Mickey Mouse : L'Histoire d'une Souris [Disney - 2022]

En projet depuis 2019, le documentaire Mickey : The Story of a Mouse a été présenté ce mois-ci au SXSW Film Festival et devrait sortir sur Disney+ au courant de l'année.
Le long-métrage réalisé par Jeff Malmberg reviendra sur l'évolution du personnage depuis sa création, ainsi que sur ses plus grands succès et sur les polémiques qui le concernent pour comprendre son impact culturel.
Petit bonbon pour les fans, un court-métrage inédit l'accompagnera, Mickey in a Minute, qui mélangera plusieurs styles visuels pour fêter l'existence de la souris. Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn et d'autres grands animateurs ont participé à ce mini-short.

Malmberg nous en dit plus sur le contenu du film dans l'interview ci-dessous.

Citation :

How much did you know about Mickey Mouse before you started this documentary?

Certainly not as much as I know now. It was just always something that intrigued me, like there seemed to be two sides to this character and that felt very interesting to me, something I wanted to explore. And it seemed like he’d been around long enough that there were interesting things inside that very simple image or logo.

Did the documentary come first, or was it the short? Did one inform the other?

I’m not sure their thinking on that short, where that came from … I just was tuned into it when I was working on the documentary. Because so much of Mickey is in the past and it’s all wonderful and interesting. But to sit there and watch Eric draw and trying to figure things out and draw I don’t remember how many he says, original hand drawings in a minute of footage. But something like a thousand.

How much of the documentary was inspired by the ongoing copyright battle for the character?

I remember being in high school or something, hearing about a school that had Mickey on their wall and they had to paint it over and it just blew my mind. I didn’t get it. As I became someone who was interested in art, Mickey was this weird third rail.

And so, from my perspective, things like Milton Glaser’s short “Mickey Mouse in Vietnam.” There are examples of off-brand Mickey art that inform and better the character, in my mind. And when you see on-brand Mickey now, you see a little off-brand. And when you see off-brand Mickey, you see a little on-brand. And I think that actually makes for a really interesting character and somebody that I wanted to understand a little bit more, what that was about. Definitely the copyright thing, to me, was… “I’m going to get them to talk about this.” Now you see how they talk about it, I think it’s an initial kind of, I’m not going to solve the issue, but I can push the ball forward.

What surprised you the most about going on this journey?

I come at Mickey from a very loving place. Like I think the world is a little less happy without Mickey in it, honestly. Anything that’s a universal kind of shortcut to joy and smiles is great by me. But I wanted it to be an honest portrait. He has inherited some really crazy things. Just like America and the 20th century had a lot of really crazy things in it. So, you can actually kind of in a weird, odd way, see angles on some of those things through this drawing and through this logo and this character. And that’s very strange.

Because half the world sees him as so meaningful. And then the other half sees him as meaningless. It’s just naturally, there start to be these gray areas that become really interesting. And if they were going to be willing to be honest about that, then I really wanted to do it. Because I had some questions and it was something I wanted to explore.

One of the more interesting aspects of the movie was the section on World War II. How reticent was the company to engage with that?

I think because we’d set a tone of like, “Hey, don’t get us wrong. We love Mickey, but there’s some interesting things that happened.” I mean, to me, one of the more interesting moments in the film that … and I didn’t know it beforehand, but we found it when we were doing the research, was the Mickey au Camp de Gurs comic book that person made in the camp. And you even see if you look, it says in French, “produced without the authorization of Walt Disney.” Even then, they’re playing with the idea of authorship or who owns what. Those moments really speak to the power of the character.

I can’t speak for them, but it’s like in that instance, although it is World War II and I had heard that they were sensitive to that, really what we’re trying to bring up is that this character has tremendous power in a positive way. I didn’t ever get a sense from them that was a problem.

The other big taboo you engage with is Mickey in blackface.

I mean, it was very important to me that we included it … it’s an 89-minute documentary, we’re not going to solve the issue of that. But we can at least bring up the question, and the line that I was glad that they let us include was that some of the images that Walt did with Mickey, Walt did damage. And I think that’s exactly right. And for a character who’s so supposedly inclusive, it’s just a sad moment. To their credit, they never flinched when we sent them that scene.

I’ve got a seven-year-old. I love watching Disney+ with her. I love watching all that old animation. But some of that stuff’s problematic. So how do you solve that? Do you solve it with a paragraph?

Do you solve it with a conversation? I don’t know. It just was important to us to create a scene that was honest. And that would hopefully lead to people talking about it.

Was there anything that’s too taboo? It’s hard not to notice the lack of “Runaway Brain.”

