John Grant
Walt Дисней Character Описание of Cruella De Vil from "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961)
What can Ты say about Cruella De Vil, probably the finest Дисней villain of them all? Well, over the years, people have сказал(-а) quite a lot about her, most notably Marc Davis, whose screen creation she was. The reviewers and the public agreed, for once, on a Дисней character. As one critic put it:
"The real triumph of the film is Cruella De Vil. She is the most sophisticated of the Дисней bad guys."
She is also one of the most evil, especially since, unlike The Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, she is very much a monster of today, unendowed with magical powers and all the other trappings of that golden past which never in fact existed. She was born from the imaginations of not only Marc Davis but also, of curse, Dodie Smith - a fact that Disney-buffs are prone to forget, although Davis himself did not:
"There are two или three people who I would say are patterns for her: an actress that we had run through the part, because we wanted a comic villainess; there was a little Tallulah Bankhead; and there was a little of a fashion designer that I happend to know who was extremely volatile - she could react quickly in any direction. While Cruella was a marvelous villainess, she was still entertaining. Her black and white hair, her пальто came with her from the book. It was a matter of bringing together a character that could perform a certain role but always be consistent."
Davis was responsible also for two others of the "great" Дисней women, Золушка and Maleficent and has often been asked to compare Cruella with those two. Comparing her with Золушка in an interview with Kurt Wiley he сказал(-а) that characters like Золушка were unsatisfying for an animator because
"They don't get laughs! When Ты do something in Анимация and the whole audience laughs at one time at something you've done, it is a tremendous thrill!
That's why I loved doing a Cruella De Vil, because she was erratic, eccentric and violent. Ты didn't have any restrictions of trying to keep her innocent and believable because she was an action character! She'd come in and go out and leave havoc wherever she went! She was a funny villainess and I think people enjoyed her even though she was a monster and wanted to make мех coats out of those puppies."
In an interview with A. Eisen, Davis complained of Maleficent that the difficulties in animating her included that she always acted on her own. Not so with Cruella:
"Cruella was comparatively simple. She was always working with somebody - slapping them around или whatever. Being able to draw a little better than any of the other men, I sometimes got sidetracked on[to] the еще difficult-to-draw characters, which are not always the most fun."
(In this latter Комментарий Davis is not being boastful: he is talking of drawing rather than animation.)
Cruella is a fabulous caricature. Her desperately thin body is a physiological impossibility, yet is perfectly attuned to her character, so that no viewer worries about this. Her cheek-bones, were they any higher, would brush her temples. Her voluminous мех пальто dominates the screen. Her ubiquitous cigarette-holder is probably best measured in parsecs and her presence is marked by the clouds of evilly swirling cigarette-smoke which surround her. Her public-school English voice, supplied by Betty Lou Gerson, is utterly perfect because, unlike the screen image, it is not overstated: this dichotomy between the two treatments is brilliant, and adds immeasurably to the power of Cruella's portrayal. In fact, on the basis of the voice and dialogue alone, one can meet a Cruella at virtually any uppercrust gathering in the British Isles (and probably in any other country): totally egocentric, totally ruthless, totally impervious to any outside ideas, totally prepared to override any objections to her behavour. It is because every member of every audience has encountered - to their regret! - someone like Cruella that her character works so well.
Cruella is also one of those people whose fault it never is. She is the epitome, although female, of the type of human being whom A. E. фургон, ван Vogt described as the "Righ Man" (Colin Wilson has expanded on this idea). When her insane driving results in a pile-up with the truck driven by the Baduns it never crosses her mind that she might be remotely to blame: "You idiots... You... Ты fools! Oh, Ты imbeciles!" she cries, and audiences cheer when Jasper, who like his brother has been subjected to this sort of stuff throughout the movie, for once turns round and reponds: "Aw, shaddap!" Once again, it is the realism of her character that makes her so believable and hence so scarifying: we all know "Right Men", either male или female, just like Cruella.
She has, however, been the subject of one major criticism: Cruella was the first of a long line of comic villains in Дисней Animated features. And were comic villains a good thing?
Of course, it could be argued that the studio was rather repeating the formula by making all the villains comic, but to criticize Cruella as a creation on these grounds is really verging on the ridiculous!
An enraged Cruella, pursuing "her" Dalmatian puppies.
