“Any resemblance to a regular motion picture is purely coincidental.” – Epigraph to The Reluctant Dragon
Fascinating omnibus film made at the height of Walt Disney’s boldness as a movie mogul. It’s an artifact from a time when a producer with the right amount of clout and vision at the same time could simply decide to make something original and imaginative because he wanted to, regardless of risk. Coming off the success of the ultimate dual art film/commercial film Fantasia a year earlier, The Reluctant Dragon is kind of a companion piece in being comprised of vignettes linked by a loose framing story. It has scripted and stages scenes mixed with documentary elements, along with episodes created with different types of illustrative storytelling, (storyboards and finished animation). Playing himself, writer Robert Benchley is introduced trying to figure out how to get Kenneth Grahame’s book The Reluctant Dragon to Mr. Disney in order for him to make it into a film. Why Benchley would have control of these rights is never explained, but it matters little as that’s one of the least implausible things in the film. (Much is made over establishing the idea that the Disney studio apparently has an open-door policy for anyone in the world to stop by and give much-needed movie ideas to Mr. Disney.) Easily getting into the brand-new Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, (which opened in 1940), Benchley ducks his guide and finds himself in one department after another, getting a little demonstration in each of them on how the films are made. Many real Disney animators appear as themselves in these scenes. As if trying to top the famous switch from black-and-white to color in The Wizard of Oz two years earlier, this film includes a similar moment in which Benchley abandons the pristine, monochromatic hallways of the studio and enters one of the animation rooms, where everything suddenly comes alive in vivid color. (Benchley even comments on the brilliance of the color, suddenly noticing that his own undershirt is bright red.) Both the comic and straight acting from everyone is typically cornball, nothing unique in Disney movies for decades to come. One of the most delightful things about the film is seeing a surprising number of previews of forthcoming Disney projects, even some that wouldn’t be complete for over a decade. These include samplings of elements from the planned films Bambi, Peter Pan and The Lady and the Tramp, the latter two of which would be delayed due to World War II. At last, Benchley is presented to Mr. Disney, only to learn that the studio has already made an adaptation of the Grahame story, and is, in fact, about to run it in the screening room at that very moment. Thus, the film climaxes with a complete short film of The Reluctant Dragon. The overall final product is a kaleidoscope of film techniques, black-and-white, color, live-action, animation, that also pulls the curtain back to show how many different types of films are made, and shows off not only a new, state-of-the-art studio but the method of interacting live-action with animation that will be used in subsequent films like The Three Caballeros and Song of the South. Being a mixed bag, The Reluctant Dragon is not usually listed among Disney’s greatest films of the 1940s, but I think its bold, experimental quality makes it more than worthwhile and one of the studio’s greatest achievements in this period.
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