" The Three Caballeros." At the New Gallery.
THE CINEMA
MR. WALT DISNEY'S versatility sometimes suggests genius, some-: times an ultimate uncertainty of purpose. There were the humble days of the Mickey Mouse cartoons, their simple ideologies presented. with infinitely painstaking craftsmanship. Then came the more elaborate Silly Symphonies and often more than a suspicion of artistic pretentiousness—a certain vagueness too as to the where-. abouts of the boundary line between the pretty and the beautiful. Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo represented an attempt at full feature status attended by varying degrees of aesthetic and commercial success ; yet, in the full-length Disney style a genre has never quite been established. Instead Disney has gone on restlessly searching for a corner of life which could provide inherently suitable subject-matter for the animator. In Dumbo and certain sequences of The Reluctant Dragon he examined the sophistications of modern life with a more realistic eye than had been traditional in his studios, and finally most of the sequences of Fantasia marked a complete swing away from naivete and nursery rhyme into pure aesthetic and the visual associations of musical images. By violent contrast Victory Through Air Power showed Disney and Seversky walking hand in hand into the realm of military strategy.
The Three Caballeros, the latest Disney production, appears to me to represent a point at which meet all the paths of this great craftsman's exploration. Technical brilliance can carry him no further. The film is a kind of publicity travelogue for South America made, presumably, with an official blessing and one eye on the political expediencies of pan-Americanism. It develops and improves upon Saludos Amigos, an earlier essay in the same kind. There are comic characters—Donald Duck, Panchito and Joe Carioca ; there is a flying donkey (shades of Dumbo); abstract forms bewilderingly change shape and colour to the rhythms of local music ; there is a touch of religion ; Donald pursues the senoritas and give us a geography lesson at the same time, and, crowning technical triumph, the cartoon characters dance with real people and real people dance through a cartoon background, defying all the laws of the cartoon world's very nature.
The Three Caballeros is too concerned with Hollywood notions of comedy, dress and dancing. South America, we are encouraged to believe, is very gay and very funny. Bob Hope would be a fit President for any of the republics. And the combination of cartoon and real photography reaches a climax aesthetically comparable with one of those Victorian photo-frames which surround a human face with a garland of cupids, birds and flowers—with the difference that here the face sings and the birds and flowers are in constant and lively metamorphosis. Yet no one should miss this film. It represents the final development of a medium of artistic expression more flexible than anything we have yet known. It could give us a portrait of the spirit as well as of the outward appearance of a people or a country. Mr. Disney should eschew further experiment and settle down to use the tools he has so arduously perfected.
EDGAR ANSTEY.
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