The charge of 101: 60 years of Dalmatian
The charge of 101
The 101 Dalmatians, the feature film by Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton Luske and Clyde Geronimo that revived Mickey's house in the early 1960s, was released in US cinemas on January 25, 1961. Precisely sixty-one years from that moment, we retrace the history of the seventeenth Classic (available on Disney Plus). Starting from premises that were anything but rosy, he was able to take on his shoulders the destiny of a historical animation studio, to the point of marking a turning point in the very technique of animation, leaving its mark on anyone who still sees it today.Subscribe now to Disney + for € 8.99 per month or € 89.90 per year
Aurora's big mistake
As mentioned, the origins of La Carica dei 101 (originally distributed in Italy with the extended title "The charge of a hundred and one") weren't the best at the time. The Dalmatian film is in fact closely linked to the immediately preceding feature film: Sleeping Beauty. This latest film was released in the late 1950s and was the result of a monumental effort both in graphics and in intentions. The desire to retell a classic fairy tale was in fact contaminated with a refined visual rendering, directly inspired by medieval miniatures.But above all, Sleeping Beauty was the last film to be produced in the traditional way. Up to that moment, in fact, the frames were made by reproducing the animators' sketches by hand on the acetates. As romantic as it was, this intermediate phase of inking was long and expensive: both of these defects came to light with the distribution of Sleeping Beauty. The lengthening of the work had raised the budget up to 6 million dollars: the move to the cinema brought back only 5.3 million. The film thus earned the unfortunate distinction of the studio's first loss-making production after ten years.
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From sleeping princesses… to Dalmatians
Obviously the reinvention had to take place in a period that was not the best. At the beginning of the decade, Disney's animation division underwent a severe downsizing of staff, so much so that the idea of closing it was even cherished. The reason was simple: despite not having produced truly catastrophic losses, Sleeping Beauty had revealed that the production mechanism had "jammed". The real risk was that the animation branch of the company would become economically unsustainable. The only way to survive was a somewhat more "modest" movie.if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh3_1"). Is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh3_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh3 "); } And then we arrived at The 101 Dalmatians: Walt Disney read the original novel (of the same name) by Dodie Smith in 1957 and immediately bought the rights. To transform the book into a screenplay thought Bill Peet, who unlike many other films of the studio (yesterday and today) adapted the book completely by himself. Evidence of this enormous effort is still found in the Disney archives, where it is evident how the final sequences are literally traces of Peet's work, something that still generates amazement even among the insiders.
But what really made the difference was the distortion of context and above all of mentality. Literally, a film that brought princes off the horse and princesses off the pedestal. But The 101 Dalmatians did not just “get rid of” the fairy tale: it translated the narration into areas, eras and situations that spoke directly to its spectators. And the first step was, if you like, the most "painful": no songs, at least officially. In The 101 Dalmatians the characters don't sing, a nice paradox considering that Rudy's character is a musician. Clearly we are still far from certain "extremisms" made decades later (for example with Atlantis - The Lost Empire), but for the times not putting musical numbers was already a break with the past.
The 101 Dalmatians: owners, furs and Dalmatian
The story is famous: Rudy and his Dalmatian dog Pongo marry respectively the human Anita and the Dalmatian Peggy. Of "contemporary" couples, who for the first time in Mickey Mouse's house showed explicit affectionate attitudes, from a dance to a kiss (although the latter is not so obvious). The serenity of both families will be threatened by Cruella De Mon, who has set her sights on Pongo and Peggy's litter to get a very gaudy black-spotted fur. This will be followed by a daring escape from the two henchmen of Cruella Orazio and Gaspare, before a just happy ending.if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh4_1"). Is (": visible")) {console .log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh4_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh4"); } Outside the plot, what counts much more in this film is precisely the dimension of reality, which especially in the opening sequences takes on practically descriptive tones. Although with some sweetening, La Carica dei 101 therefore stages the everyday life of its era, with far fewer filters than one would expect (today as yesterday) from a Disney film. Through the different women (and the respective breeds of their pet dogs) seen and "valued" by Pongo, the film makes us understand without malice how the society of the time was trying to reinvent itself. Jazz and blues music then colors a London with a comic flavor, before zooming in on the penniless Rudy. The owner of Pongo is a bored bachelor who lives in disorder, clearly lost behind a creativity that no puff of a pipe can ignite. And Pongo himself is no exception, with only one variant: it will be he who will take the initiative to unlock their lives.
