Having seen Disney's Frozen three times in the week and a half that it has been out in theaters, I am very clearly obsessed. But instead of raving over how many boundaries it broke in the Disney sphere, I'm focusing this post on the short that proceeds: Get a Horse! As I mentioned in my last post, although Frozen is the first Disney film directed by a women, Jennifer Lee is one of two directors. The second director is a man. However, Lauren MacMullan of Get a Horse! is the first woman to single handedly direct a Disney production. Now let's be honest, Disney short films have a strong reputation of being wonderful. And in my opinion, MacMullan held her own.
My favorite part of Get a Horse! is that it reminded me a lot of one of my favorite movies, The Purple Rose of Cairo. In the Woody Allen romantic comedy set in the 30s, Jeff Daniels plays a movie character that walks out of the screen and into the real world. Similar to this concept, Micky Mouse breaks through the movie screen in Get a Horse! and plays between the two worlds.
Both pieces of work use color to differentiate between the worlds. I remember loving the idea of a character from a black and white film emerging into the colorful real world when I first saw the movie. Get a Horse! also did a great job contrasting the black and white screen with the colorful real world as a means to tell the story. MacMullan took it even further though when Mickey breaks through the screen and into the real world. He actually breaks the screen, ripping a hole in it. And through that hole, we can see the world inside the screen in color. I thought the idea was a very clever add on to the use of color in The Purple Rose of Cairo.
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