Peter and the Wolf (1946)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

"Peter and the Wolf" is a wonderful Disney animated short. It is one of the segments from "Make Mine Music" (the 8th animated Disney classic). However, I was never really a fan of "Make Mine Music" and I don't remember much from it.But I always loved "Peter and the Wolf" and I'm familiar with it, so I decided to write a review just for that one.It is a perfect Disney classic. Along with "Fantasia", this is a good way to introduce classical music to children, so that they can appreciate this type of music since an early age. Classical music is often an underestimated sort of music, which is unfair.However, "Peter and the Wolf" has the classical music of Sergei Prokofiev. It is a beautiful, soft and very relaxing music to hear.The music is also used here for a peculiar aim: to represent thematically each character by the sound of several musical instruments (violins, flute and others).The characters are adorable: Sasha (a bird), Sonia (a duck), Ivan (a cat) and the brave little boy Peter.Peter is a very brave child because he decides to get out of his house (where he lives with his grandfather) to try to hunt a big bad wolf. But the wolf isn't just big - it is enormous! It is also quite scary, especially on his first appearance when he looks literally to the camera. This wolf is also absolutely amazing and majestic!Once Peter leaves home he makes immediately friends (animal friends): Sasha, Sonia and Ivan. They have a great time together, but when they have to confront the wolf, they're all (except Sasha) in panic and absolutely frightened, especially Ivan.Sasha doesn't show off his fear and confronts the wolf in a brave but at the same time hilarious way: he uses his beak as a defense and then he tries (unsuccessfully) to roll the wolf's lips. That's when the wolf takes the bird into his enormous and amazing mouth and starts to close it... Sasha is almost the wolf's lunch - a scene full of tension and suspense.The beauty of the artwork and sceneries is another quality of this great and timeless classic.This should definitely be on Top 250.

Because crocodiles are always getting the hots for them!!LOL More seriously, few animals have had a facial expression mold an image of how they look more than wolves. Some say their howl gave them their reputation, I think it's their growl, & teeth baring. Traditionally, paintings of wolves showed them growling enough to easily lead to the impression that the snarl is a permanent facial fixture, & that image is reflected in the way they're drawn in animations like PATW. If cartoons of the time were all one had to go by, one could easily believe wolves look like hairy crocodiles w/ bushy tails & long legs who's dental daggers are on 24/7 display. Of coarse, their noses aren't that long, & they don't snarl much more than most any other canine, although their growl is a little more menacing. This was my favorite version of the musical, & my favorite portrayal of the wolf. I remember a stage-play version where the wolf was played by some hot babe who shook her booty to the wolf music. Not that my hormones weren't kicking in yet, but I liked the good & ferocious wolf of the 1946 Disney version, & didn't cotton to the awesome score being adapted to sexual overtones. I think I've noticed some versions of this try to downplay the wolf's music, probably because it was too dark & menacing for such a cute story.Probably thought it a genre conflict. However, Disney probably said "That's not conflict! That's CONTRAST!" Disney-true to its nature, is legendary at blendingsomething that's kid-friendly & something that's dark sided enough toentertain older watchers. They don't say it's for all ages for nothing!Best 10 minute feature Disney ever had. Would love to see the RichLittle version. Heard that he used the voice of Carol Channing as theDuck, Paul Lynd as the cat, & Richard Nixon as the wolf.Scene where folks are dancing in the street over the wolf's capture wouldn't go over well where wolves are being reintroduced however.

A Walt Disney Cartoon.A brave Russian lad, with help from his animal friends, goes hunting the most fearsome beast in the forest.Back in the 1930's the Disney Studios was visited by the Russian composer Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891-1953) who performed on an old piano his new composition of Peter and the Wolf (1936). Walt was immediately charmed and determined to make it eventually into a cartoon.A decade later, the result was a fine little film. Although quite a departure from the original's purely aural medium utilizing the listener's imagination, PETER AND THE WOLF works well as a narrated (by Sterling Holloway) cartoon. The animation is excellent, the characters vivid, the streamlined plot straight to the point. An attempt is still made by the animators to keep true to Prokofiev's design of using this tale as a child's introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. But too much analysis becomes arcane. The cartoon does not supersede the orchestral work. It simply gives it a new interpretation.PETER AND THE WOLF was originally a segment of Disney's compilation feature MAKE MINE MUSIC (1946), but it quickly proved popular enough to act as a standalone short subject.Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work will always pay off.

Prior to seeing this as a kid, I had never seen a wolf , but I was read bed-time stories about them, & seen them anthropomorphized in cartoons.(possible spoilers) While this was a cartoon, the wolf was less anthropomorphized than in other cartoons I'd seen them in so at that impressionable age, I figured that it was a version, albeit cartoon-ised, of what wolves were like as animals.The "hairy crocodile with long legs" image this & other cartoons of the time capitalized on left quite an impression. The ominous music accompanying the wolf, along with visual imagery, such as the wolf tracks in the snow & the way it contrasted in an otherwise cute cartoon was enough to persuade me of what put the "Bad "in "Big Bad."Indeed one watching this mini-classic may find it hard to believe that wolves have any semblance of shyness or docility, though wolves in real life can sometimes be so cautious & docile that it becomes hard to believe they have any semblance of aggressiveness. The fact is that wolves have a wide parameter to their disposition that leaves room for both. Just like their domestic counterparts.Again, this was a cute & funny cartoon, & the surprising result was that the things that made the wolf seem menacing were magnified by the contrast.Wouldn't have been too effective in a serious flick. In the scene where the wolf was chasing the duck, he broke through the ice of a frozen lake. In most cartoons, this would have resulted in the character bobbing up & down in a ice cube. Hee-hee! Funny!.. That sort of thing. Not this dude! He was uneffected & stayed focused on his prey. Not unlike reports of wolves in real life in pursuit of much larger prey. In one, a pair of wolves were pursuing an adult elk who knocked one of them down. That wolf rolled & righted himself renewing his attack without missing a beat. In 5 minutes, the elk was dead. It was riveting to read about & no doubt riveting for the witnesses.The wolf, like the other characters, does do his share of buffoonery elsewhere in the feature-let's the bird make a fool of him. Just the same,Disney's effort to prove the wolf a worthy opponent for Peter were sufficient to put the wolf on my list of favorite aggressive animals. As an adult, I liked the political Incorrectness of the era the film was made in. When the bird made joking comments about Peter's pop-gun being "loaded"(after pulling out the cork to look down the bore!) I reminded myself of how stupid some of the anti-gun hysteria is nowadays. A few years ago, a girl got busted in a high school for doing a playful gun gesture with her finger. I'm tempted to say this flick brings back the good old days when guns were safe & wolves were dangerous...LOL. Hunters in it should go through the Eddy Eagle gun safety course though! Also liked the way Sterling Holloway the narrater spelled wolf in English while it was spelled in Russian.(Bonc)Well, I think I've remembered everything I was going to include. If I've forgotten anything, I guess I could cure my amnesia with another "wolf" on my head.LMBO