(USA 1977 74 min)
Directors John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman
By Stephen Russell-Gebbett
In general I have never liked the films of Disney. Not when I was young and not now. However, like the other two Disney films in this Countdown, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh doesn’t fritter away the undoubted talent of their animators to draw complex movements with grace. It doesn’t waste Disney’s admirably cheery disposition that normally gets buried in boredom, emotional whitewash or cute plasticine garishness.
There are still caveats that make the ones I do like start with “in spite of”. Undoubtedly though, once upon a time, Disney can come up with something close to priceless.
The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh is what is known as a “Package Film”. A package film is a feature-length film consisting of individual shorter stories. Unlike other disney package films such as Three Caballeros (1944) The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the last animated production to benefit from Walt Disney’s direct involvement, is made up of previously released shorts.
These three shorts are closely based on A.A. Milne’s own stories. Winnie The Pooh and The Honey Tree was first released in 1966 and follows Pooh’s desperation to get Honey first from a tree and then from Rabbit’s house (“Christopher Robin, you never can tell with bees”). Winnie The Pooh and The Blustery Day (1968) tells of the havoc caused by a storm on ‘Winds-Day’. The final short is Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) in which Tigger is shunned by his friends for his incessant bouncing. Of course, in the end, he gets brought back into the fold.
What strikes you first is the play with form and reality. It all begins in a child’s real-life bedroom and throughout the camera will push into and pull out of the book. Characters will be seen beside the text, they and the narrator speaking the same lines, addressing him and us. The wit isn’t of the self-consciously clever sort, but light. The fourth wall isn’t broken when Tigger escapes a tree when the book is tilted or when Pooh holds the page back so he can continue to devour a pool of honey. It isn’t broken but poked and prodded with delicacy and style.
Indeed, the film as a whole is sweet and unassuming.
There is, evidently, a massive debt to Milne’s words. What makes the film a wonderful adaptation is not its fidelity to content or character but to tone and atmosphere. Just as the fourth wall is gently passed through, so is the barrier between book and film dissolved. The books aren’t adapted, they come alive. The animation style, taking its cue from the E.H. Shepard’s illustrations, is among the flattest I have seen from Disney. Flatness, the foreshortening of distance and perspective, brings composition into focus. The colours chosen, the arrangement of people, shapes and space are always pleasing to look at. Nothing distracts from the softly softly story-telling. It may seem trivial, but the form (three shorts) gives one the feeling that these are everyday anecdotes and cherished memories of a life full of capers.
Some would bemoan the lack of ‘darkness’ in certain children’s films, telling us that children need to be scared. I wouldn’t and never have thought along those lines. Nevertheless, I think the most interesting part of the Winnie the Pooh canon is probably In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There from The House at Pooh Corner. This is where Christopher Robin leaves his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood to go to boarding school. It is a sad story about a boy giving up (or having to give up) childish things that makes one think of abandonment, change, and obsolescence far more elegantly than Toy Story 3. This compendium may have benefited from a little shade next to the light.
That aside The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh is an uncommon joy. You grow to like these animals (except Tigger, he’s annoying) and find it hard to leave the “bear of very little brain” and his friends, as we must.
Pooh Heaven
P.S. Just this minute a new Disney hand-drawn Winnie the Pooh has been announced.
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A splendidly incise and eloquent review. You really get into the meat of the piece, Bravo!
Thanks very much Bobby.
“What makes the film a wonderful adaptation is not its fidelity to content or character but to tone and atmosphere. Just as the fourth wall is gently passed through, so is the barrier between book and film dissolved. The books aren’t adapted, they come alive. The animation style, taking its cue from the E.H. Shepard’s illustrations, is among the flattest I have seen from Disney. Flatness, the foreshortening of distance and perspective, brings composition into focus. The colours chosen, the arrangement of people, shapes and space are always pleasing to look at.”
How true Stephen! How true. And flat or not, Shepard’s work here in making the characters so human-like is a miracle of animation. As Joel recently delineated in his series on THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, Shephard’s work there was equally as celebrated as we he did with Milne. Although I remain in friendly opposition with you on the non-inclusion of other Disneys, I applaud this selection for a number of reasons, not the least of which it resonates with children. (a point I’ve seen first-hand in the schools and at home.) The central character is an animation icon, beloved to its very essence. Hence I endorce your contention that the film is “sweet and unassuming.” (and priceless). Another “package” film in the Disney canon would be THE ADVENTUES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD.
Beautiful descriptive writing.
Thank you.
I can recognise the talent of their artists even when I see it applied to styles and stories I have no fondness or admiration for. When given the right material it comes together very nicely.
Normally I can’t see the wood for the trees (that there is something there that the finished film cannot do justice).
I must admit that I like the Winnie The Pooh shorts. The only other thing I can say I truly admire by Disney is Fantasia (1940)a masterpiece. The rest of the stuff is too Goofy or too Mickey Mouse for my taste. I grew to love Piglet, Tigger, and Pooh while being “forced” to watch Pooh and his adventures by my two year old son back in the nineties. I don’t know if that bastard Walt Disney had anything to do with the ones I watched but the episode about the lonesome cloud was my favorite.
It’s funny how Mickey Mouse has come to mean something trivial or silly.
I don’t think I’ve seen the lonesome cloud short you mention here.
