Dombey and Sons, by Charles Dickens

Illustration By Phiz

This triple decker novel isn’t a commitment, it’s an immersion.  And as such, you could not spend your time better than living for some 800 pages in the world of Dombey and Son (1848).

This was Charles Dickens’ seventh novel.  It was illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne, 1815-1882), and was the first with his new publishers, Bradbury and Evans.  At first, Dickens was anxious about the abilities of his new publishers to effectively sell his novel; he shouldn’t have been.  Dombey and Son was first released in serial format, and sold 40,000 copies a month, while Vanity Fair, by William Thackeray (1811-1863) released at the same time, sold only 5,000 a month.  Literary history has been kinder to Vanity Fair than Dombey, but that is a shame as Dombey is the exponentially better novel.

Up until Dombey, Dickens’ novels were largely picaresque affairs.  His books The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby or his earlier The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, for example, were largely interconnected episodes, strung together by the thread of a central character.  With Dombey Dickens wrote his first well-made novel, with characters introduced in the earliest chapters that move the action throughout in a clear, linear narrative. 

The story is a simple one: Mr. Paul Dombey heads the firm Dombey and Son.  His wife dies after giving birth to his son and heir, Paul, Jr.  Dombey also has a daughter, Florence, to whom he pays no attention whatsoever.  The children are sent away to school, where young Master Paul grows more and more attached to his sister.  When young Paul dies, Mr. Dombey retreats into his grief, having no room whatsoever in his heart for young Florence.

In time, Dombey marries again, to a proud young woman named Edith Granger.  She is, essentially, sold into marriage by her grasping, social climbing mother.  The marriage is a disaster.  Edith – haughty and proud as Dombey himself – openly despises her new husband, and he does everything he can to break her will.  Caught in the middle is young Florence, whom Edith grows to love.  Dombey uses Florence as a tool with which to beat Edith down – threatening the welfare of his own daughter if his wife shows her affection.

At length, Edith runs away with Dombey’s business manager, the vile Mr. Carker.  But she does this only to hurt Dombey and destroy Carker – and as a gambit, it works.  But the cost is high.

At the same time, Dombey throws Florence out of her own home.  With no place to go, she returns to her friend Capt. Cuttle, who is waiting for word of his shipwrecked nephew, Walter Gay, and his friend, Sol Gills.

The conclusion of the novel is a surprise on many levels, and an enthralling read.

Dombey and Son is also, in many ways, Dickens’ most transgressive novel.  He really only has two effective female protagonists in his oeuvre, Esther Summerson in Bleak House, and Florence, here in Dombey and Son, and I’m not sure that Florence is not the most compelling.  A lonely and neglected child, she seeks affection in the most unlikely places, and her growth into womanhood is drawn effectively.  It is a psychologically sound portrait.

But even better still is Edith Granger, Dickens’ masterstroke in the novel.  She is in incredibly powerful woman, who does not steer from her convictions (or hatreds) even when doing so would certainly make her situation easier.  Edith takes life on her terms, or not at all.  Wonderfully realized is her destruction of Carker, the novel’s villain, though it effectively ruins her life and her reputation.

Even more interesting is Dickens’ use of humor and grotesque characters.  Dickens clearly did not believe that life was either a tragedy or a comedy, and he populates his novels (even the bleaker ones) with vivid comedic characters.  There are many in this novel, including Edith’s mother, “Cleopatra” Skewton, a middle-aged woman who dresses like a young girl, Major Bagstock (a Col. Blimp character), and his two most memorable, Capt. Cuttle and Mr. Toots.

To call Capt. Cuttle a cartoon is, perhaps, to do a disservice to cartoons – the good Capt. would give Popeye the Sailor a run for his money in the absence-of-reality department.  However, Dickens, in his genius, understood that heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and it often his most comedic characters who are the most heroic.  Cuttle is the heart and soul of the novel, he gives it warmth, zest and vitality.  In addition, it is he who saves the day on countless occasions – not bad for a hook-handed old salt who speaks only in nautical phrases.

Mr. Toots, a boyhood friend of young Paul, is a comic figure as well – a halfwit who cannot sit still.  But it is Toots, too, who comes to the rescue quite often.  He loses Florence to the blandly heroic Walter (who barely makes an impression), and one cannot help but wonder if she made the right choice.  Toots might be a halfwit, but he kept the right half.

