The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1974)

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a compilation of three extended-length shorts (one of which won Academy Awards) directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. These shorts were successful in a way that Reitherman's features for Disney (Sword in the Stone; The Aristocats) seldom were, and their compilation is one of the more pleasant Disney achievements of the post-Walt era.

Unlike the character design in Alice in Wonderland, the designs in Pooh are very close to A.A. Milne's original illustrations. Much of the dialogue is faithful to the original as well. Disney also resists the temptation to toss in truly extraneous supporting characters and songs which stop the story dead in its tracks. Even the voices seem appropriate for the precious British nursery mood of Milne's One Hundred Acre Woods.

The Disney version reinforces the notion that Pooh, Piglet, and the other characters exist solely in a storybook by having a narrator read the story and occassionally turn the page. This is an old trick that has appeared in animated feature films since at least Gulliver's Travels, but this time around, the technique is taken further. At times, the text of the page is visible while the characters move around in their illustrations on the same page. (Perhaps this is a reference to Disney's professed goal in making his animated films the visual equivalent of 19th century storybook illustration?) At other times, the typeface flies around the characters, or the book in turned on its side and the characters spill down the margins. This harkens back to the Out of the Inkwell cartoons of the 1920s.

This film is highly recommended as children's entertainment. Pooh and friends are known well enough not to require further elaboration here. The true marvel of the compilation is not that it works so well, but that the adaptation from A.A. Milne's stories is so seamless and appears so effortless.

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