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One Hundred and One Dalmations is a film that marks a distinct change in Disney’s visual style, and the way they accomplished it. Their previous film, Sleeping Beauty, had tanked at the box office and drawn into question the business sense of continuing Disney’s animation studio. He had live action films and his theme park to generate income, but animation was where it all started and he very much wanted it to continue.
Ub Iwerks became the man to help Disney continue his first love. He had been experimenting with the revolutionary (at the time) technology—the Xerox process—and figured out a way of transferring the animators pencil sketches directly onto animation cels, eliminating the need and cost of hundreds of inkers replicating the animation frame by frame. This reduced the studio’s staff to a fifth of its former numbers and change the way their films would look from then on.
In previous films, inkers would clean up animators’ drawings, but Xerox copied them exactly, giving the animation a rougher appearance. Also, due to the limits of the Xeroxing technology at the time, colours lines could not be used. As a result One Hundred and One Dalmations, and the films that followed it, had a fidelity to the original animator’s work that had never been seen before, but there was a less refined appearance to the characters and all black outlines. The backgrounds—another cost cutting measure to which Disney wasn’t all that enthused—took on a more abstract appearance, and this led to a falling out between Disney and art director Ken Anderson.
Based on the 1957 novel by Dodie Smith, One Hundred and One Dalmations tells the story of Pongo and Perdita, a pair of Dalmations that get their respective owners together. Living a life of suburban bliss, the dog’s life is upended when their owner, Anita, has a visit from her witch of a boss, Cruella De Ville. Noticing that Perdita is pregnant, Cruella wants to buy the puppies when they arrive. When Anita refuses, Cruella plots to steal the puppies and make a spotted coat out of them. It is left to Pongo and Perdita to rescue the puppies and get them safely back home.
Another first for this film was that it had one screenwriter, Bill Peet, who delivered a true contemporary (for the time) story, remiss of the trappings of previous Disney adventures. It was fast paced, well crafted, with one of the best Disney villains ever created. It was punchy, funny, and had a real sense of peril that engaged children the world over. There were far less songs involved, ironic considering the main character is a songwriter. This was a fresh new approach from the Disney Studios and it played like gangbusters. Even the author came out and said that not only was she pleased with the final product, but she thought they’d improved upon her book.
MPAA Rating: G.
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