Review: One Hundred and One Dalmatians (DMC #34)
Puppies, puppies, and more puppies everywhere! This week we watched One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the 34th movie in the challenge. If you watched with us last night (possibly with your own furry companion if you have one), skip ahead for our review. Otherwise, read on for our recap.
Synopsis
Pongo, a male Dalmatian, lives in a bachelor pad in London with his “pet” human, Roger Radcliffe, a songwriter. Pongo, bored of the bachelor life, watches the women and dogs out the window, looking for a mate for Roger (and himself). He’s about to give up when he spots the perfect pair: a woman named Anita and her female Dalmatian, Perdita. Pongo tricks Roger into ending his songwriting session early, and the two leave for their afternoon walk in the park. Pongo drags Roger around the park and tries to get him and Anita to notice each other. Though Roger tries to stop him, Pongo eventually tangles his leash around the two humans, and a tug causes them to fall into a nearby pond. Although it initially looks bad, Roger and Anita eventually laugh about it. Later, the two are married, and Pongo and Perdita are mates. Later on, in a new home, Perdita is set to give birth. She and Pongo are excited, but Anita’s old schoolmate Cruella de Vil arrives and tells Anita she can’t wait to see the puppies, indicating she will be taking them off the family’s hands. Roger is uneasy about her, and Pongo and Perdita dislike her. Cruella becomes the inspiration for lyrics to a new song Roger is writing. One night, Perdita gives birth with the help of Anita and Nanny while Pongo and Roger wait. The puppies are born and they count fifteen...until one appears to have been stillborn. Roger manages to revive the puppy; there are still fifteen puppies! At that moment, Cruella arrives and requests the puppies be sold to her. Everyone refuses, and Cruella angrily leaves after promising to get even. Some time later, when the puppies have grown up a bit, Pongo and Perdita go to the park with their humans while the puppies go to bed. That night, Jasper and Horace watch as Roger and Anita leave, then pretend to be workers from the electric company in an attempt to gain entry to the home. Nanny refuses to let them in until Jasper forces himself inside. They lock Nanny in the attic and steal the puppies.
Roger immediately suspects Cruella, as do Pongo and Perdita. However, there isn’t much Roger and Anita can do even after calling Scotland Yard, so Pongo uses the dog gossip chain, the Twilight Bark, to spread the news. Many dogs send the call out and it eventually spreads to the countryside, received by the sheepdog Colonel and his comrades, a horse named Captain and a cat named Sergeant Tibbs. They realize that they heard puppies barking at the nearby “Hell Hall” which turns out to be the old de Vil mansion. Tibbs investigates and finds ninety-nine Dalmatian puppies, including Pongo and Perdita’s fifteen, along with Jasper and Horace. Tibbs learns Cruella plans to have the puppies killed and skinned to make fur coats and tells Colonel, who sends the message back to Pongo and Perdita. The two Dalmatians leave London immediately, crossing a dangerous, fast-flowing icy river as well as windy snow-covered landscapes to meet up with Colonel. Meanwhile, Tibbs discovers that Cruella wants the puppies killed that very night before the police find them. Tibbs arranges for all of them to leave while the two henchmen are distracted. The plan almost works until Jasper and Horace corner them. At that moment, Pongo and Perdita break in through a window and fight off the henchmen while the puppies escape. After escaping, Pongo and Perdita realize there are eighty-four puppies in addition to their own. They decide to adopt all of them to save them from Cruella, certain that Roger and Anita will take them all in. All the Dalmatians begin traveling back to London amid a snowstorm. While Cruella, Jasper, and Horace give chase, the Dalmatians are greeted by a Collie who tells them of shelter in a barn nearby. They all retreat to the warmth of the barn, where several friendly cows offer milk to the starving puppies while the Collie offers some scraps from his pet’s table for Pongo and Perdita.
The next morning, the Dalmatians continue on to the town of Dinsford, where they meet up with a Labrador who has a ride for them: a moving van heading to London. However, Cruella, Jasper, and Horace have followed their tracks. Pongo tells them all to cover themselves in soot and pretend to be Labradors. The plan almost works until melted ice droplets give away the disguise, and Cruella realizes what they’re doing. The dogs board the van as Cruella gives furious chase in her car. She tries to run the van’s driver off the road, but Jasper and Horace accidentally knock her and themselves off the road in their own attempt to stop the van. Back in London, it’s Christmastime. Roger’s new song inspired by Cruella is playing on the radio; the song has become a huge hit and has made them a lot of money. He, Anita, and Nanny are dismayed that Pongo and Perdita ran away. Nanny says that sometimes at night she can hear them barking in her dreams, but then she hears real barking. The Dalmatians have returned, and all the puppies with them. Everyone is overjoyed, and as Roger counts that there are a total of one hundred and one, they decide to use the money received from his song by moving to a bigger home in the country—they will have a Dalmatian plantation.
