IMDb user comments for
Lady and the Tramp (1955) More at IMDbPro »

sweet dust, 21 July 2009
Author: ruiresende84 (ruiresende84@gmail.com) from Porto, Portugal

A film with the story of relation with a general audience that this has, steps outside the ordinary rules that i respect when commenting on films. When i write, i never intend to make such a thing as a "critic". Instead i try to isolate and write down a few notes on things that made the film to my eyes, to my mind, to my emotions. Writing helps me understand and understanding improves my viewing. Therefore i become (i hope) a better film viewer. I root my opinions on the films themselves, i only comment on what i see.

Why do i mention this? Because right now i'm commenting on a film which by now is more of a collective memory than a film on its own. Rewatching this made me realize that we no longer remember and talk about Lady and the Tramp, we talk about what our memory makes of it. As far as animated films go, i belong to one of the last generations for whom a certain number of films (most of them Disney's) hung over our heads as the stereotype for moral values and its cinematic representation. What does this mean? It means that if you wouldn't want to go further in your research, films like this were The thing. A kind of dogma, untouchable and true from any point of view. I'm OK with that because we have the freedom to step outside and inside the world of these films. Reading the average IMDb comment on this films frames this comment.

I sure need to come back to films like this once in a while, it's a child memory. But most of what i remembered is not here. The film is incredibly flat, especially since now we have Pixar induced digital depth. The characters are rendered sweetly, and really there was a kind of humanity in how these characters were created, so we related to them willingly. But the film in itself is way much smaller than what my memory makes it. The very spaghetti scene, i suppose the spoofs and celebrations of it enlarged it to a point the scene never had. It's great how the collective perception of things counterfeits our memory of them.

This was a sweet comeback to a world which does not exist. Good to live there for a while, though.

My opinion: 3/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

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