Stars: Basil Rathbone, Bing Crosby
Director: Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, & James Algar
Oscar History: None, but it oddly won the Golden Globe for Best Cinematography-isn't that weird?
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
In continuing during quarantine to stream more films than I have in the past, with a particular focus on Disney films, we come now to another Disney movie that I've never seen before, and in this case, we're getting a blast from the past. Throughout the 1940's, Disney Studios made six pictures that are normally called their "package films"-movies that are less one long story, and instead a series of short films tied together, in some ways emulating Fantasia, but rarely given the same level of acclaim. I suspect if you are someone who is a Disney fanatic, but not an organized one, that you're missing these in your "Disney completist" list, and I definitely was, so I'm moving through this list, and I weirdly decided to start with the last one, and the one that is generally considered to be the best, The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad.
(Spoilers Ahead) The films are not, like the previous package films, a number of movies, but instead here just two, and both have literary roots. Narrated by Basil Rathbone, the first half is an animated adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, where we see the rambunctious Mr. Toad spending all of his money on reckless adventures, and when he sees his first automobile, he decides he must have it and spends all of his time dangerously roaming the countryside. Even his more cautious friends Ratty & Moley cannot stop him, but the law does when Mr. Toad is accused of stealing an automobile, and is framed in a trial by a group of weasels and a man named Mr. Winky who are plotting to take Toad Hall (his palatial estate) for themselves. Mr. Toad is saved by his friends, returns to Toad Hall, but never is reformed-the movie ends with him now moving on to airplanes in his "need for speed."
The second movie is a retelling of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Here we have Ichabod Crane, the dandy schoolmaster who comes to Sleepy Hollow and begins to woo the beautiful Katrina van Tassel, buxom (boy howdy-someone was thirsty in the animation room while drawing Katrina) and the daughter of the richest man in town. It is implied that while he loves her, he's probably more after her money, and seems to be able to charm her away from Brom, the man she was originally inclined toward (Brom also is drawn thirstily, and clearly is an early inspiration for Gaston). The film's climax is when Ichabod meets the Headless Horseman on the outside of town, riding a black horse (worth noting-the same color as Brom's horse), and is scared out of town. The film ends with Brom & Katrina married and the narrator (Crosby) implying that Ichabod did not die that night, but ended up married to a wealthy widow in another town (getting his money after all), but the legend of what happened to him continues to persist.
It's worth noting that if history was different, this package film wouldn't exist. The Wind in the Willows was considered an option for Disney to make into a feature-length film as early as 1938, one year after Snow White. Along with Bambi and Dumbo, Wind in the Willows was one of only three productions to be allowed to continue at the beginning of World War II when Disney Studios were in dire straits financially, but of the three Wind was considered the least promising and was shelved until it came back in the post-war era, frequently paired with a number of films (including a canned big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Gremlins) until it was finally settled to package it with Sleepy Hollow, and to hire big-name actors as the narrators to gain more publicity for the film (the first time that movie stars were used to gin up excitement for a film, now a commonplace practice).
The films themselves are fun, if admittedly lighter-weight Disney. Wind in the Willows is a great adventure, with some winning animation, but it would never hold a candle to movies like Bambi or Dumbo. I don't do halves for my star rating, but if I did Wind in the Willows would be a 3-star, as it's a bit frivolous and repetitive even if it's good-natured, and Sleepy Hollow would get 4-stars, a it's more atmospheric and the animation is better. Particularly the sequence with the headless horseman is fantastic-the cinematography playing with the audience (frequently it feels like we're taking the place of Ichabod in the chase), and genuinely haunting. Overall, though, I'll go with 3-stars here. The idea of a stringed-together short film isn't really my jam unless there's some overarching theme (anthology films always struggle with story consistency), and this movie definitely doesn't have any cohesion.
(Spoilers Ahead) The films are not, like the previous package films, a number of movies, but instead here just two, and both have literary roots. Narrated by Basil Rathbone, the first half is an animated adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, where we see the rambunctious Mr. Toad spending all of his money on reckless adventures, and when he sees his first automobile, he decides he must have it and spends all of his time dangerously roaming the countryside. Even his more cautious friends Ratty & Moley cannot stop him, but the law does when Mr. Toad is accused of stealing an automobile, and is framed in a trial by a group of weasels and a man named Mr. Winky who are plotting to take Toad Hall (his palatial estate) for themselves. Mr. Toad is saved by his friends, returns to Toad Hall, but never is reformed-the movie ends with him now moving on to airplanes in his "need for speed."
The second movie is a retelling of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Here we have Ichabod Crane, the dandy schoolmaster who comes to Sleepy Hollow and begins to woo the beautiful Katrina van Tassel, buxom (boy howdy-someone was thirsty in the animation room while drawing Katrina) and the daughter of the richest man in town. It is implied that while he loves her, he's probably more after her money, and seems to be able to charm her away from Brom, the man she was originally inclined toward (Brom also is drawn thirstily, and clearly is an early inspiration for Gaston). The film's climax is when Ichabod meets the Headless Horseman on the outside of town, riding a black horse (worth noting-the same color as Brom's horse), and is scared out of town. The film ends with Brom & Katrina married and the narrator (Crosby) implying that Ichabod did not die that night, but ended up married to a wealthy widow in another town (getting his money after all), but the legend of what happened to him continues to persist.
It's worth noting that if history was different, this package film wouldn't exist. The Wind in the Willows was considered an option for Disney to make into a feature-length film as early as 1938, one year after Snow White. Along with Bambi and Dumbo, Wind in the Willows was one of only three productions to be allowed to continue at the beginning of World War II when Disney Studios were in dire straits financially, but of the three Wind was considered the least promising and was shelved until it came back in the post-war era, frequently paired with a number of films (including a canned big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Gremlins) until it was finally settled to package it with Sleepy Hollow, and to hire big-name actors as the narrators to gain more publicity for the film (the first time that movie stars were used to gin up excitement for a film, now a commonplace practice).
The films themselves are fun, if admittedly lighter-weight Disney. Wind in the Willows is a great adventure, with some winning animation, but it would never hold a candle to movies like Bambi or Dumbo. I don't do halves for my star rating, but if I did Wind in the Willows would be a 3-star, as it's a bit frivolous and repetitive even if it's good-natured, and Sleepy Hollow would get 4-stars, a it's more atmospheric and the animation is better. Particularly the sequence with the headless horseman is fantastic-the cinematography playing with the audience (frequently it feels like we're taking the place of Ichabod in the chase), and genuinely haunting. Overall, though, I'll go with 3-stars here. The idea of a stringed-together short film isn't really my jam unless there's some overarching theme (anthology films always struggle with story consistency), and this movie definitely doesn't have any cohesion.
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