“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”
Yes, I really am doing this. All
these horrors and I go and blog
Mary Poppins. What can I say? It amuses me. I won’t pretend this sort of thing
is usually my cup of tea, but I actually rather enjoyed it. In fact, I’m full
of regrets about waiting until the age of almost thirty-six to see it. This is
the perfect film for children, with everything about it firing the imagination
of the child within us all. It’s forever deriving fantasy from the mundane and
ordinary. A simple bag becomes a magical repository of all things. You can jump
into pictures and become a cartoon. Plus there are songs and that.
Julie Andrews is captivating as our
heroine, and her voice is extraordinary.
The one thing everyone knows about
this film is that
Dick Van Dyke’s “cockney”
accent is said to be awful by all. In fact, it is far more jaw-droppingly atrocious
than I would have had the power to imagine. I would be very much surprised if
this were not the worst accent in the history of cinema. Having said all that,
I worry that I may have underestimated just how bad it is! It’s a pity. Van
Dyke is actually pretty good when it comes to the actual acting, giving us a
likeable and charismatic Bert, but you’re far too busy laughing at the accent
to take any notice of what he’s doing.
This is very much a tourist
friendly version of London and, for that matter, a version of 1910 which has
been sanitised for the children of the 1960’s. Knowing that this is a
Disney film I was looking for
reactionary sentiments throughout, which was an interesting exercise. One of our
first songs appears to mock the
Suffragette
movement, and the character of Bert portrays the hard life of Edwardian poverty
as not only bearable but positively fun. This may appear to show conservative
attitudes to both gender and class issues, but, these are interestingly
subverted at the end, where Mr Banks’ patriarchal authority is undermined by
both of these things.
The whole look of the film is a
bit of a jolt after so many more modern films in a row. The tanned faces, the
technicolour picture quality and the matte painting backgrounds give the film a
retro charm that contemporary audiences would have never seen.
Mary Poppins herself is a force of nature. Yes, we see this in her
interaction with the children, but the best moments for the character are those
in which she wraps Mr Banks right round her finger. She is, essentially, the
perfect Edwardian woman- unflappable, infinitely capable, sexless, and
maintaining the very stiffest of upper lips in the silliest and most surreal of
circumstances. This, of course, is what makes her so damned charismatic.
Some of the social attitudes are
fascinating. It’s only 1964, but the film shows a strangely modern hostility to
fox hunting. I never knew, though, that apparently foxes can be Irish! I raised
an eyebrow, given the bastardry of banks in recent years, at their negative
portrayal in this film. A run on a bank is a rather more alarming thing to see
nowadays than it would have been at the time.
This film is quite, quite mad. We have
an Admiral who keeps his house like a ship and shoots at chimney sweeps. We
have a carousel where one can ride the horses away. We have animated fireworks
that look like something out of
Yellow Submarine. We even have an Englishman who pronounces “niche” as “nitch”.
Grrrrr! The ending is simultaneously reinforcing of the patriarchal family
structure and subversive of it, a nice touch.
Mary Poppins buggers off as the wind changes: this apparently
orderly and conservative figure is, underneath, capricious and chaotic, and
brings whimsy to all she touches. I never thought I’d say this, but I love this
film.
