M Rhodes and Neal Gabler at Palmer Vineyards (Long Island) this past July
Walt Disney has gone from being one of the great film pioneers in the 20th century (a claim he staked quiet early) to being perhapes the most misunderstood major figure in film (Orson Welles might be as misunderstood, but Welles used his mangled repuation as a career move). Neal Gabler's major biography of Walt Disney, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Knop), from last fall was a big step in the reviving of Disney's cinematic repuation and also a re-consideration of Disney the man. Gabler, author of many books including An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Winchell was gracious enought to be interviewed about his bio of Disney as the first entry on this blog.
MR: You mentioned that hardly any of Disney's first group of animated films made any money (in fact, they typically lost a great deal of money). Why?
NG: "There are many reasons why the films failed financially on first release. For one thing, the war had started in Europe, and Disney was more dependent than most studios on foreign markets. Given the nature of animation, his films traveled better than most live action films. For another thing, the cultural mood had shifted from Snow White in 1937 to Pinocchio three
years later. With the impending war, Americans seemed less inclined to fantasy than they had been. But on the other hand some analysts believed that Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi were so much darker in tone than SnowWhite that they repelled children without attracting adults. It may have even been that the novelty of feature animation wore out quickly with Snow White. The results were devastating for the Disney studio."
MR: Do you think that Disney has been overlooked as a pioneer of the cinema?
NG: "During his lifetime Walt Disney was justly regarded as a major cultural force. Intellectuals embraced him early and viewed him as a kind of naive, unpretentious folk artist, and that characterization lasted at least until the postwar period when the Disney studio was so large that the idea of Disney as naive or as a folk artist seemed anachronistic. Throughout
the 1950s and certainly in the 1960s, his reputation steadily declined and the public divided between those who still regarded him as an artist and those who, while not shortchanging his cultural influence, saw him as a vulgarian who cheapened the culture. The latter view has seemed to predominate since his death in 1966. But having scoured Walt Disney's life, including the story meeting transcripts, I can attest to Disney's personal contributions to his great animations, and anyone who has ever entered one of his theme parks can attest to the way he changed the American consciousness. Every shopping mall, mega-church, theme restaurant, etc., owes a great deal to Walt Disney. So it is not only the way he reinvented animation or the amusement park that serves as his legacy. It is the way he changed the way
we think about the world."
MR: Disney is a great American entertainer, but can he be considered a great American artist?
NG: "If you think of Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi as works of art -- and I do -- then you have to credit Walt Disney as an artist since these films largely emanated full-blown from his head. Disney could very well be called the author of Snow White and Fantasia, and he made significant contributions to Pinocchio and Bambi. In many cases Disney
scrutinized every frame, literally, of a film. His was certainly the governing aesthetic and sensibility. One animator said that of the many who worked at the Disney studio, none who left ever produced anything as good as Walt Disney's work, which he took to mean that Disney himself was the primary creative force. In any case, I think that Disney's visual imagination might very well rank with Picasso's as the two most important of the twentieth century."
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination will be released by Knopf in Paperback in Oct. 2007
MR
0 comments:
Post a Comment