Blog Post #11: Animating Dreamworlds

Animation has been used since its start to create fantasy worlds that people do not see in their everyday life. When spliced with real life movies, it helps the characters voice their true concerns and even travel to fanciful faraway places. In the 1964 musical film Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, Bert, and the children go into an animated world as a part of the magic of Mary Poppins in the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Mary Poppins is a film based on a book series by P.L. Travers about a nanny who turns these children’s boring world upside down with magical things and wonderful songs.

In this world they visit, animals dance alongside people and carousel horses ride off of the carousel along trails. There are even animated people who play music and dance. This movie was one of the earlier attempts to splice animation into a live feature film with real actors, with the exception of “Gertie the Dinosaur.” The characters even interact with the animated animals. Bert dances with the penguins. One penguin even steals a kiss from Mary. Mary even sings along with an animated band. This is not exactly done seamlessly. In fact, Mary appears to be singing in front of a television screen of cartoon characters during the song. The penguin dance looks a little better. This may be due to the fact that there are no real life penguins to compare them to, but there are real people. Despite the mistakes, this technique does add to the magic of Bert and Mary Poppins’ adventures. Oddly enough, Travers did not agree to this being in the film, but Disney decided to keep it adding the typical Disney touch of magic, characterized by talking and dancing animals, to the feature. In the end, it has remained one of the most memorable scenes in this film.  Below you will find the videos (please excuse the singalong bar).

ETA: I commented on Kristina Wade’s and Emily Witt’s blog.