Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities, Celebrated Shorts 1920's-1960's (2005)

DVD

Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts 1920s-1960s is a thoughtfully put together assortment of some of Walt Disney's early, groundbreaking work. While a lot of the work on display here pales in comparison to what people can achieve now, it is still very impressive to watch the animated films that started it all. I also really enjoyed the historical perspective that Leonard Maltin provided, even though I felt his appearance gave this set the feel of a Saturday afternoon TV show. That is honestly my only real complaint with what is a very interesting document of the early Disney archives.

This set gives us Alice's Wonderland which very early in the game predates Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, as it merges real people inside an animated world. While the results achieved in the 1920s makes these "Alice Shorts" look almost experimental in nature, they are still worth checking out for their ambitiousness. This set also gives us such shorts at Ferdinand the Bull, Paul Bunyan and Morris, the Midget Moose.

While I would recommend not watching all of these shorts in one shot, I only feel this way because so much action and movement has been pressed into such short time periods. As someone who is making his own feature length animated movie, 1985-1986, I found the Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts 1920s-1960s to be inspiring, and worthy of any animation fan's collection.

Disc One

Alice's Cartoon World
This is an interview conducted by Leonard Maltin with Virginia Davis. Davis is the 4 year old girl in the early "Alice" shorts. It was really interesting hearing her talk about making these movies, simply because it seemed like such an interesting time to be working on these projects. Also, working with Walt Disney (which she discusses) sounds like it would have been a lot of fun regardless of your age. The fact that she was a little girl getting to live within a real life fantasy world, seems to have made the experience all the more magical.

From Kansas City to Hollywood
From Kansas City to Hollywood: A Timeline Of Disney's Silent Era, 1923-1928 is a documentary in which Maltin takes us through this period of Disney's growth. What I found to be the most inspiring was how Walt stuck to his guns so often. It seemed like he had people around him (even within his own staff), who wouldn't hesitate to try and hurt his company or jump ship. Yet, he never seemed to stop working and in the end it was his talent that won out, and explains why we are still talking about and using Disney products today. This man's belief in himself and in the medium of animation is unparalleled in my opinion.

Disc Two

Audio commentary with Leonard Maltin and Richard Sherman
This audio commentary with Leonard Maltin and Richard Sherman is for the short "A Symposium On Popular Songs" which Sherman also composed. I really got a kick out of this because it was a succinct discussion about how music is used with the images of animation. Also, there was a lot of behind the scenes talk in which Maltin would ask Sherman about a certain anecdote and Sherman would then recount it for Maltin. Overall, this kind of commentary is even more important because it is talking about such an older piece of animation. While it's not from the very early days, it's early enough to still be considered relevant to the overall scope of this set.

Animation Art Galleries
These are galleries for 4 of the shorts on this DVD. They look at "Ferdinand the Bull," "The Little House," "The Story of Anyburg, USA" and "Chicken Little." Essentially one uses their remote to choose which images they wish to look at, and then they can press the left or right buttons to scroll through them. Honestly, this was one of my favorite features because I loved being able to just look at the still images of the art. If for no other reason than to glean ideas for my own drawings.

What I think I like best about Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts 1920s-1960s, is how layered with information it is. The featurettes and interviews that they have done for this set is just right. I think the only real misstep is beginning each DVD with Leonard Maltin. He comes out of the gate with so much information that it almost scared me off from this set. Maltin expounds on so much of what this box set has, that he almost takes the fun out of viewers discovering it for themselves.

All in all, of all the Walt Disney Treasure's sets that they were going to be releasing, this was the one I was the most excited about. As I mentioned above, I am working on my own animated film and it is pretty primitive even compared to what people like myself are doing on their home computers. This set made me realize that you have to start somewhere, and as long as you believe in yourself good things can happen.