"And they call it bella notte ..."
Hello everyone!
As you can see, I've moved away from Bollywood yet again (though you can always count on the fact I'll get back to it at some point, my list of movies that I still haven't watched is long, but distinguished haha). This time though, I've gone in the opposite direction and right into the golden era of animation.
Aka, the Walt Disney one.
Say what you want about the man - and opinions are certainly divided - but his company knew how to make movies back in the day.
They didn't even need to be all that complicated either, as we're about to witness.
All you really needed was a couple of protagonists, a very realistic situation, and boom you had a story.
Even if the main characters were dogs - or possibly BECAUSE of that.
We're heading back to the 1950s in Lady and the Tramp.
Our story begins on Christmas eve, when Jim Dear presents Darling (these names are honestly nicknames, of course; it's what our FMC hears all the time and doesn't question the fact that they aren't real, given names) with a lovely gift: a little Cocker Spaniel puppy.
They name her Lady, and she soon becomes the apple of their eye, joining in on daily routines and generally just living her best life. Time jumps to when she turns around six months old and gets her license and first collar, marking her as officially owned.
In that same breath, we also meet Tramp, a dog with NO home and NO owners (also no collar, of course), who lives wherever he pleases, eats wherever he pleases, and generally speaking does what he wants.
He also introduces us to the dog catcher, who puts up a sign that reads all dogs in the city MUST have licenses, otherwise they'll be caught and taken to the pound.
Of course the movie frames this as an incredibly bad thing, but if you think about it, it's actually really not. The city council just didn't want stray canines running around, because no matter how much you might love dogs, they can be unpredictable and some of them, not by their own fault but because of circumstances, aren't safe.
Anyway, things seem to be going well enough until Darling becomes pregnant, at which point our Lady's owners show that they're actually rather bad pet owners, because they completely forget she exists outside of keeping her fed and a roof over her head, as they're so up in the clouds about the pregnancy.
Now don't get me wrong - that's definitely something to celebrate. But the poor dog does NOT understand what's happening, and they do nothing to alleviate her worries!
She learns about babies and stuff from her neighbours Jock and Trusty, and of course Tramp wanders in at around the same time, offering an alternate perspective, in that babies replace dogs in an owner's heart.
This is partly true for Lady, although once the boy's born, Jim Dear and Darling do remember they in fact have a dog again. Which is when the story swerves: they're off on a trip, probably when the kid's old enough to be left for a bit, and Aunt Sarah arrives to take care of him. She also brings her two Siamese cats, and all hell breaks loose.
The cats are basically causing chaos, Lady's trying to prevent it, but Sarah being a cat person and staunchly misunderstanding dogs, takes her to town and fits a muzzle on her. Distressed, Lady runs away and gets rescued by Tramp, who helps her get the thing off (the beaver scene in the zoo is one of my favourites LOL).
They then proceed to have a lovely evening date, sort of thing, where he shows her the town, takes her to Tony's for the best spaghetti, and tempts her with the big wide world outside the city they live in.
But Lady's loyal, if nothing else, and worried about the baby, so he agrees to take her home. Then, he proceeds to tempt her into a game of chasing chickens, they get sighted by the dog catcher, and poor Lady isn't fast enough to escape him, so she's nabbed and put into the pound.
There, she meets some of Tramp's cohorts, who explain a little bit more about him and lift the starry eyed veil from her, because apparently, Tramp's a scoundrel who loves 'em and leaves 'em, which breaks her heart. Her license ensures Sarah comes to get her, and she's then exiled to the dog house outside, on a chain.
Jock and Trusty try to solve her problem by offering marriage when Tramp comes by, in his usual devil-may-care way. It's obvious he doesn't really see her trip to the pound as problematic, seeing as he's evaded it for so long, and Lady throws the names of all the other dogs he's seduced before, wordlessly explaining that it isn't their misadventure she's all that upset about, but that instead.
She sends him packing; but when a rat, which she'd chased away once before in the movie sneaks into the house and she can't get to it, her frantic barking brings him back.
Lady explains the predicament, and Tramp goes in; he makes a mess out of the nursery trying to get the rat away from the baby, and Lady joins him after finally ripping herself free. Sarah, of course, thinks the DOGS were trying to attack the baby, so she has Tramp taken away to the pound and locks Lady up.
It's at this point that Jim and Darling return, initially frantic about the baby, but then confused because, Lady would NEVER? Jim releases her, and while Sarah screeches to watch out, the dog's loose! Jim's like, shut up old stupid, she's trying to tell us something. Lady leads him to the dead rat, and they all hurry after the dog catcher.
Jock and Trusty, meanwhile, who've heard the entire thing, are way ahead of them. Trusty, a bloodhound of a venerable lineage, insists they can catch the scent and figure it out. As a focal point of the movie is that he's supposedly lost said sense of smell, it's a minor miracle when he DOES figure it out, and starts howling like a banshee.
I swear, if you were a fugitive, and you heard THAT? Yeah, game over.
They catch up to the coach, upset the horses, and manage to stop it just before Lady and her family arrive. Tramp's saved - but Trusty got caught under the coach and is insensible.
Christmas rolls around again, and now Tramp has a collar and license of his own, he and Lady have a littler of pups, and Trusty walked away from the scene with only a wounded paw, so all's well that ends well!
And man, but now I realize where we get our obsession with the bad boy from the other side of the tracks and the refined, well-off girl.
Lady and the Tramp is the OG story that set the wheels in motion! It's such a lovely tale, too, and even though you initially think that the dog catcher's the villain, it actually turns out to be someone else entirely: Aunt Sarah, the family relation, and the rat who keeps trying to do bad things.
It just goes to show how well Disney used to write its scripts, and I definitely encourage you to watch this.
The 1955 original, that is. Not the CGI remake that I'm not touching with a 10 foot pole.
xx
*images and video not mine
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