Directors: James Algar, Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney
Release Date: October 5, 1949
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, told and sung by Bing Crosby, quite faithfully retells the story by Washington Irving.
The story tells us about the skinny schoolmaster Ichabod Crane who tries to court Katrina van Tassel, the most beautiful girl in town, while ignoring his rival Brom Bones. At Halloween Bones tells a spooky story about a headless horseman, scaring the schoolmaster to death. And when on the way home he really encounters a headless horseman, he’s never seen again…
The animation of Ichabod Crane and Katrina van Tassel both show how familiar the animators had become with the human figure. Ichabod Crane is an awkward, slender figure, but human, nonetheless. Katrina both has a sexy, graceful charm, as well as stylized moves, which make her a little abstract, like an all too beautiful woman can be in the hearts of men. Certainly, in the next feature, ‘Cinderella‘ (1950) the animators were confident enough to let human characters star a feature for the first time since ‘Pinocchio’ (1940).
This film’s highlight, however, are the wonderful backgrounds, which were lacking in the first story, ‘The Wind in the Willows‘. In ‘The legend of Sleepy Hollow’ the backgrounds are stylized, with striking colors, and most of the times clearly inspired by Mary Blair. The background artists’ art reaches its peak in the stunning scary forest scene, an elaboration on the scary forest in ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937). This climatic scene, in which Ichabod Crane is confronted with the headless horseman, makes effective use of expressionistic coloring, like the best parts in ‘Fantasia’ (1940) and ‘Bambi‘ (1942).
These positive aspects, however, cannot rescue this film, which is rather slow, and totally devoid of sympathetic characters. In the end one has to conclude that this second part of the feature, like the first, is not particularly interesting or memorable.
Watch ‘The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad’ yourself and tell me what you think:
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February 7, 2016 at 18:28
Ross Care
Katrina is a kind of test case for the later Cinderella. The backgrounds are wonderful in this segment. Aside from the charming character design the Toad sequence is a disappointment. But then the original book (Wind in the Willows) is probably impossible to visualize effectively. The studio started to develop it in the early ’40s but gave up.
On the plus side of Ichabod the scene between Ichabod and Brom Bones at Katrina’s door is hilarious and beautifully timed. And the Headless Horseman chase is terrific, one of the great Disney action sequences, especially the spooky buildup as Ichabod rides into the woods. Scared the heck out of me when I was a kid.
The studio was coming out of the slump of the mid-40s with this film (and Melody Time) so I have a soft spot for both of them.