Thoughts Before Watching
Kevin: I can’t help but get excited every time we jump back to an animated movie! I mean, true, I’ve seen so many Disney animated films and not enough of the live-action, so that explains it. But it was movies like this that were one of my first creative inspirations. Also, it’s been over a month since our last animated film and I’m craving something familiar. Although, there actually isn’t much for me to say on this one during the “before” thoughts. I like it, I really do, but where it ranks in my list of favorites is closer to mid-range if only because I grew up in the era of the Disney Renaissance. I think a lot of the wit flew over my head when I was a kid, perhaps. There are some good things here though: Cruella is a great villain, and I remember the Twilight Bark because I always thought it was so cool.
Megan: I love this movie! I love all the dogs, the cute puppies, and Tibbs! Also, this movie has quite possibly the most adorable meet-cute of all time. When I moved to New York and experienced my first “real” winter with snow and blizzards and below-freezing temps, I found myself sympathizing with Lucky who laments “my tail's froze and my nose is froze and my ears are froze, and my toes are froze.” The last time I watched this movie was on a VHS tape, and since our VCR has been out of commission for who knows how many years, I’m definitely overdue for a re-watch. Can’t wait!
Thoughts After Watching
The Beginning of the Xerox Era
Kevin: Gather ‘round, folks—it’s story time. You may already be familiar with this, but I think it’s worth rehashing. One Hundred and One Dalmatians essentially marks the beginning of the end of the so-called “Silver Age” of Disney animated films, an era which had begun eleven years earlier with Cinderella. I say the “beginning of the end” because this film and the next two animated films to follow (The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book) would be the last ones Walt Disney personally oversaw before his death in 1966. By this point, Walt was disillusioned with the medium of animation as a profit-making tool, reportedly believing that the studio’s future lay in live-action. This is unfortunate considering how much he personally loved animation, being an animator himself, but it’s not entirely surprising. Sleeping Beauty had been a relative box office bomb compared to earlier animated films, which resulted in many layoffs throughout the animation department as the studio struggled to recover its losses. Indeed, many of the animated films before Sleeping Beauty did not bring in huge box office returns compared to live-action films.
Still, in spite of the downturn, Walt had mixed feelings about doing away with animation completely, as it had had been what he originally founded the studio for. Ub Iwerks, one of Walt’s top animators and most famous for the design of Mickey Mouse, had been experimenting with Xerox photography as a new way to create animation. His experiments did away with the inking process, saving time and money (although also resulting in the unfortunate layoff of the inking team, most of whom were women). The downside of the process was that the camera was not able to create the smooth black lines seen in previous animation, but instead created very scratchy outlines. The end result was a look that appeared to be of lesser quality compared to earlier animation. On the upside, the Xerox process made animating the spots on the Dalmatians incredibly easier. In the end, the studio finished the project for a much lower cost than it otherwise would have been to animate all the Dalmatians and their spots.
The Xerox process would continue to be used in the next two films and several more that followed after Walt passed away. What’s additionally unfortunate is how much Walt disliked the style, which only increased his discouragement. Again, his disappointment isn’t all that shocking. To go from the styles of earlier films to the scratchy look must have been difficult. Still, there seems to have been some very small happy ending. Although Walt had criticized animation director Ken Anderson (who had been the one to suggest using Xerox for One Hundred and One Dalmatians) and refused to let Anderson direct ever again, Walt eventually “forgave” Anderson sometime in 1966, just before Walt died. Anderson had taken Walt’s criticisms seriously and believed he had messed up badly. While it’s nice to hear Walt changed his mind, something about this forgiveness just seems off-putting. Sure, the animation wasn’t what Walt wanted, but the process saved the studio money, and from what I’ve researched the movie enjoyed far more praise in its initial run than Sleeping Beauty did, with reviewers even calling the film the best Disney had offered in many years. That last part isn’t necessarily a direct result of Xerox, but I’d wager if the studio had used their previous animation process then the medium would have been dead in the ground. The mere fact that One Hundred and One Dalmatians was so successful means, if anything, Walt should have apologized to Anderson rather than forgive him.