Walt indeed was looking to make Pooh a household name back in the 60’s, and each of these three vignette’s are caharming (Blustery Day is the standout and was the Oscar-winner for Best Animated short of 1968). But, I don’t know, these film, like the more slap and dash put-togethers 101 Dalmations, The Jungle Book and The Aristocats, have this funny sketch line look to them that not only expose the limited budgets the artists had to make these films, but show a sloppy side to the animation that betrays the expecttations of the viewers that have come to know Disney’s work for the seamless movement and character design.
I agree that the films represented in this essay are charming and create a sense of child-like innocence that was inherent in Milne’s books. However, the inherent British sensibilities that are part of the charm of Milne’s books are lost in this complete Americanization of the stories. The properness of the tales, the huffy stoicism of many of the characters (particularly the Rabbit and Pooh himself) is non-existant and I have often felt that a great part of Milne’s creation is lost in the translation. The reviews of the films were mixed at best and most of the literary authorities at the times of release cited that the real magic of the books never made it to the screen.
It’s this period in the Disney canon that is most troublesome. At a time when most film-goers were screaming for more reality, Disney’s delve into fantasy was just not cutting the mustard and an interest in these films at that period were sped through as merely a quick way to make a buck. Disney himself was far more interested in his live action movies by this point, as well as the theme parks and was also racing against time as he was growing more and more increasingly ill from lung cancer. He did have a slight hand in the films but, considering how grave his health was becoming, it is doubtful that a major part of his time was spent in the story board rooms or over-looking the designs.
I will also take umbrance towards the allusion that these films capture the nostalgiac steps from childhood to adulthood better than TOY STORY 3. Whereas the sadness is hinted at in the Pooh films, the theme is the front and center of the recent Pixar film. We see Pooh and his friends from afar, and never do we associate with them enough to really feel a kinship with them that will wax poetic in the end. The brilliance of TOY STORY 3 (as well as its two predecessors) is that we can relate to the characters, we are like them in our hopes and dreams and aspirations. They are us and we feel a friendly association with them. The icons of Pooh are distant, like from a far away land that we have the privlege of looking into from time to time. Yeah, I feel a little twinge in my heart when I think of where Pooh and his friends will end up in the absense of Christopher Robin, but I am ripped apart with confusion and despair (until the logical solution is presented) at the departure of Andy as he sets off for college and the idea that he may forget his old friends. The difference, and ultimately the tether that binds the characters of Andy’s room to Andy and not Pooh and his gang to Christopher is that one sees them as his loving friends while the other is just amused by them, knowing full well they are expendable. No final scene in recent animated feature film-making has the emotional heft or resonant moral integrity that TOY STORY 3 does and to compare a trifle like THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH to an emotional marvel like TOY STORY 3 is like a Volkswagen trying to outrun a well oiled and speeding fire truck.
I really do like these Pooh films, they are the diamonds in the rough when Disney was unveiling piles of dirty coal. But, considering the films that came out during this troublesome period, thats not saying much…
In the vast filmography of major animated films by this auteur, I can think of no less than 15 others that would be better suited to make this cut. I know this is Stephen’s opinion and I applaud his choice considering his dislike for the films of Disney and his utter hatred for Pixar. It just seems to me that Walt could have been given a bit of a better representation than something like these that seem so quickly slapped together.
I. M. O.
Dennis,
I think one could say that the Disney films I’ve chosen (there’s still one to go by the way) somehow felt less typically Disney to me than the others. A “better representation” or a more accurate encapsulation of Disney’s oeuvre would have meant the pack of films that don’t impress or move me.
I don’t ‘hate’ Pixar. That implies that I would be over-emotional or a little bit prejudiced. Toy Story 3 made me feel very little and it seemed to me to be generally a retread of themes and ideas in the previous film. Pooh, even in a few pages, made me feel something, possibly because the emptiness of separation is not filled with too much hand-holding or schmaltz.
I see your point about British stoicism not being fully translated here.
Very interesting selection. I’m not one to complain about Disney’s fidelity to the source – unlike Bob, I don’t see Pinocchio as being diminished because it strays so far from the Colicchio book. Yet here, where the literal fidelity is so strong, and even the drawings consciously echo Shepard I feel like there’s somehow a homey quality which is lost, a quietness (we don’t see Pooh’s mouth for the most part in Shepard’s drawings, and the voice of Sterling Halloway somehow shifts the character even further from the original conception). I guess this is nitpicking but for some reason I regret this change. But I haven’t seen the films in years and would love to watch them again with this prompting.
This & Sleeping Beauty both are somewhat different from the other Disneys – SB in terms of animation, this perhaps somewhat in terms of animation but more in terms of the narrative. I look forward to seeing what the other one is, I can’t remember if Fantasia was on your nearlies, but while that would be different it would also be kind of predictable; I’d love to see something more of a surprise. I would not be at all shocked (though it would still count as a “surprise”) if Lilo and Stitch was the highest Disney on this list.
“This & Sleeping Beauty both are somewhat different from the other Disneys – SB in terms of animation, this perhaps somewhat in terms of animation but more in terms of the narrative.”
Yes. As I said above, the typical Disney films do not attract me. Where there’s something different from the norm their films take on a new shine.
As for the last Disney…no comment.