To leave a novel like Dombey after pouring through its pages is something of a letdown.  Dickens’ world is so densely imagined, his people so vivid and lifelike, his sense of drama so satisfying, that putting down Dombey and Son is rather like saying goodbye to a friend.  To read a book like Dombey and Son is to realize the current poverty of creation in contemporary novelists – the lack of expansive spirit, of warm humanism, of complex plotting, of delight in creation.  Reading Dickens provides warmth and succor, cheer and insight.  How many contemporary novelists can make that claim?

This year many of us will return to A Christmas Carol, perhaps the central text of our holiday celebration.  But there is much more to Dickens than Scrooge and “bah, humbug!” and adventurous readers would be amply rewarded by visiting the world of Dombey and Son.

The World Loses Ray Harryhausen, Part I

Harryhausen animating the skeleton in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

It’s just about one month shy of the first anniversary of the passing of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) one of the Great Men of American Letters.  Sadly, we now mourn the loss of one of the great visionaries of American Cinema, Bradbury’s friend Ray Harryhausen.

In an age when the cinema is glutted with fantasy and science fiction films bloated by special effects, it’s perhaps difficult to remember that genre films were the exception to the rule, and that special effects were once, well …, special.

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was born and raised in California, where he became friends with young Ray Bradbury, a fellow science fiction fan.  Like many of an entire generation of science fiction and fantasy buffs, the release of the original King Kong in 1933 was a seminal event in his life.  The mighty Kong fell not only from the Empire State Building, but he fell on Harryhausen as well, metaphorically smothering the boy and making him and a fan of stop motion animation.

The young Harryhausen went Kong-Krazy, and did all he could to learn how the effects of Kong were achieved.  It was then that he learned of Stop Motion Animation, a process by which models were filmed – literally one frame at a time – with slight alterations in posing.  When played sequentially, the animation effect simulated life – making steel-skeleton puppets covered with rubber, fur and miniature costumes come alive.  Harryhausen started building models and making amateur films while in his teens.  Footage of these early films still exists, including one where the young animator has envisioned the world of Venus.  A story that has passed into Harryhausen lore is that he appropriated his mother’s fur coat to create the model of a mastodon….

Harryhausen, in many ways, resembled the great studio painters of yore in that after showing early aptitude, he got to apprentice with an established master.  A friend arranged for Harryhausen to meet Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), the brilliant special effects pioneer who created King Kong.  O’Brien was impressed by Harryhausen’s experimental films, and urged him to take drawing and sculpture courses to hone his craft. 

Harryhausen started his professional career animating short films for science fiction auteur George Pal (1908-1980); the series was called Puppetoons, and specialized mostly in fairy tales.  He also worked with Frank Capra during World War II, mostly as a camera assistant.

After the war, Harryhausen went to work with his mentor, O’Brien, and together they made one of the most impressive fantasy films of the 1940s, Mighty Joe Young (1949).  The film won O’Brien his long over-due Academy Award, which is ironic in that Harryhausen did most of the actual animation while O’Brien focused on solving technical problems.

After that, there was no stopping Harryhausen, and he went on to create the special effects for some of the most celebrated and best-loved fantasy and science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s: It Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and Mysterious Island. He also produced many of his own films (such as Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the Titans), and was always the guiding vision behind each and every film on which he worked.  This led to a unified body of work, similar in tone, outlook and depth of feeling.  No ironist and blessed with a sense of adventure and optimism, Harryhausen opened a world of the imagination to generations of movie goers and future film-makers.  When Harryhausen was honored with a special Academy Award, actor Tom Hanks told the audience, "Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane...I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!"

Like painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), there is little “color” or drama to Harryhausen’s life.  If Sargent’s epitaph was “he painted,” then Harryhausen’s could well be, “he created.”  He married late in life (in 1963), to Diana Livingston Bruce, and lived quietly in London and Spain, tirelessly breathing life into his magical puppets, and consequently bringing a little magic into the lives of all of us.  Ray Harryhausen loved fantasy, science fiction, hamburgers, his fans, and Diana.  His passing is a great loss to anyone who loves the world of the imagination.

Tomorrow: The Essential Ray Harryhausen Film List

Ray Animated an Elephant and Dinosaur for the Climax of

The Valley of Gwangi

The Art of Rise of the Guardians

Many movie-goers leave an animated film amused or moved or (all-too-frequently) indifferent, but few spare a thought for the incredible amount of work involved in creating it.