We had a “Runaway Brain” scene, because I’m with you. It ultimately just didn’t make kind of the arc of the film. I’d be curious if I had tried, what would’ve happened. There’s a lot of, as you know, history there. I was always trying to free my mind from the concept that this needed to be a Wikipedia entry or an encyclopedia, like “Runaway Brain” is one of my favorites, it just didn’t quite make the swoop we were going for.

Did you have a favorite Mickey era after this?

After this, I think I really fell in love with that, kind of from “Fantasia”-ish, or let’s start with like ‘38 to like ’41, like “Brave Little Tailor” through “Fantasia” through “Little Whirlwind.” Just that wild, “Little Whirlwind” Mickey, I think is just so dynamic. And it would be interesting to see where that went if that line kept going, I wonder where Mickey would be today.

The section on modern Mickey was really interesting to me. Especially that you talked to Warren Spector who got a raw deal in this whole thing. But to see him still be magnanimous about the character, was really inspiring.

Yeah, I agree. I’m glad you say that. I really like him. And I think that he was such a vibrant example of, there was a period where Mickey really, frankly, post-Walt’s death, post-1960s, of the image being reinterpreted, we’ll say.

What is Mickey? And it’s people like Warren, it’s people like Eric, it’s people like Paul Rudish, who get to play with him again. To me, that was really interesting, to have people who could take him off the shelf and dust him off and let him be an actual character. And not so precious. Because if we don’t do that, he’s a plush toy. And he’s a great plush toy, but like he’s more than that.

To see their attempts at that and I think, frankly, maybe early days on that, that he could be a dynamic character that we all know again. That’s been a recent phenomenon.

When is the Donald doc coming?

Unfortunately, that would be a seven-minute short, I think.

La D23 Expo 2022 proposera un panel dédié au film le 11 Septembre : Disney Original Documentary’s Sneak Peek of Mickey: The Story of a Mouse.
Présenté par Bret Iwan, les visiteurs auront droit à un behind the scenes ainsi qu'à un sneak peek du documentaire.

Je suis vraiment surpris que personne ne parle de ce documentaire juste exceptionnel ! Encore une fois Disney nous propose un documentaire sans détour qui n’hésite pas à affronter des sujets sensibles. Ici on nous montre le symbole d’espoir qu’est devenu Mickey mais on n’oublie pas de montrer la face « sombre » du personnage que ce soit les blackface, l’utilisation a titre de propagande, la paranoïa excessive de Disney sur le copyright et enfin ce que le personnage est malheureusement devenu aujourd’hui.
Un film a voir absolument !!

Il est dans ma liste. Mais entre "Il était une fois 2" et "Le monde merveilleux de Mickey : automne" sortis tous les deux en même temps que le documentaire, je n'ai pas encore eu le temps. Ton avis me conforte dans l'idée de le voir. J'espère qu'il ne sera pas répétitif avec d'autres documentaires sur Walt Disney. A voir...

J'ai vu ce documentaire dès le jour de sa sortie, pour honorer l'anniversaire de Mickey Mouse. ^^ Et ce documentaire m'a vraiment bien plu!
Le film est vraiment très complet et détaillé, en développant avec justesse chacune des évolutions majeures du personnage. On nous raconte l'époque où il était plus casse-cou et farceur, avant de passer à sa période plus proprette, jusqu'à arriver au Mickey bien plus farfelu d'aujourd'hui. On aborde ses différents designs, ses différents acteurs vocaux, en prenant toujours la peine d'expliquer les raisons derrière les divers changements vécus par la souris (en expliquant notamment l'apport de Donald et Dingo). Et ce qui est très plaisant également, c'est que le documentaire est très objectif, abordant les aspects plus sombres du personnage de Mickey dans ses jeunes années (ses blackfaces, son comportement d'harceleur envers Minnie, son utilisation de propagande pendant la guerre) et la manière douteuse dont la société l'a utilisé (la paranoïa du copyright, la disparition des valeurs prônées par Mickey au profit de l'argent). Après, j'ai trouvé ça assez irritant de voir les intervenants présenter les aspects sombres de Mickey, avec des "ouais, on assume ce qu'on a fait", alors que Disney ne traite pas toutes ses franchises ainsi. Si vous assumez la manière dont Mickey a été utilisé autrefois, pourquoi ne faîtes-vous pas de même avec Mélodie du Sud? Aussi, je trouve que les intervenants enfants apportent une touche un peu niaise, sans grande pertinence.
Voilà, mais dans l'ensemble, j'ai quand même trouvé que ce documentaire était de qualité.

J’attends désespérément la VF?

Tout chaud sur Chronique Disney, le site, retrouvez, en cliquant sur l'image, la critique du documentaire Mickey Mouse : L'Histoire d'une Souris.