The Rescuers on Film and Page
“‘It’s rather an unusual case,’ said Madam Chairwoman blandly. ‘The prisoner is a poet. You will all, I know, cast your minds back to the many poets who have written favorably of our our race—Her feet beneath her petticoat, like little mice stole in and out—Suckling, the Englishman—what a charming compliment! Thus do not poets deserve specially well of us?’
‘If he’s a poet, why’s he in jail?’ demanded a suspicious voice.
Madam Chairwoman shrugged velvet shoulders.
‘Perhaps he writes free verse,’ she suggested cunningly.”
—Disney has done a new Blu Ray/DVD release of The Rescuers, based on the eponymous books by Margery Sharp. In July of last year we released the book The Rescuers, illustrated by Garth Williams (celebrated for his illustrations in Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, A Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, and the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder).
The A.V. Club, in its review of the two Disney movies, The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under, goes into detail about the animation—The Rescuers was one of the last Disney movies made with their traditional cel-animation system, three of Walt Disney’s “nine old men” animators retired after it was made, up-and-comers Don Bluth and Glen Keane tested the new xerographic process that let animators transfer colored lines to animated cels—but we just wanted to compare the art. And needless to say the movie and the books are very, very different. Our book has Miss Bianca and Bernard travelling to Norway to save the poet trapped in the Black Castle; Disney’s version has them on the Louisiana Bayou saving an orphan forced to dig for jewels.