Such is not likely to happen with the current animated film Rise of the Guardians, which seems to be the one film to emerge from 2012 that may be a holiday classic for years to come.  One of the most beautifully designed animated films in recent memory, Rise brings to life several of childhood’s most cherished figures, including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and Jack Frost.  (Not to mention Pitch, the Boogey Man!)  Such reinvention does not happen without careful artistic consideration or much thinking and re-thinking.

Fortunately for those who cannot get enough holiday spirit (or insight into that remarkable alchemy that is animated films), a new, deluxe coffee table book is there to tell you all you need to know and more.  The Art of Rise of the Guardians details how these iconic figures were reimagined for the film, along with how the many set pieces – from the North Pole to the Tooth Fairy’s palace – were designed.  The book is written by animation historian Ramin Zahed (also editor-in-chief of Animation Magazine), who provides not only an instructive look at the creative process, but also at how large-scale animated films are conceived, produced, nudged-along, and, finally, let out into the world with the best intentions.

This film is, of course, based on the on-going series of books The Guardians of Childhood by William Joyce.  Regular Jade Sphinx readers are well-aware of our devotion for this illustrator, writer, animator, and filmmaker, who is on his way to becoming something of a 21^st Century Walt Disney.  Joyce provides the preface to the book (Alec Baldwin, the voice of Santa, penned the foreword), where he writes about the Guardians: they have vast, extraordinary domains, they are more than just benign gift-givers, they are great and magnificent heroes who would lay down their lives for innocence and the well-being of children everywhere … It will, I think, make kids believe, and for everyone else, it will remind them of how beautiful and powerful belief can be.

The book then shows everything -- from rough pencil sketches to watercolors to intricate storyboards and special effects shots – a creative team at a world class studio can do to harness that belief.  The Art of Rise of the Guardians is a lavishly illustrated book, but the art is put into perspective by a text showing the creative process.  For instance, we learn that Pitch’s lair is not only influenced by such film noir classics as Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai, but also by Venice, Italy.  As Zahed writes, One couldn’t really pick a more appropriate inspiration for Pitch’s home than the melancholy, sinking city of Venice.  The decrepit walls of Pitch’s palace are sliding into the water, and the interiors are covered with mud.  Set in one of the most haunting and beautiful cities in the world, this gloomy Renaissance-style lair is a reminder of the dark turn the villain’s life took hundreds of years ago.

Though the heroes in Rise of the Guardians all have equal time, of course the star turn is that of Santa Claus, perhaps the most famous and beloved Guardian of them all.  The Art of Rise of the Guardians is strongly recommended for believers in Santa Claus (and you know who you are), animation buffs or simply people interested in how intricately-designed, large-scale movies are made. 

Brad Bird’s Iron Giant

Just as some gifts keep on giving, some wars are still fought long after the cease fire.  A dramatic case in point is the Cold War, where the more fanatical fringes of our Right Wing continue to harp on the Red Menace and lionize sad pathological cases like Senator Joe McCarthy.  At times, it seems as if bunches of our population are happily marching towards Bedlam.

But it was fascinating to your correspondent to find the debate still raging in an animated cartoon marketed to children.  The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird (born 1957), was released in 1999 to universal applause and empty theaters.  I believe that Warner Brothers only looked at the text of the story – boy is befriended by giant robot – and slept through the subtext.  It was one of the most adult movies of the decade, and an indication that Bird, if given half the chance, would have a brilliant career before him.  (And he did – later directing such marvelous animated films as Incredibles [2004] and Ratatouille [2007]).

The storyline of The Iron Giant is deceptively simple.  In Rockwell, Maine, 1957, young Hogarth Hughes discovers a gigantic, metal-eating robot in the woods outside of his home.  Of course he keeps it a secret, telling only his beatnik friend (Harry Connick, Jr.).  However, a rapacious agent of the US government has tracked down the robot, wanting to take it to Washington to better serve the Pentagon.

I cannot help but wonder how Warner Brothers missed such a bet with The Iron Giant.  The film opens with shots of Sputnik circling the globe, and also imaginatively recreates 1950s Superman comics, science fiction movies, duck-and-cover drills and Red Scare paranoia.  In an age where most 20 year-olds are a little vague on the identity of Clint Eastwood, perhaps a film that so slavishly recreates, and then comments upon, 1950s tropes should be marketed to older adults.

There is a long and honorable tradition of adults savoring cartoons.  The surrealist Popeye, Betty Boop and Felix the Cat cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s were considered adult fare (and often “intellectual” to boot).  It’s only after television completely homogenized cartoons, and played them in the daily mid-afternoon “kiddie ghetto,” that cartoons themselves were viewed as strictly kiddie concerns.  Bird, with his films for Pixar, and films such as Up (2009), have all worked to return animated films to their original, adult base.

