Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944)

Saludos Amigos (1942) 

and The Three Caballeros (1944)

Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are two rather unusual entries into the Disney animated canon that are perhaps quite often forgotten today; their origin, however, is an interesting story. On the cusp of the United States’ entry into World War II, Disney were asked by the US Government to go on a goodwill tour around Latin America, in order to strengthen the bond between the two, as several South American countries had ties to Nazi Germany and the US wanted to keep things friendly between them. The result is the aforementioned films, two anthology or “package” films, which combine a number of different shorts, each based on different aspects of Latin American culture. The result is an, at times interesting, but often confused and somewhat tedious affair; as these are not traditional movies, with little narrative, characterisation or direction, it is hard to talk about them in detail, but I’ll try as best as I can to share how I feel.

The animation in both films is serviceable, if nothing special. As said before, the films are made up of a number of different shorts, unsurprisingly, then, the animation style here is more reminiscent of Disney’s previous short cartoons, as opposed to their full-length features. The animation is still good, but it is certainly not on the level of quality of any of the previous Disney movies, like I said, it’s just in the style of their normal cartoons, nothing different or extravagant. One point of interest however, is that several sections ofThe Three Caballeros combine hand drawn animation with live action footage, in one of the earlier experiments with this technique, as far as I know. While this technique has hardly been perfected, yet – it’s still a long way off til Who Framed Roger Rabbit – it still looks good and is quite impressive for the time. While you don’t always think that Donald or the other animated characters are really in these live action locations and you rarely feel that the live action actors are in the animated backgrounds (they hardly blend in at all) there are times when the interaction between the two is quite impressive, such as when Donald is thrown up and down on the beach or is dancing with a woman. Again, there are a lot of flaws in the use of this technique, but it’s charming to see it in its infancy and must have been quite novel at the time.

Well, you know what they say about big bills

Each film has somewhat of a framing device that ties the shorts together, though in neither case is it particularly strong and in Saludos Amigos it is kind of hard to call it a framing device at all, as it is simply just a narrator explaining how the Disney animators came up with the different shorts and then introducing them; still, this is no worse than Deems Taylor’s introductions in Fantasia. The live action footage and narration is actually very interesting, it is fascinating to see the Disney artists and animators in their environment, to see how they drew inspiration from their surroundings, how they formed that into a solid idea for a short and the various different levels of concept art. Funnily enough, their concept art and breathtaking sketches and paintings of the South American landscape are a lot nicer to look at than the animation of the actual shorts. Still, though entertaining, these live action segments feel a little out of place; the way they are presented and narrated makes them feel less like they are part of a feature film and more like news reels, or  behind the scenes footage you might find in the DVD extras. Perhaps if the film had taken a different approach as more of a documentary about Disney’s travels around South America, as well as an examination of how they got their inspiration and interpreted the world around them, it would have been a lot more interesting, but as part of a collection of animated shorts, it doesn’t quite work and makes the two parts of the movie – the framing device and the actual shorts themselves – feel very separate and disjointed. The framing device of The Three Caballeros is a lot more traditional – Donald Duck receives a number of gifts, each of which tell a different story about Latin America; though this fits the format of the movie a lot better, it is hardly a strong narrative and doesn’t really glue the shorts together much better than its predecessor.

The Three Caballeros (And Greg)

The shorts on their own are perfectly fine, but nothing special; as I said before, they are just standard Disney cartoons, nice but nothing more. The exception to this in Saludos Amigos is the final segment, “Aquarela do Brasil”, which shows a paintbrush forming a watercolour painting of Brazil that slowly comes to life; this looks like something out ofFantasia and is animated appropriately – it is bright and colourful, plays with your expectations in terms of shapes and perspective and perfectly matches sound and movement. The segment featuring the titular song from The Three Caballeros is also pretty good, the song itself is nothing special, but the speed and energy of the animation that accompanies it is pretty impressive; it is very energetic and has a lot of ideas and images flying around, but never gets out of the animators’ control. There are some other visually impressive shorts that combine sound and animation, like in the end of Saludos Amigos, but they tend to go on a little too long and get too strange; though the energy of these segments is initially admirable, they ultimately get a little too hyperactive and there is just too much of it, you start to feel exhausted and want things to slow down a little, but the film never does and then it just ends suddenly. This is perhaps best defined by the fact that one short partway through and then most of the end of the film seems to consist solely of Donald Duck chasing hot live action women; while this is a pretty funny concept, it’s also a little strange and gets kind of exhausting by the end. Like, I get it Donald they’re hot, but take it easy man, Daisy’s gonna be pissed; I dunno, it just seemed like a really odd choice to centre a great deal of your movie around. Speaking of Donald, I don’t really know that I care for how he’s used here – it’s Donald alright, I guess, but there’s something a little unrecognisable about him in these movies. He’s a little unlucky and gets mad a couple of times, but I dunno, I don’t think they really give him enough time to be the Donald we know; we get little glimpses of his personality but his scenes don’t get to breathe enough for the film to really tap into the funniest aspects of Donald’s character. The pacing is just too fast and hyperactive, there’s always something going on visually and it never stops or slows down to really let Donald react or be funny, he’s only really there to be a recognisable Disney character, really, his role could have been filled by anyone. Overall, the shorts aren’t bad, they’re just decent and at worst, a little boring.

‘Winston tastes good like a cigarette should gya-huh!’

I really don’t know what else to talk about, to be honest, these are pretty strange and unconventional films in terms of their format and are pretty short – Saludos Amgios isn’t even feature length, clocking in at 42 minutes – and don’t have much to them, so I don’t know what I can say. I think the idea and background behind these films is more interesting than the actual films themselves, the history behind Disney’s South American tour and the footage of their experiences and ideas is very interesting. It’s also cool and also quite informative to see all these different aspects of Latin American culture and actually a little heart warming that Disney managed to bridge the cultural divide a little and introduce some of the beauty and wonder of South America to the US; the South American theme behind the shorts is, for better or worse, a lot more interesting than the shorts themselves. Again, that’s not to say the shorts suck or anything, but I don’t think any of them are really good enough to stand out and even all of them can’t really hold a whole film together. I just don’t think the format worked, we know that Disney can construct a great movie out of a number of shorts, from Fantasia, but lightning didn’t strike again here; I think the different segments would probably work better on their own, as individual cartoons or shorts to be played before a feature film, rather than collected all together with a loose framing device around them. Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are definitely two of the lesser-known Disney movies and, despite some interesting ideas, I can certainly see why – they’re nothing special. 

Other Thoughts

• This is just Woody Woodpecker, come on guys

It’s totally fucking Woody Woodpecker what are we doing

5/10