Steamboat Willie

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

STEAMBOAT WILLIE, a mischievous little rodent, neglects his pilothouse and frolics his way into cinematic history.

On 18 November 1928, a struggling young genius debuted the world's first successful cartoon with synchronous sound. There would be no looking back for either Walt Disney or his alter ego Mickey Mouse. Financial struggles would remain, but essentially the world was their oyster bed and Mickey would eventually rival Chaplin as the most recognizable cultural icon of the century.

As entertainment, STEAMBOAT WILLIE is still fun to watch, featuring fine work by animator Ub Iwerks and showing a Mickey with all the passions & indifference of a small child. He must deal with a tyrannical skipper (Pete, without his peg leg; he had been appearing in Disney cartoons since February of 1925), a wisecracking parrot (in a few years it would be a Duck) and a cute little Mouse named Minnie. Together the two rodents rather callously make music on the live bodies of a goat, cat, goose, piglets & cow (a precursor of Clarabelle) - all of whom happened to be conveniently on board the steamship. Audiences howled for more and the pattern was set for the subsequent Mouse cartoons of the next few years.

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Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

While in France as Germaine Dulac created a benchmark of short-subject, cinematic surrealism with The Seashell and the Clergyman, Walt Disney and his collaborator Ub Iwerks in America worked on Steamboat Willie, the most prominent of the early synchronized sound cartoons (it was revealed that this was not the first, contrary to other reports). It's also one of the more successfully simplistic and funny of the Mickey Mouse shorts (still in a silent-film way- the only sounds are little irks and bleeps from the Mickey and the animals). It also goes by fairly quickly for its less-than-ten minute run, if only by how quick and dopey the gags are.

But in these minutes one gets the immediate sense of how much fun Disney has with his characters, and how the newfound use of sound changes how his creation uses the animals as musical tools. There's no story to speak of, just random things that happens and occurs because of Mickey (err, Steamboat Willie) on this boat on a river. And like the better Mickey Mouse shorts, his lack of speaking acts as an advantage. It's a must-see if you haven't seen it as a kid, but if you have it might still be worth another look.

Seeing again, after a very long time, this short seems real - real creepy. So, the recent version by Nick Lives can be defined as wise one comparing with original.

Cruelty , sexism and sexual jokes, bad treatment to animals and horror in pure form.

A strange work from beginnings of Walter Disney , so funny in childhood for many from us , frighting today because the permisity about taboo themes seems just the rule.

In short, a form of revenge, reminding children sadism or teens teribilism , of Mickey against Captain Pete . And its forms are not so amusing, in fact.

But, sure, a classic. Served by a sort of a controversy answer at start of 2024 year.

Steamboat Willie (1928)

**** (out of 4)

I think it's quite fair to say that STEAMBOAT WILLIE is the most important animated film in history. While it wasn't the first Mickey Mouse short (it's the third) it is the one that really turned him into a superstar and it took Walt Disney into a while new level unlike anything we've ever seen. The story is pretty simple as Mickey decides to whistle and dance his way throughout the boat. Yes, whoever would have guessed that by simply whistling this little mouse would become a part of cinematic history? Not only is this film historic but it's also quite excellent in its own right. The film has a certainly charm and good-hearted feel to it that it's impossible not to smile with it and it's even more impossible not to want to join in on the whistling. There are countless highlights here but my favorite has always been the sequence where the cow is too small to get loaded onto the boat so Mickey must do something to put meat on his bones.

"Steamboat Willie" is Mickey`s first movie, and was released way back in 1928. It is an atmospheric piece of movie history, and is a must see for every Disney-fan out there. If you don`t like Disney, you probably won`t like this movie.

A great debut for Mickey Mouse and it`s the first cartoon. As an old Disney-fan, I think that this is a brilliant movie. 10/10