Favorite moments of cinema: Dumbo

Dumbo is the historical outline of a surreal and rugged Disney, witness of an era of an experimental study that played with highly complex symbolisms in line with a violent time, of war and survival of art. So much in this revolutionary legend, that its myth and taste for a more adult audience is clearly due to the influence of hallucinogens during its conception in Mickey's quarters and Dalí's artistic inclusion in what is the darkest sequence in Disney history (The Elephant Dance). However, the film conceptualized by a number of non-accredited artists is a story of great exposure and cinematographic values, skillful and above all, of strong and constant emotional content during its 60 minutes long.

With a high social content embedded with analogies and metaphors to racism, the labor system, alcoholism, matriarchal loss and finally disability, the revolutionary animated Disney jewel has been responsible for traumatizing and falling in love with 4 generations since its premiere in 1941.

The appearances of the elephants may be the most obvious reflection of the dark (and fun) work inside the Disney barracks back in the 30's and 40's, such as the fact that Salvador Dalí designed the original sketches for this surreal sequence that invited children to not abuse liquor in a very peculiar way (Yes, as if alcohol was a conscious priority at that age); Likewise, the myth tells the sequence was directed by Al Schenk, a German refugee who worked for the studies and who particularly enjoyed the company of Zapotec Indians on the border between Mexico and the United States, with whom he shared a taste for peyote, one of the most powerful natural hallucinogens on the planet of which it’s reported as a corridor rumor, it was also provided to the study workers by the same anti-Nazi management assistant. The myth could easily be confirmed as reality by witnessing this:

Deformed pachydermic figures marching and singing a rugged chant; Cut to sphinxes and a bizarre appearance of a camel with fused elephant to immediately give way to a macabre dance between a couple adorned with a strong dose of visually violent flashes to finally close with the transformation into vehicles to communicate the vertigo and survival instinct needed to be able to bear and cope with that moment.

Before conceptualizing the surreal parade, Dumbo was also the most honest platform to print all the trauma and atonement of its same creator, Walt Disney, concerning the loss of his mother 3 years earlier, in a home accident by the boiler some historians say, Walt felt guilty for ignoring the house he bought to his parents after the success of Snow White. This fundamental sequence literally enlarges and tears the heart thanks not only to its exceptional melody, but to the direction and assembly of its scenes that show nothing more than the love and love of a mother (and temporary loss of this) in the most volatile stage of the protagonist, still as a baby. Something that Burton could not achieve with all the visual and narrative tools possible, the 1941 animation denotes the mastery of those animators and directors by perfectly combining the melodic tones and changes of Baby Mine with the scenes of the animals and their mothers, having as a climax the legendary plane in the Dumbo rocks in his mother's trunk. Beautiful!

Dumbo undoubtedly prostrates itself in Disney's history as his most surreal, truculent, beautiful and morbid exercise in an era where studies sought to experiment with other artistic currents, move sensitive fibers and reach all markets before World War II! They did it! A film delicacy to grind the brain of any child or adult.