’s also assisted by a couple of the more memorable Disney henchmen, Horace and Jasper. These cockney kidnappers voiced by J. Pat O’Malley and Frederick Worlock are great, the perfect combination of both funny and actually kind of threatening. Again I think part of this owes to the general helplessness of the puppies, but the blokes deserve some credit too. The pair are very well designed even if they are basically the same face on two different body types, and they feel like they’d exist in the real world, especially when compared to the henchmen that both precede and succeed them. Though as we found out in 1996, in the real world they look like Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams.
Very much like how Bambi turned people off to hunting, I imagine One Hundred and One Dalmatians at least made people more conscious of animal cruelty. Hell, organizations like PETA probably figure people in the fur industry are all Cruellas. And it likely stems from how up front this film was with the graphic implications of animals being skinned for their coats. And because of this, and the fact that whenever these topics are being brought up they’re in an environment of dark shadows and dinginess, I really admire this film.
Which is why it’s unfortunate that all that only amounts to a small portion of the film, which is mostly concerned with being cute. One Hundred and One Dalmatians really feels like the first Disney movie designed for marketing. Throughout the film we see not only the puppies, but a number of pointless dog characters (including cameos from half the cast of Lady and the Tramp) who really aren’t important and only seem to advertise the different designs or just having pet dogs themselves. The one hundred and one dalmatians don’t have much character, which is to be expected given how many there are. They exist only to live up to the title and be adorable, something even other characters comment on to the point that it becomes annoying. We get a few named puppies like Patch, Rollie, and Lucky (who was almost a stillborn; that was a bit of a dark scene too...) but they each consist of a single character trait that with the exception of Lucky isn’t really seen more than once. They’d have to wait for the 1997 animated series to have more defined characters (the give-and-take there would be that they’d be transplanted in America. But then again, Cruella would become one of the funniest cartoon villains...). The cute factor is a bit of an Achilles heel too because compared to the darker discussions and villains, the shift in tone is really pronounced and doesn’t always work. One minute Horace will have the puppies cornered prepared to beat them to death with a club, the next Pongo and Perdita will be leading them away in a puppy exodus. One minute they’ll be fearing for their lives as Cruella catches on to them, the next they’ll be having fun rolling in soot. There are scenes that are just devoted to getting an “awww” out of the audience rather than advance much story or characters. It’s inconsistent and while it doesn’t derail the film, it definitely hurts it. Pongo who’s for maybe the first time in a Disney movie voiced by a big star -Rod Taylor, has a very basic personality as does Perdita and neither are very interesting. Same could be said for Roger and Anita. Apart from Roger’s design and distinct career as a songwriter, there’s little to them. The only characters apart from the villains who I kinda like, are the trio of the Colonel a sheepdog, Sergeant Tibbs a tabby cat, and a horse called the Captain. And that’s mainly because as I noted in my Peter Pan review, I really liked the colonial British stereotype as a kid, and it still amuses me now. Also the Captain’s voice is once again, the terrific Thurl Ravenscroft.
You know, despite coming from the studio that had done Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wind in the Willows, this is probably Disney’s most English animation. From the opening scene to the stiff upper lip behaviour of most of the dogs, there’s a classic English atmosphere permeating the film. The animation particularly in the colour palette and backgrounds I think brings this out. The snow in Suffolk feels like a scene from an English country painting and London is shown with a twentieth century but still old fashioned character.. Roger and Anita’s home is small as it would be, so much so that you wonder why they had a Nanny before the puppies were even born (Roger wasn’t making money, was Anita working a job that could afford a live-in caretaker?). Nowhere do you feel the space than when one hundred and one dalmatians are littering the living room.
Essentially One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a film that encourages puppy hoarding without any care being given for the fact they’ll all one day be full grown dogs. But who cares, they’re cute. The film is really concerned with selling the audience on the cuteness of these puppies which is a little irritating and sometimes awkward when lined up against the darker implications of animal cruelty. The dark stuff really is what this film does best, orchestrated by some exceedingly good villains. The animation is pretty to look at and being an Anglophile I like the English tone. This film is fairly restrained for a Disney movie when it comes to songs, with only two “Cruella de Vil” and “Dalmatian Plantation” neither of which are that good (it’s pretty distracting that Roger’s singing voice is so noticeably different from his speaking voice), though the former is gratingly catchy. The film is shouting “look puppies!!” a few too many times and this distraction from an otherwise good story keeps it from really being great. If you fell in love with dogs because of this movie, congratulations! That was its intent. I just look for a little more substance.
Next Week: The Sword in the Stone (1963)
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