By PETER CALDER
The phrase "unseen Disney" sounds like a contradiction in terms. The name of the godfather of American animated film conjures up notions of the sunny, the open, the remorselessly upbeat, to the extent that modern, iconoclastic biographical readings of Uncle Walt have taken him to task for
the anodyne way his films legitimised the social status quo.
But the fact is, though Disney and his collaborators have been prolific in lighting up screens across the world since the late 1920s, there is plenty of footage that never made it and, 36 years after Walt's death, makes fascinating viewing.
The man in charge of all that back catalogue, including the unseen ephemera, breezed into town this week to introduce a screening of Disney's Unseen Treasures, which plays at the Civic Theatre in Auckland today as part of the Auckland International Film Festival.
Scott MacQueen, who has been manager of library restoration for the Walt Disney Company since 1991, was enthusiastic in his praise of the man who started the firm.
Sure, Walt was never much of a draughtsman (he struggled to replicate the signature that became the corporate logo and his only drawings of Mickey Mouse, in early silent shorts, were candidly mediocre).
"But his genius lay in recognising the skills in others and having a master plan. He knew how to get the best work out of his artists and had a tremendous sense of story."
Disney, of course, flowered in the golden age of the producer, who in modern moviemaking is more likely to be an industrialist or a merchant banker than a creative talent. And, though often a demanding, even difficult boss, Disney was "a pure producer and a creator", says MacQueen.
"When you read his story conference notes, you often hear him challenge on a gut level things that aren't working. He may not always have known how to fix something, but he could identify what was wrong and encourage people to do their best work."
The programme includes some legends: Fantasia, the 1940 forerunner of the music video, which provided animated visuals for famous classical music pieces, was to have included a sequence set to Debussy's Clair De Lune, which never made the final cut.
Likewise a scene in the first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), in which the wicked queen mixes up a poison potion, was adjudged too scary for the littlies then; they may see it now.
More tantalisingly is the never-harvested fruit of a collaboration between Disney and the surrealist artist Salvador Dali.
"Dali had a brief flirtation with Hollywood in the mid-40s," explains MacQueen. "The only evidence that remains is the dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound. But Dali and Disney were great admirers of each other. They were two of the most populist artists of their time."
The premise of the film, called Destino, sounds surreal enough: intended as part of an omnibus like Fantasia, it was a love story told with baseball imagery to the accompaniment of a Mexican pop song.
The project was abandoned early, but it is a reminder that Disney, whose name since his death has become the peg on which a multi-billion dollar marketing franchise is hung, was once a cutting-edge artist.
"You look at some sequences, like in The Three Caballeros, and you can understand why Dali would have found him a surrealist blood brother," says MacQueen. "There was a lot of the experimental and avant garde in Disney."
He is more diplomatic as to whether his employer's output is in the artistic vanguard now: "It's harder to define cutting edge, because the cutting edge moves so quickly. With CGI and the so-called Japamation [such as Princess Mononoke], tastes and fashions change by the day."
MacQueen will also introduce screenings of two treasures from the David Selznick film library: the restoration of the original cut of a Shropshire-set bodice-ripper called Gone To Earth and Nothing Sacred, a screwball comedy written by Ben Hecht about what happens when a tabloid paper gets hold of the story of a tragically dying woman.
* Disney's Unseen Treasures, Civic, today, 5.15pm; Gone To Earth, Sky City Theatre, today, 1pm; Nothing Sacred, Sky City Theatre, tomorrow, 3.30pm
By PETER CALDER
The phrase "unseen Disney" sounds like a contradiction in terms. The name of the godfather of American animated film conjures up notions of the sunny, the open, the remorselessly upbeat, to the extent that modern, iconoclastic biographical readings of Uncle Walt have taken him to task for
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.