The Iron Giant is wonderfully animated, beautifully played and crammed with both wit and meaning.  As an entertainment product, it was miles ahead of anything that Disney was doing at that time, and avoided Disney’s trap of smarmy, self-congratulatory narcissism.  The focus was on plot, exposition and character – a rarity in live action films of the decade, let alone animated features.

The Iron Giant is based upon the children’s book of the same name by English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998); the screenplay by Ted McCanlies (born 1953) jettisoned all but the barest outline to craft an original story.  Hughes, however, praised the final script, thinking it in many ways an improvement on his original novel.

In many ways The Iron Giant was a victim of its own excellence – when people wanted a disposable cartoon about funny giant robots, they got instead a mediation on the Cold War, the American gun culture, free will, conservatism vs liberalism and how we educate our children based on the toys and myths common in the playground.  It could never play in Peoria….

If you think you are too adult for animated films, then by all means rent The Iron Giant.  It is a particularly successful example of the heights to which this particularly American art form can soar.

Felix the Cat: The Great Comic Book Tails

Few cats have ever loomed so large in the public mind as Felix the Cat.  During the silent film era, Felix was the only animated superstar, his status rivaling that of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.  Iris Barry (founder of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art) wrote that Felix was unique in that he was both “popular” and “distinctly high brow.”  In fact, Aldous Huxley wrote an article on Felix – cementing the sleek, black feline’s bona fides as a media superstar and pet of the intelligentsia.

The mania for Felix was huge, his cultural currency once greater than that of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse.  Felix adorned toys, cups, clothing, and even was the subject of a jazz number by the King of Jazz, Paul Whiteman (1923’s Felix Kept on Walking).  Felix was the totem Charles Lindbergh carried while crossing the Atlantic and he was the first balloon to float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1927. 

Felix was created for the movies, and his origins are clouded in debate and uncertainty.  The name on the cartoons was that of Australian cartoonist and entrepreneur Pat Sullivan (1887-1933).  However Sullivan’s lead animator, Otto Mesmer (1892-1983), was most likely the creator of Felix.  Once the film series was successfully launched, Mesmer was also the man behind the extremely popular comic strip, which began in 1923. 

Felix’s meteoric fame burned brightly and quickly.  By the early 1930s Felix lost critical ground to other cartoon characters whose creators embraced sound earlier.  Sullivan would die in 1933 and, following three interesting, colorful cartoons from the Van Beuren Studios in 1936, Felix faded from view.

But proving the cats have at least nine lives, Felix returned again in a series of cartoons designed by Joe Oriolo (one of Mesmer’s former assistants).  These cartoons are the ones most fondly remembered by Baby Boomers, where Felix carries a ubiquitous Bag of Tricks and spends most of his time outsmarting a villain called the Master Cylinder.  These cheaply made and poorly animated shorts were a marked come-down from the surrealist fantasias of the silent era, but kids seemed to like them.  Oriolo’s son, Don, was involved in The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat which aired from 1995 to 1997 and tried to return the character to his more mischievous roots.

So, it was with great delight that I recently received my copy of the newly published Felix the Cat: The Great Comic Book Tails, edited and designed by Craig Yoe with an introduction by Don Oriolo.  This is a lavishly put together book, superbly bound with heavy, non-reflecting paper, allowing for minimal glare on the images.  This is how Americana should be reproduced.  In addition, along with the comics themselves we have a feast of Felix imagery in the opening pages – if you have even a small interest in The Cat, this book is for you.

The comics collected in this volume range from 1945 to 1954, and reflect the sense of Post-War relief and prosperity many remember from the era.  While I think the earlier, black-and-white daily newspaper comic strips are more interesting and bizarre, these comic book pages still retain an oddly domesticated weirdness.  Felix lives in an ordinary suburban home (complete with armchair!), and works at various jobs.  However – his adventures still have the quality of fun mixed with extreme strangeness.  There is tons of slapstick humor, but also a sense that Felix realizes that he is unfettered by the constraints of physical reality (at one point, Felix lands his spaceship on the bottom point of a crescent moon).  Of the tales included Felix in Candy Land -- where everything and everyone is made of some type of sweet -- is perhaps the most outré and most satisfying.  A great book for your kids … or for yourself!