Title: The Golden Touch
Studio: Disney
Date: 03/22/35
Credits:
Series: Silly Symphonies
Running time (of viewed version): 10:02
Commercial DVD Availability: SS 1 d1
Synopsis: What good is money if there is no food? No good at all. The same can not be said of the lack of cats.
Comments: Billions of gold coins in 1935. Hairy knobby man fingers, pre-saging the disgusting power. The cat with the ruff is as close as the cartoon comes to a standard style Disney character. The king and elf are not what I think of as Disney like. Pretty paltry mustache the king has. I think this story has fallen out of favor because it does not really mesh with type A executive ideas about wealth. Which is to say: "sacrifice everything for money, even if it slits your own throat" is now the watchword (which it has been in the past as well, otherwise the story would not have survived).
According to Wikipedia Walt himself directed this cartoon. He considered it a disappointment and forbade anyone from talking about it. I don't think it's bad at all. Not great either. The 10 minute run time seems pretty long for a cartoon short. Was this typical for the Silly Symphonies?
ReplyDelete9:19 and 8:36 on the two previous SSs, so somewhat longer than its immediate predecessors.
ReplyDeleteSupposedly this was also a test by Disney on his helming the studio's initial feature film, and its failure convinced him not to be the hands-on director of "Snow White". The cartoon does have a bit of a Burt Gillette/Van Buren 'look' to the character designs.
ReplyDeleteAndymatic, it seems reports of this cartoon's pariah status are modern-day exaggerations. Storybook retellings and other tie-ins appeared at the time of its release, and—tellingly—went on for several years, with new merchandise appearing even after SNOW WHITE.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Walt wasn't happy with the finished film, but it wasn't exactly the flop many have claimed.
Yeah I had a hard time envisioning any Disney cartoon being a flop during this period. My first impression watching this was it looked like a Van Beuren cartoon but played like an Ub Iwerks Comic Color.
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