There’s no better style for this film!
Kevin: All that said? I really love this look. I think it suits this movie very well. Although part of the Silver Age, One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a far more grounded and relaxed film than the classic fantasy of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the charm of Lady and the Tramp, and the whimsical adventure of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. From the opening credits montage (a fancy jazz sequence no less), we already know this will be different. This is one of the few movies that’s set in the actual decade it was created, and there’s something about the art style that just works very well here. Because the animation looks laid-back, so too does my personal engagement with the story, and in a good way. I think this animation helps make the movie more relatable. We can still relate to the modern issues the characters face even if the movie is almost 60 years old as of this post. There are some over-the-top elements (basically anything involving Cruella), but they don’t feel out of place at all. The scratchy line work is also interesting because of how many times you can spot the underlying guidelines on the character designs. This is a cool aesthetic, and my appreciation for this film comes from the fact that it shows you can design a good or even great animated film without appearing to be top quality. While this style works perfectly for this film because it matches the setting and tone, this same style looks out of place when used in some of the later films, like The Sword in the Stone (more on that in a future blog post).
“It was a beautiful spring day, a tedious time of the year for bachelors.”
Megan: I don’t think I truly appreciated Pongo’s opening narration of this film until now. (Probably because I didn’t know what a “bachelor” was, among other things.) I mean take this quote for example:
“As far as I could see, the old notion that a bachelor’s life was so glamorous and carefree was all nonsense. It was downright dull. It was plain to see that my old pet needed someone. But if it were left up to Roger, we’d be bachelors forever. He was married to his work, writing songs. Songs about romance of all things, something he knew absolutely nothing about.”
I love that re-watching animated Disney movies can reveal the multi-layered wit and humor—something for the kids, something for the adults! However, I will say that I didn’t quite realize until this viewing that Pongo is essentially sizing up the women outside the window to see how they compare to sexy models on the covers of Roger’s magazines. Even Pongo, a dog, is getting his primary information about female beauty ideals from models in magazines! I could go into how magazines and the beauty industry promote this unattainable ideal of airbrushed beauty, but that’s a whole different blog post.
One thing I have always loved about this scene, from an artistic perspective, is how each dog and woman pair look alike—the color of their coats or outfits, the way they walk, and even their facial features. I also found it funny that Pongo begins his search by looking at the women first, and then their dogs—that is, until he comes to Perdita. He sees her first (perhaps because she’s another Dalmatian like him), and then looks to Anita. If they were humans, Pongo would be the one trying to convince Roger to go on a double date so he can spend more time with Perdita, only thinking of Roger’s date as an afterthought.
An era of recycled animation
Kevin: I’m not the first person to point this out, and I won’t be the last, but contrary to popular belief, Disney did not use recycled animation during this film and the ones to follow in order to save time or money. The idea instead came from a single person: co-director Wolfgang Reitherman. According to this article, Reitherman believed that if previous animation worked for a particular scene, why not reuse it for something else? Technically speaking, there were plenty of other movies prior to this one that appeared to recycle animation, if you knew where to look. It’s just that they become more obvious with the movies Reitherman worked on. In actuality, there’s reason to believe his technique did not save time or money at all. According to an article on geekdad.com, Disney Legend Floyd Norman shares that “it’s actually harder and takes longer to redraw an existing sequence.” As an artist, I agree with this. References are helpful, but redrawing something to use over and over can often get difficult. At times, it’s best to just do something new. As Norman says in the article from geekdad.com, it’s also just more fun!
As part of its adherence to recycled animation, there’s one amazing cameo during the Twilight Bark scene where familiar characters from Lady and the Tramp show up. Did you spot them all?
The Meet-Cute of All Meet-Cutes
Megan: I mentioned this earlier, but oh my gosh the meet-cute!!! This whole progression from Pongo spotting (haha! pun!) Perdita and Anita on the street, to convincing Roger to take a walk, finding Perdita and Anita, and then playfully forcing Roger and Anita to meet—it’s perfect! And then when they fall into the pond with their soaking wet hats and handkerchiefs—it is such a comedic pairing! Props to Pongo, the master matchmaker! We don’t get too precise of a timeline here, but Roger, Anita, Pongo, and Perdita meet in the spring. When we next see them they’re happily married and have been for 6 months, and it’s now summer, so it must have been less than a year of courtship before they tied the knot. Pongo should really consider a side gig as a dog-lovers’ matchmaker!
How in the world are Anita and Cruella “friends”?
