Making It Look Easy

Making It Look Easy October 31, 2014

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Though it’s nearly 50 years old, it doesn’t seem dated, partly because it’s a frontier movie whose setting was long outdated even when it was made. The film is full of sentiment, but not a whiff of sentimentality. There are humorous touches – especially with the nearly-naked, always-muddy, youngest son, Arliss – and the humor is genuinely funny, and of course not smarmy; the humor appeals to children without being infantile. 

Thematically, the film is about manhood. In his father’s 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’s a little preaching moment at the end, as the father (Fess Parker) haltingly tries to sum up the lessons Travis’s learned. But it’s subtly handled, and the preaching doesn’t turn preachy. 

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. It gets a boost because it’s 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’t complicated; it’s almost simple enough to he a fable.

However it works, he combination of simple, understated elements makes for a classic, and 1950s Disney makes it look easy. It’s not easy, as the continuous flow of silly films shows. Disney films aren’t always this good. Simple as it is, Old Yeller 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.


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