Song of the South (1946)

ClassyCo

ClassyCo

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SONG OF THE SOUTH is a live-action and animated hybrid musical drama produced by Walt Disney and distributed by RKO in 1946. The film chronicles the tales of Uncle Remus (James Baskett) as he relays his stories to a young boy named Johnny (Bobby Driscoll). Set on a rural plantation in Southern Georgia during the Reconstruction era, the film sparked controversy immediately upon release for its portrayal of black people and for being racist. It has never been officially released on physical media, but there are bootlegs out there everywhere, and the Internet Archive has a cleaned-up version to view.

I've never seen SONG OF THE SOUTH, but I remember my maternal grandmother talking about seeing it when she was young.

What say you?



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Crimson

Crimson

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I tracked the movie down some time ago through "methods"; I said this in the last movie thread:

I practically felt guilty hitting "play" on this one, given its reputation. I would have sworn I saw this movie as a kid, but not a single memory was sparked.

I didn't like the movie at all, but not for any reason I might have suspected. The film's portrayal of race, far from ideal, was also less awful than I expected given that the film is hidden away. Mostly, I just found the movie to be dull treacle. One catchy tune isn't much to build a movie around. This is the fakest of Old Hollywood artifice -- nostalgia for a time that never existed. Everyone in the movie smiled to such excess, I found myself wondering how much their faces must have hurt at the end of filming. Even the animated sequences were more noisy than funny, but then Disney's cartoon shorts of the day were never as good as those made by Warner Brothers or MGM.

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Snarky Oracle!

Snarky Oracle!

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I remember seeing SONG OF THE SOUTH in the theaters (no, not in 1946!!) when my mother took me as a child (she had first seen it in the theaters). I liked it then. But I was a little kid child, so, who knows.

I'm not surprised to learn that it's less racist than its reputation as, as I recall, I think it takes place in Reconstruction, after the war, so Uncle Remus' undiluted glee as a free man probably was just before Jim Crow kicked in.

Y'know, when you're a boy, how you try to rationalize Jim Crow and stuff. The lynchings sure sounded bad.

I remembered lots of smiling, it's true, and my mother (even then!) was responsible enough to explain to me that the movie put a rose-colored tint onto the material. But I hadn't recalled that the movie was boring.

I'd kind of like to see it again before I croak. But it's not at the top of my pre-demisal agenda.

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