Megan: I had to put “friends” in quotes because it seems a stretch to call Anita and Cruella friends. They’re former schoolmates, but people I refer to as my former schoolmates don’t show up on my doorstep unannounced—most of them don’t even know where I live! So we know their relationship is slightly more than old schoolmates, but even still it puzzles me. Aside from the puppies, what interest did Cruella have in maintaining a connection? It’s not like they were mere Facebook friends and Cruella suddenly decided to reconnect with Anita after she announced her dog was having puppies. They had to have maintained some level of connection prior to the events of the film in order for Cruella to know about the puppies. And why would Anita want to maintain a relationship with Cruella? Is it out of some sense of duty or loyalty? Clearly if they had anything in common when they were younger, they don’t seem to anymore. While Cruella is obsessed with furs, Anita admits that while she’d like one, “there are other things” (to which Cruella makes fun of Anita’s middle-class lifestyle). Roger and the audience know that Cruella is bad news, and yet Anita defends her when Roger accuses Cruella (rightfully so) of stealing the puppies. Is Anita too nice for her own good to tell off Cruella? Or is there some history between them we don’t know about that makes her blind to Cruella’s evil ways? The only other connection I could possibly see is if they worked together (correct me if I’m wrong, but if I remember correctly I think they do work together in one of the live action remakes). We don’t quite know what either of them does for a living, but we do see Anita writing or drawing on some papers in her living room, and we know Cruella is obsessed with furs and has the means to live a lavish lifestyle. The only problem there is if they worked together, Roger wouldn’t refer to Cruella as Anita’s “schoolmate” but as her coworker or colleague. Alas, within the bounds of this film, Cruella and Anita’s tenuous relationship remains a mystery.
It’s still a man’s world, but the women hold their own
Megan: Speaking of Anita and Cruella, they are part of the reason this film passes the Bechdel test. Both Anita and Cruella talk about the puppies and the dogs, in addition to Cruella mocking Roger. (At least they’re not competing for a man…) Similarly, Anita and Nanny talk about the puppies, and how much they miss them after they’ve been stolen, or, in Pongo and Perdita’s case, ran away. Perdita even plays a role in passing the Bechdel test since she and the dairy cows talk to each other—again, largely about the puppies. Unfortunately that’s it. We don’t get any female characters talking to each other about their own lives or emotions except for Anita who asks Cruella how she is, to which Cruella says she’s “perfectly wretched.” In a way, she’s the most honest of the bunch, because in spite of her seemingly independent wealth, even Cruella is stuck within the confines of traditional gender roles in this film. The men speak most often. The male dogs of the Twilight Bark are the ones to orchestrate the puppies’ rescue, escape, and return home. Sure, a few female dogs pass along the message, but the key turning points and nick-of-time resources come from male dogs. Even when the puppies are born, with the women tending to Perdita and the puppies while Roger and Pongo wait in the next room like an old-fashioned hospital waiting room, it is Roger who comes to the rescue and revives Lucky. This is not to say the female characters are shrinking violets. In spite of all this, they still manage to hold their own when they’re on screen.
Megan: Take Nanny, for instance. She might seem like a pleasant, sweet little old housekeeper. However, when Anita and Roger are out, Nanny knows that Horace and Jasper are on the doorstep under suspicious pretenses and refuses to let them in. While smaller in stature and outmatched two-to-one, she still manages to fight off the intruders by chucking things at them and using all her might to try to stop them. Though she ultimately fails, it’s not for lack of trying.
Meanwhile, Anita finds her own power in politely refusing Cruella’s demands for the puppies. Though Roger emphasizes the point (if somewhat stutteringly), it is Anita who first voices it, and frames it as standing in solidarity with Perdita, who would be heartbroken to be separated from her puppies. (Women supporting women!) Even Cruella in this exchange has some decency to ask “when can the puppies leave their mother?” as if she, too, in spite of her cruel intentions, feels she owes Perdita at least that much.
Megan: Perdita holds her own, too. She knows Cruella is bad news, and when her puppies are stolen, she and Pongo are true partners in the search. She faces the elements, swims a frozen river, and even storms in with her teeth bared to fight off Horace and Jasper. At every point in the journey back home, Perdita helps the puppies get to safety. She even saves one of the pups from flying out the back of the moving van by grabbing onto its tail.
