Disney character Mickey Mouse in a scene from the short film "Steamboat Willie" from 1928
Photo: LMPC / Getty ImagesThe animated Donald Duck duck includes the croaking screeching and Mickey Mouse, of course, the squeaky voice: In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine that this was once not the case. In 1928, however, it seemed by no means certain that a few years later animated hordes of poultry and mice or ostrich ballets would dance loudly across the screen in the name of Walt Disney and people would go to the cinema for them. Because up until then the audience was used to silent films. Would it be able to indulge in the illusion that drawn figures produce all these noises - the "Boings!", The descending and ascending chimes, even speaking?
Even Walt Disney was skeptical, recalls the noisemaker Jimmy MacDonald, whose profession was really emerging at the time - and reports on the largely improvised settings of these early days of the animation. His stories can now be heard in Frankfurt am Main, where the German Institute for Film is tracing the acoustic traces of the film and entertainment empire with "The Sound of Disney 1928-1967".
Everywhere in the recording studio, according to MacDonald, there were spittoons that were hit with a pencil - "Schepper!", "Boing!" Cigar boxes were also checked for their sound content, and in between Walt Disney himself gave a little cartoon mouse its soon-to-be-iconic falsified voice. In the projection room, Disney and his team saw and heard what a short time later would inspire an audience of millions: the drawn images and the sound recorded synchronously in a single take at the time magically married into a new, soon self-evident whole.
The Disney short film "Steamboat Willie" from 1928, in which Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie make their debut, was not the very first animated cartoon with synchronized sound. For example, the brothers' "Song Car-Tunes" had already appeared a few years earlier Butcher. But the almost eight-minute film in which Mickey and Minnie sail across the Mississippi on a paddle steamer should be one of the milestones of the animated talkie. For Walt Disney, the formerly destitute artist from Kansas City, the popular success of "Steamboat Willie" formed the basis for his entertainment empire.
In addition to film clips and numerous original celluloid panels, it is above all the recorded anecdotes and works of Disney employees from those pioneering days that are worth visiting the exhibition - including the composers Carl Stalling and Peggy Lee or the voice actress Marcellite Garner. While anthropomorphism is celebrating happy reviews in the background, you can listen to and see at the media stations how Walt Disney and Co. created that lively world from the - nomen est omen - "Silly Movies" in the studio.
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Why is there such an unusually large number of recordings from the main places of animation? Marketing! Disney knew that a guided glimpse behind the scenes did not detract from the fascination of the audience, on the contrary, it could even fuel it. In 1939, for example, he had a documentary made about the creation of the Disney cartoons.
From here the exhibition is making great strides. The title-giving sound is illuminated from different perspectives; Not only short cartoon dialogues and Foley Art, i.e. sound art, but also the actual soundtracks characterize the Mickey Mouse empire: songs from Disney classics that make it as music albums far beyond the film and still hang in the ear today. But is that a Disney USP? Does the unmistakable sound of the Disney film exist?
A little contextualization could have deepened the exhibition theme. The comparison with other animated film giants such as Hanna-Barbera, for example, the inventors of Yogi-Bear and the Feuerstein family. Or simply a few voices from contemporary noisemakers and film composers who, like the exhibition visitors, look at Disney's sound factory from today's perspective.
The special exhibition "The Sound of Disney" can be seen until January 10, 2021 at the DFF (German Film Institute & Filmmuseum) in Frankfurt am Main.
"The Sound of Disney" ends with the "Jungle Book" from 1967, and here at the latest it becomes revealing again: How smoothly one of the most successful animated films of all time knew how to adapt to every childhood! How the fine art of synchronization was finally celebrated worldwide - and regional vocabulary was lovingly woven into lines of dialogue and vocal lines. This becomes understandable with the famous lazy song "Try it out with comfort" de Bären Balu, which the musician and dubbing director Heinrich Riethmüller transformed from the US American "The Bare Necessities" for the German family audience.
An original celluloid plate from "The Jungle Book" from 1967
Photo: Disney / DFFThe exhibition organizers have also added two more recent video works to accompany the Disney works. The French artist Pierre Bismuth cuts the various dubbed versions of the "Jungle Book" together into a Babylonian tangle of language, while David Claerbout's "The Pure Necessity" transports the animated jungle dwellers back to their animal existence and thus frees the film from all singing and dancing. The Belgian artist painstakingly drew a one-hour film sequence image by image by hand - and created a new version in which Balu, the panther Baghira and the snake Kaa behave like normal jungle dwellers - which then looks pretty unspectacular in comparison.
Only at these two points do you step out of the hitherto divine unity of image and sound, before finally diving in again with a lively "Schubiduuu" monkey chorale.
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