{"id":16782,"date":"2014-10-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1610"},"modified":"2014-10-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T00:00:00","slug":"making-it-look-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/10\/making-it-look-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Making It Look Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

I watched Disney\u2019s Old Yeller<\/em> (1957) with my youngest daughter the other night, and was left marveling at the effortlessness of it all.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s nearly 50 years old, it doesn\u2019t seem dated, partly because it\u2019s a frontier movie whose setting was long outdated even when it was made.\u00a0The film is full of sentiment, but not a whiff of sentimentality. There are humorous touches \u2013 especially with the nearly-naked, always-muddy, youngest son, Arliss \u2013 and the humor is genuinely funny, and of course not smarmy; the humor appeals to children without being infantile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thematically, the film is about manhood. In his father\u2019s absence, the older brother, Travis, has to take over the manly duties of running the farm, making decisions, fixing what gets broken, controlling his little brother without getting into rock fights with him. The greatest test of manhood is finally to destroy the dog he has come to love, the dog who saved the lives of both boys. There\u2019s a little preaching moment at the end, as the father (Fess Parker) haltingly tries to sum up the lessons Travis\u2019s learned. But it\u2019s subtly handled, and the preaching doesn\u2019t turn preachy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Technically, the film is no great shakes. A still camera, no tricky Hitchcockian angles, a modestly made film. The frontier backgrounds often look fake. The acting is uniformly good, anchored by Fess Parker, who is barely on screen but whose all-American Gregory Peckishness is nearly enough by itself to make the movie watchable.\u00a0It gets a boost because it\u2019s based on a pre-existing book, a well-loved story before it came to the screen, with rounded characters who have a literary existence beyond film. But the story isn\u2019t complicated; it\u2019s almost simple enough to he a fable.<\/p>\n

However it works, he combination of simple, understated elements makes for a classic, and 1950s Disney makes it look easy. It\u2019s not easy, as the continuous flow of silly films shows. Disney<\/em> films aren\u2019t always this good. Simple as it is, Old Yeller<\/em> is worth some serious watching, for filmmakers who want to re-learn the art of making moving, entertaining, and, dare I say, edifying films for kids.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched Disney\u2019s Old Yeller (1957) with my youngest daughter the other night, and was left marveling at the effortlessness of it all. Though it\u2019s nearly 50 years old, it doesn\u2019t seem dated, partly because it\u2019s a frontier movie whose setting was long outdated even when it was made.\u00a0The film is full of sentiment, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,251],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nMaking It Look Easy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I watched Disney’s Old Yeller (1957) with my youngest daughter the other night, and was left marveling at the effortlessness of it all.Though\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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