Song of the South

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• 54   Metascore
• 1946
• 1 hr 34 mins
• Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Music
• G

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It's important news of the art-industry this week that Walt Disney finally has whipped that problem of combining the cartoon film medium with the orthodox variety employing players, and has come up with a picture like nothing he or anyone else has supplied the entertainment screen. It's a story about a little boy who listen to the tales about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, told him by the all-wise Uncle Remus of imperishable memory, and conducts himself accordingly, and the 30 per cent of it which is cartoon fits into the 70 per cent which is human performance as snugly as currency in a cash-drawer. Exploited in proportion to the delight it delivers, the picture promises to wind up in the blue chip class by the time the final returns are in. Considered strictly as a commercial property in the marquee sense, this is the first Disney picture a showman could exploit in terms of talent names negotiable at his box office. These include, this time, Ruth Warrick, Hattie McDaniel, Lucile Watson and Mary Field, and the result of this inclusion suggests further enterprise in this direction next time, for it simplifies the billing, job tremendously to have proper nouns instead of impoverished adjectives to work with. The Disney solutions of the problem of combining cartoon and straight movie turns out to be as simple as it is charming. He starts his picture with a length of quietly pleasant live action in which a little boy arrives at his grandmother's plantation and is turned loose to learn its ways under guidance of a pickaninny his own age. They have good experiences and bad, all in the normally childish category, and the wise Uncle Remus, general factotum around the place, supplies one of his meaningful tales about Brer Rabbit whenever the boy needs counsel. The tales themselves are told in the cartoon form, the rest of the story in the orthodox medium, with just about the right amount of transitional blending, and the operation is expertly managed. The effect of the whole is first to amuse and then to charm, and totally to stimulate the gentler emotions, which have taken such a beating from killer-mellers and psycho-chillers this past year or so. Wholesome is doubtless the word for the whole of it, but wholesome in the wider sense of being universal in appeal, with nary an age bracket or other fractional division of the population roped off from the general and genuine enjoyment. In addition to the players named above, there is special exploitation material in the presence of robust, genial, sensationally competent James Baskett, recruited from the Amos and Andy radio program to portray Uncle Remus. People who see the picture will be talking about him a long time afterward, wherefore it's dollar sense for a showman to start talking about him in advance. Perce Pearce is credited as associate producer of the picture, Harve Foster as director of the live actors and Wilfred Jackson on the cartoon side, and the screenplay is by Dalton Reymond, Morton Grant and Maurice Rapf, from a story by Reymond. Previewed at the Academy Award theatre to an all-press audience which loved it. Reviewer's Rating: Excellent.