Just go beyond the superficial glance to see how, under the aspect caricatured, the society portrayed by The 101 Dalmatians is something incredibly realistic. The conceptual overturning lies precisely in telling it through the point of view of pets. Pongo considers the owner as a friend (he speaks of "bipedal friend" or "my bipedal") but at the same time suggests the existence of a real "animal society", parallel to the human one. A society where animals are aware of both their "limits" and those of humans. Yet they respect and help them: the conceptual overturning takes on amusing tones, in its asking the human viewer the unusual question "but is it I who take care of my dog, or is it my dog who takes care of me? ".
Ub Iwerks and the miraculous photocopier
Outside of the contextual exchanges repeated also in the future (one for all, The Aristocats of 1970), the reason why The Charge of 101 is remembered in the history of animation lies in the revolutionary production technique: xerography. It was none other than Ub Iwerks, Walt's great collaborator from the beginning and now (rightly) recognized as co-creator of none other than Mickey Mouse.Iwerks, returned to Disney after a period of separation from work that did not had gone well, he invented this technique starting from the same principle as the photocopier. In this way, the animators' drawings could be transferred directly to the rhodium glasses, completely skipping the entire inking process that had so burdened the budget of Sleeping Beauty.
An idea that, although not everyone likes , it was also the umpteenth manifestation of how much the creatives behind 101 Dalmatians were somehow "happy" to be able to work on the film. The same motif of the spots, in addition to Dalmatian dogs, was also used on backgrounds and scenographies, which in turn received "spots" of color in the face of being drawn with realistic lines. Even the opening credits revolve around this motif, and it has been repeatedly admitted that without Iwerks' intuition this Disney classic probably would never have seen the light.
Cruella De Mon, Cruella De Mon ...
Thanks to the technological improvements and some edges, some made also to make a virtue of necessity (recycled or too rough animation segments, as well as problems of cleaning the drawings) The 101 Dalmatians turned out to be a real success at box office. Costing just over half of Sleeping Beauty, in one year it grossed as much as 14 million dollars in the United States alone, thus raising the fate of Disney animation.Leaving for a moment the anthropological and historical component , one of the reasons why the film still retains its freshness lies not in the technical component, but in its multifaceted antagonist: the perfidious and unforgettable Cruella De Mon.
Cruella: Anita, darling!
Anita: How are you?
Cruella: Miserably dear, as usual. Superbly in pieces!
(the first lines of the character of Cruella)
Altezzosa and with bichromatic hair, through Cruella De Mon the directors try to evolve the figure of the witch. Removed from her anachronistic magical powers, this literary topos becomes a decadent smoker, made insatiable by her own money and dominated by an obsessive consumerism. But apart from her evil component, her self-irony in knowing how to accept her own discomforts earned her the paradoxical sympathy of the audience. So much so that the scene where he says he feels "beautifully broken" has sometimes been used as an internet meme.
Over the decades the original film was redistributed several times in theaters, becoming a steady income that generated hundreds millions of dollars. But he was also one of the first to have a live action remake: in 1996 La Carica dei 101 was released - This time the magic is true, where Cruella was played by none other than Glenn Close. This re-adaptation was also a global success, not failing to generate sequels in and out of the glass in the 2000s (respectively, The charge of the 102 - A new blow from the tail and The charge of the 101 II - Stain a hero in London). Further evidence of how much Cruella has remained in the hearts of the spectators is the live-action Cruella. Currently in production, this latest film will see Emma Stone in the part of the wicked protagonist.
Cruella De Mon, the Disney shopaholic The main reason for the ambiguities about the figure of Cruella lies in the fact that, after the animated film , the brand did not fail to generate sequels and derivative works. The necessary deepening of the character has in fact created conflicting opinions. In the original film, she could at best be a rich and bored heiress, while in the (parallel?) Universe of the 1996 live action she was transformed into a wealthy stylist. In the animated sequels she is portrayed as being on probation, as well as still hopelessly obsessed with black-spotted furs. But as with many other Disney antagonists, Cruella's is a hunt that is bound to go unfulfilled.
Conclusion: Talking Spots
Sixty years after its original release, The Charge of the 101 remains a film with something to say. But where in the origins it could have assumed portraiture ambitions, today it has become a precious testimony of an evolutionary path not only anthropological, but also technological. A film created by making a virtue of necessity over many things, but which has been able to recover contact with reality precisely from its constraints.A reality which, if desired, he painted as cartoonish and caricatured, two characteristics which, however, have proved the paradox to bring it closer to that of the spectators. As well as one of the first animated films that authentically attempted to imagine imaginatively how animals and humans have always coexisted in two "parallel" societies. And that humans, unfortunately or fortunately, are unable to perceive.
