SONG OF THE SOUTH (1948)

Much maligned and long suppressed, Walt Disney’s live-action/animated mix of the Joel Chandler Harris Uncle Remus tales is such a joyous celebration of fable & sharp-eared folk wisdom, it’s a shame that the period race elements (Southern Plantation/Reconstruction Era, as seen thru a sentimentalized 1946 white cultural filter) has left the film buried since the mid-‘80s. Or has Stateside, international territories kept it in fitful circulation. (Google around to find it.) Far, far worse examples of racial insensitivity are out there, but a high level of insult & condescension are always in play, the black farm hands all happy-go-lucky types. Still, James Bassett, the first black actor to win an (honorary) Oscar®, has an unusually large and strongly positive role to play for the period (he does some of the animated voices, too). And if his ready chuckle as Uncle Remus now curdles, it’s still an outstanding assumption. (What a surprise to find so much of MARY POPPINS in here: a troubled marriage to be saved; an eccentric outsider who fixes things using teachable moments, magical animation & songs interacting with real world problems; even a sequence built on laughing your way past troubles.) In addition to the story’s landowning whites, Disney was careful to add a ‘white trash’ family to supply both villains and redeeming little girl to pair up with Bobby Driscoll’s poor little rich boy. But what makes the film unmissable are the riotous animation sequences that, like DUMBO/’41, neatly split the difference between lush feature animation and a more vivid ‘cartoony’ look. The ‘Tar Baby’ and ‘Laughing Place’ stories popping right off the screen. The artistic loss of self-censorship considerable.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: The Chandler stories, which he believed brought from Africa by slaves, embellished into a sort of African-American Aesop Fables, are all but unreadable today, phonetically written in an impossibly thick, rich local dialect.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Disney hedged their bets releasing their tie-in set of 78rpm records with a white guy (Johnny Mercer, no less) on the main vocals. Still, a marvelous record collection if you can find it; and with a truly frightening cover picture of Br’er Fox. Yikes! (Bassett is there for some Uncle Remus chuckles and Br’er Fox.)