Dumbo (1941) [60th Anniversary] – DVD + Dumbo [Big Top Edition] – DVD

***/****
60TH ANNIVERSARY DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B
BTE DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras B
screenplay by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer, based on the book by Helen Aberson & Harold Perl
directed by Ben Sharpsteen

by Bill Chambers With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney had established two story prototypes between which he would all but vacillate over the next couple of decades. In 1937's Snow White, the eponymous heroine trusts that Prince Charming will one day steal her away from life's ills; in 1940's Pinocchio, a misfit innocent is navigated by his surrogate conscience (Jiminy Cricket) through an unkind world back to the parental figure he left behind. Disney didn't really return to the Prince Charming myth until the Fifties, when he began a run that includes Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan (a movie about a swashbuckler's repeated rescue of the damsel in distress who fancies him)–Pinocchio's template just seemed to have more resonance during the war years.

Moviegoers embraced Dumbo, one of Disney's cheapest and most profitable pictures, after dismissing Pinocchio and Fantasia. (Uncle Walt was always far fonder of pushing the envelope than his audience was.) Funnily enough, it's Pinocchio with animals–long nose and all. The story begins with disappointment, as Mrs. Jumbo, a circus elephant, does not receive the special delivery she was expecting from Mr. Stork. A few days later, she is compensated with an adorable baby elephant nicknamed Dumbo by the sewing circle for his oversize ears. When the circus crowd teases her son relentlessly, pulling and poking at his flaps, Mrs. Jumbo throws a tantrum with stigmatic consequences: she gets locked up in a trailer marked "Mad Elephant."

Timothy, a mouse, befriends the down-in-the-dumps orphan and makes it his mission to raise Dumbo's self-esteem and status as a performer. In the film's saddest moment, Timothy takes Dumbo to see his caged mother; Mrs. Jumbo dips out her trunk between the bars and cradles Dumbo in its sling. They weep, and so do we–Disney manipulated us with such deftness that you relent to his sadism like an emotional checkmate. Base childhood anxieties work the gears of Dumbo in addition to Dumbo the character, whose muteness–to paraphrase DVD commentator John Canemaker–clears a path for our symbolic projections: how we relate to not only his maternal loss, but also his distinguishing physical traits and clumsiness. His imperfections are ours, which makes his surmounting of them both inspirational and aspirational.

The film is dotted with memorable sequences (the celebrated 'Pink Elephants' fantasy, not to mention the stormy roustabout routine, are stronger detours into surrealism than the majority of Fantasia), and its comedy and drama have an edge lacking in today's entertainment for children. With topical references to The Little Engine That Could, media personalities, and afro-jazz, Dumbo is one of the few early Disneys that wilfully dates itself. (Sometimes, alas, it is racially dubious, as in the case of the proto-Heckle and Jeckle crows.) While many an authority on the subject cites Dumbo as the Disney studio's finest hour (literally: at 64 minutes, it's the shortest of Disney's theatrical releases), I find it a bit too undemanding to belong in the same company as flanking projects Pinocchio and Bambi. What does a picture in which an elephant learns to fly at its conclusion, almost as a deus ex machina, lack, if not sophistication?

THE DVD – 60TH ANNIVERSARY
Released but two weeks after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Platinum Edition, Disney DVD's Dumbo: 60^th Anniversary Edition has nothing on that Snow White set in terms of either completeness or presentation, although it's by far the best repackaging of Dumbo yet. While a layer of sooty grain hampers the 1.33:1 image throughout, the transfer is vividly detailed and coloured. As for the audio, the mono stems, mastered in 5.1 to the angst of purists, sound brittle, if plumper with bass than one thought possible. It's not unreasonable to suspect the broadest effects–rain, wind, thunder–of having been re-recorded from scratch.

Disney's gone sequel-crazy: Trailers for Peter Pan II, Cinderella II, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (co-starring the voice of Jennifer Love Hewitt, here brazenly hawking the direct-to-video production as a must-buy electronic babysitter) greet your first spin of the disc. Somehow I can forgive the abovementioned cash-grabs before the sacrilegious Dumbo II, which is previewed elsewhere, within Dumbo's bonus materials. Animation historian Canemaker's screen-specific commentary track comes off as ruthlessly scripted, but boy, does it strike a nice balance of anecdote and analysis. Canemaker gives every single applicable Disney artist their due in rich biographical accounts that tend to end in tragedy, and his reading of Dumbo's subtext is fresh enough to keep us listening.

Scrolling down the (bombastic) supplemental menus you'll find the following selections: Michael Crawford's take on "Baby Mine" in music video form; "Celebrating Dumbo" (15 mins.), a featherlight tribute to Dumbo from the ubiquitous likes of Leonard Maltin and Roy Disney; seven "Dumbo Art" galleries, complete with how-to narration on browsing them ("Story Development" contains storyboards so gorgeous as to belong in a museum); "Sound Design", a 6-minute excerpt from the under-seen The Reluctant Dragon wherein Robert Benchley watches a very staged approximation of Dumbo's Casey Jr. coming to aural life; the "Original Walt Disney TV Introduction" for Dumbo, running one-minute and shot in black-and-white; "Dumbo's DVD Storybook," narrated if you so choose; "Look Out for Mr. Stork" and "Casey Jr." sing-alongs; and "Publicity Materials"–Dumbo's (poor condition) 1941 and (mint condition) 1949 trailers. A DVD-ROM section links to Dumbo's website and another version of the storybook. Rounding out the disc, the disturbing Silly Symphonies The Flying Mouse (9 mins.) and Elmer Elephant (8 mins.) play as rough sketches of Dumbo's themes and aesthetics. Originally published: November 2, 2001.

THE DVD – BIG TOP EDITION
Maybe it's the racial stain on Dumbo–arguably Disney's most enduring animated classic–that discouraged the powers-that-be from canonizing it under their Platinum imprimatur, but surely the film deserves a more prestigious DVD presentation than this new Big Top Edition, a minor reconfiguration of 2001's 60^th Anniversary Edition. The only upgrade of note here is a fresh transfer that wipes the windshield of the previous release while saturating a faded palette more naturally. Still, there's room for further improvement: the image has been dimmed to the point of sacrificing shadow detail and now hugs the edges of the frame a little tightly. Let's hope Dumbo is subjected to additional TLC before making its final stop in the HD realm. Disney has also squandered this opportunity to resurrect the film's original mono soundtrack, though the DD 5.1 remix remains relatively innocuous. While most of the earlier platter's supplements return, Michael Crawford's operatic cover of "Baby Mine" is replaced by a less flamboyant, if equally inexplicable, rendition courtesy of Jim Brickman and Kassie DePaiva; the preview for the now-defunct Dumbo II, the excerpt from The Reluctant Dragon, and the ROM-based extras are each MIA; and there is, of course, a different batch of sneak peeks (Brother Bear 2, The Wild, Princess Fairy Tales, Disney's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, The Little Mermaid Special Edition, Meet the Robinsons, The Fox and the Hound 25th Anniversary Edition, Disney Learning Adventures, and Airbuddies). Also on board this FastPlay-enhanced reissue: "My First Circus," a DisneyPedia feature with a See 'n Say interface that uses stock footage and clips from Disney cartoons to teach the viewer about circus animals, provided they can tell the difference between a tiger and a rabbit. I couldn't, for which I was gently admonished.

• 60TH ANNIVERSARY DVD
  64 minutes; G; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1; English SDH subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Disney
• BTE DVD
  64 minutes; G; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1, Spanish DD 5.1; English SDH subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Disney