Dumbo
Edward Brophy, Herman Bing, Margaret Wright
Director: Ben Sharpsteen
We've all heard about flying pigs, but what about flying elephants? In Walt Disney's Dumbo, Timothy Q. Mouse - a meagre, erm, mouse - helps his outsized friend achieve this exact feat.
When Jumbo Junior is mocked (and dubbed Dumbo) by the adult circus elephants for his extraordinarily large ears, the mouse befriends him, parodying the 'elephants are afraid of mice' paradigm. After Dumbo's mother is locked up (deemed mad after losing her temper when circus visitors ridicule Dumbo), he is alone. Timothy takes pity on him. He chatters away, encouraging Dumbo to find a talent. Here, we also find the idiom 'quiet as a mouse' inverted: beside him, we have Dumbo by name, dumb by nature (he is the only title character of a Disney film who does not speak).
But he certainly makes an impression. As one song goes: 'Technicolor pachyderms [are] really too much for me', referring to the pink, hallucinatory elephants that appear when the elephant-mouse duo accidentally gets drunk.
At the time Technicolor was special, and, as one of Disney's earliest colour features, Dumbo's original audience didn't think it was 'too much'. Dumbo became the hit Disney needed after the financial failures of Pinocchio and Fantasia. But back to that drunken incident: through misadventure, comes adventure when Dumbo and Timothy find themselves up a tree. Realising the wingspan of Dumbo's ears, the mouse reaches a conclusion: Dumbo flew up the tree. Dumbo has discovered his special talent, and the tale turns from woe to wonder, as the mouse helps him hone his flying abilities, playing on his confidence by persuading him that he can fly if he holds a 'magic' feather.
So, Dumbo becomes the star of the show, with Timothy as his manager. Mrs Jumbo is released and travels with Dumbo in a private carriage on the circus train.