For the Disney faithful, the chance to see construction crews building the mother of all theme parks between 1954 and 1955 in Anaheim, Calif., will likely hit an emotional chord. But even if you’re not among the hundreds of millions of visitors to the so-called (and trademarked) Happiest Place on Earth, Leslie Iwerks’s documentary is a captivating historical document.
Delving into company archives, the director (whose grandfather, the animator Ub Iwerks, was a crucial contributor to early Disney films) has composed an official story, but one that wisely avoids “why this matters” talking-head commentary. “Disneyland Handcrafted” is instead an immersive bit of time travel, spun out of 16 mm footage from the months leading up to the park’s opening day. Some of the film aired nationwide as progress reports on a weekly ABC show, and some of it has never before been seen publicly. (The deft editing is by Mo Stoebe.)
The audio is excerpted from interviews at the time with people who were there: model makers, landscapers, art directors, architects, vehicle designers, accountants and publicists. The story they tell is one of debt, an impossible deadline and creative challenges. The project’s doubters — it was known as Walt’s Folly — included not just outside skeptics, but some of the people working on it around the clock.
There’s plenty to debate about Disney’s elevated concept of an amusement park — the anti — Coney Island, in one observer’s estimation. But Iwerks is here to praise the achievement that transformed Orange County farmland into a pop-culture mecca. And given that much of Disneyland is inspired by turn-of-the-century nostalgia, it’s fitting that the film is itself a dive into midcentury nostalgia, capturing the postwar optimism as well as the manual labor, whether with heavy machinery or paintbrushes, of an analog age.
Disneyland Handcrafted Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. Watch on Disney+.
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