2020 was a mad year but 2021 is gracing us with the anniversaries of many all-time favourites, including Walt Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians which was released 60 years ago this January.
Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske and Wolfgang Reitherman (who would go on to direct many of the post-Walt features of the Disney Dark Age), the seventeenth Walt Disney animated feature was based on the 1956 novel by Dodie Smith and utilised contemporary art styles and new technology of the era.
Dilys Powell of The Sunday Times called it “the rebirth of Disney” and Punch’s Richard Mallett praised it for having “no sign of the old Disney inclination towards chocolate-box charm”.
Genesis of the Film
The Walt Disney Animation Studios entered the 1960s with a mountain of debt. Although 1959’s Sleeping Beauty was a box-office success, it ran monstrously over-budget and plunged the studio into such terrible debt that many of the animators were let go because the studio simply couldn’t afford to keep them on.
Even more discouraging for the animators, Walt’s passions had moved from animated features to live-action, television, and his theme parks. Many felt that Walt did not care about art anymore.
But he did. Walt knew his animation department was on the brink of closure, but he was reluctant to do so as that was what his studio had been built on. Walt consulted Ub Iwerks, a long-time friend and colleague, who had been experimenting with a new technology called xeroxing, which enabled the animator’s drawings to be copied directly onto the animation cells as opposed to being inked and traced individually by hand.
Not only was it faster and most cost-effective (the film would have cost twice as much if each individual puppy and spot had to be done by hand), but the animators also loved its rougher, sketchier look. For the first time ever, the animators could see their original pencil lines onscreen, reemphasising their work as drawings above all else.
Walt was not a fan, however. The film’s style lacked the fantasy elements Disney was known for and, ironically, he did not want his animated features to look like drawings; he wanted them to be as close to live-action as possible. Walt saw One Hundred and One Dalmatians as too artsy and, jealous that so much had been achieved without his control, he told the film’s artistic director Ken Anderson that there would be “no more of that One Hundred and One Dalmatians stuff”.
The Animators, Audiences, and Critics did not Share Walt’s opinions.
The art was inspired by British cartoonist Ronald Searle, renowned for his St. Trinian’s illustrations, for the animators wished for the art style to reflect the film’s modern story and setting. The backgrounds and characters were together as one, as opposed to the background being secondary so audiences focused on just the characters within the frame.
The colour scheme is more muted and pastel-esqe, unlike the dramatic and bold colour scheme of Disney’s princess films, and is reminiscent of the British watercolour school. Having the freedom to express themselves creatively in a way they had never been able to before, the animators were able to bring the modern, artsy aesthetic of 1960s London to the animated world.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians was the first Disney film to be based in contemporary times, a far cry from the living Renaissance painting that was Sleeping Beauty, and critics loved it for that. The film was applauded for its starkness, and for being the “wittiest, most charming, least pretensions cartoon feature Walt Disney has ever made”.
It is still praised today by Disney’s current animators including Eric Goldberg, who praised it as being “unlike any other Disney film at that time”, and Brad Bird, who admires its ability to be “contemporary in a classical way”.
Its story is also remarkably modern. It features television, a relatively new phenomenon, no big musical numbers despite one of the characters being a songwriter, strangely grounding the film, in reality, considering the protagonists are talking dogs, and Roger and Anita are a wonderful depiction of intimate, working-class, down-to-earth newlyweds never before seen from the Disney Studios. One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a mature and sophisticated story.
Cruella De Vil: What A Villian!
Dodie Smith’s Cruella (whose name is not only a contraction of cruel and devil but infuses the character with a sense of social status) in the novel was a cool-headed, detached woman but Disney’s version is a glamour-obsessed maniac barely holding on to her sanity.
She was designed and animated by Disney legend Marc Davis, who also animated Maleficent, one of Disney’s most beloved villains. Davis cited his inspirations as Hollywood Golden Age actresses Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, and Tallulah Bankhead, and when Betty Lou Gerson was cast to voice Cruella, she also cited Tallulah Bankhead as a major influence on her characterisation.
Gerson drew on the way Bankhead used a “phoney theatrical voice” and described it as sounding like “someone who’s set sail from New York but hasn’t reached England.” It added a bizarre sense of staginess and the performative to her character, making her insanity all the more believable.
Everything about Cruella recalls demonic imagery, from her skeletal design and red-lined coat, from her foul green smoke to her flapper style cigarette holder. The music associated with her is blues, jazz, and vaudeville-inspired, associating her with the loose morals of the 1920s where materialism was the bees-knees.
Unlike many Disney villains, she does not exercise her power using magic or beauty, but rather through money and influence. She is in your face, dramatic, manically obsessive, rude, greedy, and downright cruel.
One of the things that makes her truly terrifying is that people like her exist. She throws her money and social influence around, expecting it to give her everything she wants regardless of other people’s feelings, and is driven by a materialistic obsession that would literally result in the death of dozens of innocent puppies.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians is grounded in reality in a way that makes her motives and desires tangible – murdering your stepdaughter because you’re jealous and insecure or cursing a baby because you weren’t invited to the christening aren’t realistic actions that you have reason to be worried about – but unfortunately, murdering puppies for fur is a real, substantial goal. It makes Cruella a truly despicable human being and one of Disney’s greatest villains.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians may not be in your top ten Disney films, but it should be admired and appreciated for its mature and modern storyline, contemporary setting, and wonderfully creative aesthetic. It marked a new era for the Walt Disney Animation Studios and brought us some of the most memorable animated puppies ever.
Happy 60th Anniversary!
