Peter Pan

One of Walt Disney’s great obsessions was to bring J.M. Barrie’s beloved play/book Peter Pan to animation. He secured the rights to the property in the 30s, intent on releasing the film during the studio’s Golden Era, various setbacks pushed the film into development hell, where it languished before finally arriving in 1951. Strangely enough, a similar thing happened with Alice in Wonderland.

Perhaps the cinema gods were smiling down upon the studio, in some strange way, as the delay eventually brought in Mary Blair’s wonderful perspective. Her contributions to Alice in Wonderland cannot be understated, but her vision of Never-Never Land is even greater. A trip with the Lost Boys through the various jungles of Never-Never Land reveals a series of nearly abstract impressions of various landscapes. In a few brief minutes, we travel with the Lost Boys through an overripe jungle, an African savanna, and into a densely populated North American forest.

Blair’s sense of juxtaposing colors bleeds into the film in a variety of ways. The tropics of Mermaid Lagoon, all bright pinks, oranges, lilacs, and the menace of Skull Island, grays and greens abound there, in such close proximity springs to mind. As does the nearly cotton candy colored skies of Never-Never Land. A battle with pirates or a leisurely stroll through the flora of Never-Never Land always shows a hint of menace lurking around the edges. But not too much menace, as is evident in all of the films in the Silver Era between Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp, Disney suddenly appears gun-shy about unleashing hallucinatory and nightmarish images. He still produces a few scares or unhinged pieces of animation, but not at the same scale that they were unleashed in prior films like Bambi or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

If Peter Pan has one serious flaw as an adaptation of Barrie’s work, it’s that it often too much Disney and not enough Barrie. Granted, it’s a solid adaptation, but some of the darker impulses of the original text are removed to instead play-up slapstick. No film adaptation has found a way to treat the Native American characters in an un-problematic way, and Disney’s indulges too much in caricature. Tiger Lily’s a fierce warrior princess in the book, and is here reduced to helpless, nearly silent victim (her lone line, a stifled cry of “Help!” before a wave silences her) is bad enough, but the song-and-dance number in the tribe’s camp is even worse. It’s an ugly reminder of things that were once deemed perfectly fine, and a distracting segment in an otherwise charming movie.

While the film may shave down a few story elements to become more palatable and “family friendly,” Peter Pan and Tinkerbell remain cold, at times unlikable, and malicious characters. This is a good thing, as it only reinforces the notion that Peter Pan is not truly a hero worth emulating, but a colossal ego frozen in amber. Bobby Driscoll, at the time the first and only boy to play the role theatrically, does great work as Peter. He finds just the right touch between his arrogance, insouciance, pride, and charm to make the character continually engaging. Strange that Tinkerbell eventually became a placid bit of cheesecake for the studio, going so far as to soften her rough edges to the point of dilution. Ah well, her capacity for one emotion at a time, as stated in the text, is shown in a handful of ways. Her rages are more interesting to watch as she burns a hole in a leaf, or changes from flesh colored to blood red.

Where Peter Pan excels is when it indulges in the titanic clash of egos between Captain Hook and Peter. Captain Hook is a delicious villain here, possibly the most pleasing one until Maleficent’s grand bitchery in Sleeping Beauty. At times, he’s an eloquent gentleman, swearing to honor a series of codes and principles, but not opposed to bending them or engaging in prolonged word play to escape it. At other times, he’s a tyrannical monster, happily killing one of his own men for annoying and distracting him, prone to hysterical fits, and coldly calculated seductions. Hook is one of the greatest Disney villains in the canon, even if his encounters with the crocodile play a little hard on the slapstick. In a nice touch, the same actor, Hans Conried, voices Hook and Mr. Darling while the crocodile that chases after him is animated like a dog, owning to the stage tradition of the same actor playing both nana and the crocodile.

Oh, what glorious animation this film has! The various flying scenes, so hard to capture, are rendered here magnificently. Peter truly feels weightless, as he seems to be a constant whirl of motion hovering about the frame. The flight through England into Never-Never Land is an efficient bit of tone changing. While the England scenes were rooted in realistic depictions of actions and character movement, Never-Never Land’s approach sees the background becoming more abstract, and the animation more limber.

Stressing narrative propulsion and a mischievous sense of fun and adventure, Peter Pan is the first classic in the Silver Era. An imperfect one to be sure, but finally one that adheres a stronger narrative to the various unwieldy segments. A little more focus on the darkness hovering over the edges would have been nice, but I can’t complain too much. It’s a decent enough adaptation of the book, and I’ve loved it since childhood. It may be a little too scatterbrained, but it’s also refreshingly simple.