The thing I like best about  Dumbo is that it’s the film that figures in the manic climax to Steven Spielberg’s underrated comedy of excess  1941. There, General Stillwell (Robert Stack) has taken over a downtown theater to watch  Dumbo in private, so that he can weep copiously and out of sight of his minions. His private pleasure is interrupted by the hysteria arising over a presumed attack on Los Angeles by the Japanese, which in reality is a lost sub. 

1941 is one of those strange films in Spielberg’s catalog. The popular critical image of Spielberg is that he celebrates the middle class suburban family, using the pretext of a suspense or sci-fi story to wallow in the comforts of an ideal home with harried parents and messy kids whose kingdom resides everywhere but the parents’ bedroom. But he is just as likely to tear a family apart, as he does in  Close Encounters, Empire of the Sun, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, and 1941. It’s the reverse of his usual narrative choice ( Jaws, Poltergeist, ET), where the external threat to the family only strengthens it.

 

 

The family in  Dumbo is torn apart, too. Little Dumbo is separated from his mother, who is confined in a cage in a traveling circus because she has been outraged at the treatment of her child, mocked for having big ears. With the help of Timothy Q. Mouse (voiced by Edward Brophy; Dumbo never speaks), Dumbo discovers that he has the power to fly on oversized wings grants him and mom special status in the circus world after a delicious revenge against the scary clowns who tormented him (could  Dumbo be the source for the widespread fear and / or hatred of clowns?).

 

 

 Dumbo came out in 1941 at the height of Disney’s war on motherhood. Bambi’s mother is killed by hunters, and Alice’s lonely journal among mean adults. Today, as in the Lion King, the mother figure is as likely to be absent with the father remaining as the spine of the family (in any case, at least one of the parents is always gone). Was Disney directing his writers to dwell on these mother led families because he thuoght they made for better box office, or were his own neuroses plugged into the zeitgeist? Was ’40s and ’50s American culture, and therefore the culture of the civilized world, ambivalent about The Mother at the height of a war, and so therefore erased her? She was certainly the nemesis in most comedies, such  Father of the Bride, where the father is continually emascuated by the machinations of the women around him, completely oblivious to his individuality.

 

 

But at root,  Dumbo is a salutary tale about self esteem. As Mr. Mouse says, The very thing that held you down are going to carry you up and up!” That’s the congenial message of the film, which Disney said was his favorite of all his productions. Dumbo appeals to the fragile person within us who wishes we had a special talent that would set us apart. Not make us equal, but make us better.

Dumbo (Big Top Edition), which is the second iteration of the film on DVD, comes in a fine full frame image with DD 5.1  sound, manipulated out of the original mono. The film has  English subtitles, and language tracks in French and  Spanish. Curiously, this DVD release has fewer special featuers than the 60th anniversay release of 2001 and the transfer has been criticized has being worse than its predecessor. Close comparisons with the 60 anniversary disc show that the image here is dimmer and flatter.

 

 

Among the extras remaining from the first disc are the commentary by animation historian John Canemaker, “Celebrating Dumbo” with by Roy E. Disney and Don Hahn, Disney’s intro to the movie done for his weekly TV show,  Dumbo art gallery of 167 images, two singalongs, “Look Out For Mr. Stork” (2:28) and “Casey Jr.” (2:27), “DVD storybook: Dumbo’s Big Discovery,” and two bonus shorts, “Elmer Elephant” and “The Flying Mouse,” while erasing “Sound Design,” “Exclusive Look at  Dumbo II“, which never came out anyway, and “Publicity Materials,” which included all the trailers. Disney has something against trailers. Maybe they recognize as much as we that they spoil all their movies. New to the disc are the music video for Jim Brickman and Kassie DePaiva’s rendition of “Baby Mine” (4:00), the unduly complicated “DisneyPedia: ‘My First Circus’.” If you are a completist,  Dumbo hit the street on June 6, and retails for $29.99, but the 60th anniversary edition should continue to satisfy most consumers for now.

 

 

Comments: None