Like many a Disney villain to come before, Cruella perhaps has the most agency of any of the female characters in the movie. She has money, for one thing. She wears lavish furs, and she’s ready to pay twice as much for the puppies if it means she’ll get what she wants. Though we see little of her bedroom, we can tell that she spared no expense on her home, while another property she owns sits abandoned (perhaps on purpose so no one will suspect it’s where she hides the animals she intends to turn into coats. Who knows? Maybe Horace and Jasper pay her rent on the dumpy old building). While Cruella may not know much about puppies (not realizing that they’re born without spots or much fur), she’s cunning when it comes to covering her tracks. She knows to hire someone else to do her dirty work. She scolds Jasper for calling her at her home after stealing the puppies, knowing the call could connect her to the crime. She also knows when to cash in her chips—when the police begin investigating the stolen puppies, Cruella decides it’s better to kill the puppies now to get half a dozen coats rather than wait for them to grow up and possibly have her crime discovered. Though she knows the right way to do things, she doesn’t always follow it, for when she tells Horace and Jasper to drive more carefully lest they get pulled over by the police, she speeds off in her own car, driving recklessly in pursuit of the puppies.
How poor does Cruella think the Radcliffes are?
Megan: While it is clear that Roger and Anita live a very different lifestyle from Cruella, they can’t be all that poor. They have a modest home near the park (a step up from Roger’s bachelor flat), they can afford to keep Nanny on as a housekeeper, and they’re ready to take on the financial responsibility of caring for seventeen dogs in their home. While we don’t know what Anita does for work (if anything), we do know that Roger is a musician, and a bit of a struggling musician at that. It is only at the end of the film that Roger’s song about Cruella gives him his big break, giving them “more money than we ever dreamed of” as Anita puts it. While Cruella constantly pokes fun at Anita and Roger for their quiet lifestyle, her insinuation that they are poor seems false. Perhaps they have less money than Cruella, and thus an amount that would be unsuitable for maintaining Cruella’s lifestyle, so she feels they must be struggling to survive. Yet it would appear that Roger and Anita have been doing just fine. And after Roger’s hit song, they must be doing far more than fine if they can afford to care for 101 Dalmatians and move to a place in the country to start a “Dalmatian plantation home.”
Many positives, including clever jokes—although just above average overall
Kevin: I definitely did not pick up on some of the jokes when I was younger, but this movie is really clever. There’s some well done wordplay in the songs “Cruella Devil” and “Dalmatian Plantation” for example (I seriously wish that last song was much longer). Another moment is the Twilight Bark. I already said that I always thought it was cool, but it’s even more interesting after this watch. I forgot that The Twilight Bark itself is a dog gossip line, so there’s a clever bit in there about how gossip chains can sometimes become your best (if not only, sadly) source of legitimate news. There’s also the hilarious bait-and-switch where the humans are the pets while the dogs are the focus. (I mean, I knew this when I was a kid, but it’s somehow much funnier now.) Lastly, much of the humor comes from Cruella’s hired minions, Jasper and Horace. They’re your typical comical henchmen duo comprised of a quick-thinker who believes he’s always right (Jasper) and one who’s a little slower on the uptake but who is actually right (Horace). The two end up in trouble mostly thanks to their own ineptitude, leading to some typical but funny slapstick. Yet, both of them shine in ways more witty than slapstick. Jasper has some terrific moments, such how well he plays off pretending to be from the electric company while Horace struggles to keep up. On the other hand, there are other moments where Horace has suggested or understood something correctly while Jasper dismisses him as an idiot, such as the hilarious scene where the Dalmatians have rolled around in soot. In fact, Jasper is so profoundly dismissive of Horace that it gets frustrating. Characters like Jasper can just be unbearable at times.
Kevin: So, my reaction here in the end is just very slightly opposite of my reaction to Swiss Family Robinson. In our last review, I found I liked the film in spite of talking almost entirely about its issues. With this film, I still very much enjoy it. But, after speaking so positively about it (true, a lot was backstory about the production), my overall feelings have not changed. I think it’s heart-warming, and its lead characters are truly amazing parents. I also love how close Roger and Anita are to Pongo and Perdita that they have absolutely no misgivings at all about having one hundred and one Dalmatians, embracing every single one of them. The songs are surprisingly catchy to this day even if the film doesn’t have one of the more popular soundtracks. I had to think about where this one stands for me compared to the last film centered around dogs, and while I know I will watch this again, it just won’t be many more times.
Verdict
Megan: 7
Kevin: 6
Final Score: 6.5
What did you think of One Hundred and One Dalmatians? Share with us in the comments!
Ways to Watch
DVD
