Saturday 27 June 2009

One Hundred and One Alterations!

I was looking in the cupboard for something else entirely, and I found a copy of Dodie Smith’s “The Hundred and One Dalmatians”, which was adapted into the animated film “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” … sometimes referred to as “101 Dalmations” … or sometimes misspelled “… Dalmations” … which was read to me as a kid *before* I saw the film!

For a while I’ve been wanting to write close comparisons of animated films and the books they were adapted from, so where better to start than one of the best? According to the extra features on the new DVD, Dodie Smith herself contacted Bill Peet to tell him that the film was even better than her book! (And I bet Bill was doubly thrilled, seeing as he and not Walt was being praised for the adaptation) So in the near future I’ll be comparing the Dalmatians book and film, and hopefully it will be the first in a series.

By the way, a while ago Mark Mayerson posted more of a brief overview of the differences between the two versions of the story, and Hans Perk posted an early script draft of the film which in some ways is closer to the events in the book.

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