CURRENT FILMS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 78, 12 January 1949, Page 5

CURRENT FILMS

ST. JAMES THEATRE Co-ordinating a story enacted by human characters with parallel sequences by animated art characters, Walt Disney’s “Song of the South” opened to-day at the St. James Theatre. Once, at least, in many a youngster’s growing years, he has,the impulse—and sometimes the courage—to run away from home. He ffeels abused, misunderstood, unloved, or resents some great “injustice” heaped upon him by an adult and dictatorial world. It is here that Uncle Remus, Joel Chandler Harris’s celebrated taleteller, begins to dominate the plot, pointing a moral with his stories to lift the downcast hearts of a little boy and a little girl, and their little Negro friend.

The hoy of the story (Bobby Driscoll) feels neglected and outside the affection of his parents (Ruth Warrick and Eric Rolf). They are troubled when the husband, an Atlanta newspaper editor, politically affronts certain powerful interests, and the pair’s social life suffers in consequence. The boy is left with his mother at the grandmother’s plantation, while the father returns to the city to fight for his professional life. The lad is bewildered by all this emotional disturbance. He starts to run away. Uncle Remus (James Baslcett) halts him and composes his mind and heart with amusing but also appropriate fables wherein the talking animals face similar problems. With the aid of a little neighbour girl (Luana Patten) who brings tlie boy comradeship and esteem, Uncle Remus sets his feet toward home again. The family reunion comes after the lad has been attacked by a bull and lies near death. The youngster’s salvage from danger and fear and rebellion is the substance of the comedy-drama into which the pictorial fables are blended.