Song Of The South (1946)
If you live in the United States, then you have never seen this first live-action (with animated sequences) movie from the Walt Disney Company outside of a few theatrical releases. That's because they've apparently taken it upon themselves to protect our sensitivities by refusing to release a home video version of this movie. That's certainly their right since this is their movie and they can do what they want to with it, but I find it interesting that the movie has been available on home video in places like Europe and Japan and is still shown on television in Australia. I guess Disney just doesn't care about the sensitivities of foreigners which is at least reassuring in its own way.
Knowing that Disney didn't want me to see it (at least until I moved to Germany or Canberra ), I immediately tracked a copy of this movie down to give it the once over and make double-sure that it was much too inflammatory for the rest of you to see. I have to say that what I saw outraged me! What with the catchy tunes, the object lessons, and friendship that stretched across class and racial lines, I was ready to burn my trailer down!
Johnny is the little Nancy-boy of John and Sally. For reasons that remained fuzzy, Suzy and Johnny were being dropped off at Suzy's mom's plantation and John was going back to Atlanta without them. This proved to be a bit traumatic for the wussy boy because he starts bawling and begins plotting his grand escape. Johnny takes off down the dirt road and wanders by a group of folks that are singing about Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit. He's momentarily entranced by the singing, but moves on down the road and sees Uncle Remus himself ("hisself" in the movie) telling stories about the various Brer animals that inhabit these parts. I read somewhere that the word "Brer" is slang for "brother" or something, making all these animals sound like they're part of some big woodsy fraternity.
Uncle Remus sees Johnny hiding behind the trees and tells the people who come looking for him to just tell his mother that Johnny is with him. He talks to Johnny after they leave and Johnny tells him that he's running away. Uncle Remus offers to go with him, but gets him to delay his trip until the morning since it is so late. While Remus is stalling him, he busts out his first Brer Rabbit story. He tends to let loose these tales whenever little Johnny needs to be taught a lesson about life and such. I guess that's better than putting his cigarette out on his head or something like my step dad used to do.
The first story just happens to be about when Brer Rabbit tried to run away from his swanky little pad in the briar patch. It ended up with him trapped by Brer Fox, and it was only through a bit of tomfoolery lifted straight out of Tom Sawyer and his whitewashing gag that Brer Rabbit was able to escape, piss off Brer Fox, and make Brer Bear look like a boob. Somehow the point of that story was that you can't run away from your problems. I personally didn't get it, but little Johnny did, so he decided to stay put at the plantation.
With Crisis #1 passed, it was time for Crisis #2. This involves Johnny getting a cute little puppy from the white trash that live just down the road from Tara. There's two older boys that are threatening to drown the doggie because it's the runt and they have a little sister (Ginny) that saves the dog by giving it to Johnny. Since Johnny has a mom whose own husband would rather live in Atlanta without her, she says that they ain't having no white trash dog named Teenchy or whatever and that he needs to get rid of it. Johnny naturally gets rid of it right to Uncle Remus.
These two little hilljacks want their dog back and start bothering Johnny for it. It doesn't help Johnny that before he got the dog, he showed up around those parts wearing a fancy lad's velvet outfit complete with lace collar! God, mom! Why don't you just tape a sign on his forehead reading "Sissy - Please beat the piss out of me!"
What's Johnny to do about the dog and the local bullies who want him back? I seem to recall a time when Brer Rabbit was in just such a fix. Rabbit had once again gotten caught by Brer Fox and Brer Bear. Fox was determined to cook the little devil and finally be done with him. Brer Rabbit though pulled the old "that's okay if you cook me, but whatever you do, don't throw me in the briar patch!" Well, whoever came up with the whole "sly as a fox" cliche never met Brer Fox, because he spends most of his days getting tricked by a Brer Rabbit scheme that would never have worked on a second grader. Somehow or other, Johnny uses this story to outwit the mouth breathing brothers who are after Teenchy.
These two young punks figure out that they were played like a moonshine jug and go tattle to Johnny's mom. She finds out that Remus was harboring this dog and tells him not to tell any more stories to Johnny. When this happened I went straight to my clip board and checked the box marked "main character put on suspension at some point." That's bonus points for any movie.
With Uncle Remus on suspension, the drama ratchets up, because it is now Johnny's birthday party and it promises to be a real gala. Johnny gets his mom to invite Ginny, in spite of her inferior breeding. (This movie gets a bad rap for being racially insensitive when it's really the low class white family that look like dopes.)
Ginny's mom makes her a new dress and Johnny comes over to get her. Her brothers follow and push her in the mud causing her to get dirty and cry and causing Johnny to become the Incredible Hulk in a red velvet suit!
Before Johnny gets clubbed with a big stick, Uncle Remus steps in to save the day. Despite his suspension, another Brer Rabbit story is told involving the Laughing Place. After this story, Johnny's mom shows up and Ginny narcs them out about the all-new Brer Rabbit story they just heard. Remus gets himself suspended again and this time he knows to get while the getting's good because he packs up his crap and gets ready to leave the plantation. The movie then becomes Brer Awesome once Johnny gets his ass planted by a crabby bull and Johnny almost visits that big Laughing Place in the sky!
The movie presents a homey, magical version of the old South that surely never existed and the sets look like something you'd see at a Disney theme park, but the relationship between Johnny and Uncle Remus felt genuine. The animated sequences are vintage Disney and it's fun to see Uncle Remus interact with the animated animals as he tells the stories of Brer Rabbit. The combination of live-action and animation that Disney would return to periodically in the years to come is very well done and one wishes that Disney would give this the DVD release it deserves so we could see it with a pristine print.
The story in this movie may be little more than an excuse to bring the Brer Rabbit stories to life, but it does a good job of trying to capture that too-fleeting moment in our life when stories like that could come alive for us. Once you separate the film from the alleged controversy swirling around it, you have an above-average Disney classic that should keep Disney fans and their kids enthralled to the end and humming that Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah song incessantly. I would have to say that this movie was pretty satisfactorial.