Once Upon a Time Walt Disney

Walt Disney wasn't the only player in the animation game during the 20th Century, but he swiftly became the biggest. And Once Upon a Time Walt Disney, now at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is an excellent illustration of why he did so.

An essential element of Disney studio's success was Walt's belief that animation was a viable cinematic art form: his 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was the first animated feature film, and its success ensured that animation was no longer the runt of the cinematic litter.

Another part of his success was the sheer artistic awareness that Walt brought to his films. His appreciation of classic paintings, modern visual artists, European folk tales and the latest cimatic techniques were all grist for the mill, putting his movies head-and-shoulders above the competition.

In 1935, he and his brother Roy went to Europe to explore that continent's artistic heritage. During the trip, the duo bought many books, to create a reference library for their artists. Those books included collections of children's stories such as Aesop's Fables, Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio and cautionary tales by Charles Perrault (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood). This art and literature library would fuel Disney Studio's collective inspiration up until the present day.

Using over 500 pieces culled from Walt Disney Studio vaults, Once Upon a Time Walt Disney "wants to prove that Disney was a bridge between the old, ancient culture from old Europe and American new culture," according to museum director Nathalie Blondil.

Some of these influences are blatant. Disney liked to open many of his movies with a panoramic vista. This initial shot, seen in Peter Pan, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty, was a tribute to one of his favourite artists, French engraver Gustav Doré.

Walt Disney also encouraged his artists to look to the greats when seeking inspiration. It's obvious that background painter Eyvind Earle examined Ludwig II's flamboyant Bavarian palaces when he designed Sleeping Beauty's castle. Gustav Tenggren looked to Flemish painters like Pieter Brueghel the Younger when designing the backgrounds for Pinocchio, and the works of German masters like Moritz von Schwind and Hermann Vogel were crucial when designing the dark look of Cinderella. The exhibit even shows several pieces by these masters, to make the connections more vivid for the audience.

Disney's image-borrowing even extended to character design: Snow White's pre-Raphaelite look was a cross between child stars Shirley Temple (who presented Disney with his honorary Oscar in 1937, also on display) and Janet Gaynor. The wicked Queen's look was influenced by actor Joan Crawford and a sculpture of Uta, wife of the Margrave of Meissen, which adorns the Gothic cathedral in Naumberg. Beatrix Potter's watercolours in The Tailor of Gloucester inspired the characters of Gus and Jag, the two mice who provided the comic relief in Cindrella.

There's also a multi-media portion, showing clips from Disney movies next to the sequences that inspired them. View the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from Fantasia next to a clip from F.W. Murnau's Faust, and it's obvious that Disney had watched this classic horror movie closely.

Once Upon a Time Walt Disney also takes pains to recognize the many artists who worked on Disney movies, and how they developed their ideas. Figures like Ub Iwerks (a crucial figure in Disney's early development), Earle, Tenggren, Claude Coats (who did the backgrounds for Cinderella), and Ward Kimball, Bill Tytla and Fred Moore (whose animation genius on Dumbo saved Disney after the box office failure of Fantasia) all get their due in this exhibit.

The strangest part of the exhibition is a six-minute clip of Destino, a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali (yes, you read that right). Disney jumped at the chance to work with the Spanish surrealist when he came to Hollywood in 1945. Despite the American media cracking wise about "the Master of the Mouse" hooking up with "the Master of the Soft Watches," both men shared a mutual admiration and were excited about working together.

Dali and Disney ultimately developed Destino, a story of thwarted love between a ballerina and a baseball player. It was based on the ballad by Armando Dominguez, and intended to be Disney's live-action/animation follow-up to Song of the South. Unfortunately, the project never really got off the ground, and was shelved.

In 2002, Roy E. Disney (Walt's nephew) and animator Dominique Monfrey pieced together the animation and made a six-minute short, which was released the following year. Destino is pretty much what you would expect from such a mix: it combines Dali's iconic (some would say, clichéd) artistic gestures and Disney's love of sentiment in equal amounts. I'm not sure the average audience would have been willing to sit through 90 minutes worth of such dream-like, liquid imagery. Still, it's a fascinating peek at what might have been if the pair had been able to realize their dream.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Art has been accused of putting on exhibits that emphasize style over substance. With Once Upon a Time Walt Disney, they get it right. This is an exhibition that will delight those who want hard information on the studio, and those who just want to gaze at the pretty pictures.

Once Upon a Time Walt Disney is in Montreal, the only North American stop for this exhibition, runs until June 24th. If you get the chance, go see it. Oh, and while you're at it, stop at Schwartz's for the smoked meat.

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