With the end of 2022 just a couple weeks away, many an outlet and tastemaker is reviewing how more recent releases, cinema legacies and the cultural zeitgeist have impacted their views on the “best” titles in film history. Animation is often represented only sparingly in these assessments, so it was nice to see three treasured movies from some of the most influential toon studios of the last century on Variety‘s “100 Greatest Movies of All Time.”
For those keeping score, this is one more than Sight & Sound‘s 2022 ranking update, which included Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Spirited Away (2001). We also recently saw John Musker and Ron Clements’ Disney fairytale The Little Mermaid (1989) inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry as the year’s sole animated addition.
Walt Disney’s hand-drawn Bambi (1942), an adaptation of the 1923 book by Felix Salten overseen by supervising director David Hand, scored the highest placement for an animated feature at No. 63 on the 100 Greatest Movies chart. Variety’s critics noted the film has a “purity” that is “unmatched by any cartoon since …What makes this Disney’s best is the simple way it invites audiences to empathize with creatures.”
Bambi received three Academy Award nominations at release (Sound, Song & Score), and has previously been ranked in the American Film Institute’s “10 Top 10” for Animation (2008) and been inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (2011). Disney announced in 2020 it was working on a live-action, produced with Depth of Field and with screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Lindsey Beer (Chaos Walking) attached.
Next is the Studio Ghibli classic My Neighbor Totoro (1988), coming in at No. 74. As the reviewers write, “Walt Disney may have pioneered the field of hand-drawn animated features, but Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki elevated it.” The list makers describe the bucolic family feature the director’s “most beloved” film worldwide.
Totoro, whose titular forest troll character still features on the studio’s logo, was the third feature released by Ghibli and earned numerous awards in Japan. The film has previously made best film lists from Empire (2010) and Sight & Sound, which made it the highest ranked animated feature on its list in 2012 — a post it still holds, just ahead of Spirited Away.
Pixar’s groundbreaking Toy Story (1995) — the first fully computer-animated feature to hit theaters — was placed at No. 95 by the critics, largely for introducing the next evolution in animation technology while asserting “even as the technology evolved — liberating the heretofore hand-rendered form — nothing has surpassed that first toon, thanks to great writing and voice work that, even more than the CGI, brought Woody, Buzz Lightyear and their pals to life. ”
Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards (Song, Score and the first animated film up for Original Screenplay) and was entered into the National Film Registry in 2005. The first film spun off into one of the most successful animated feature franchises (grossing more than $3.3 billion worldwide), complemented by shorts, short-form series theatrical productions and more.
It is worth noting that effects animation history-maker King Kong (1933), featuring the work of American stop-motion pioneer Willis O’Brien, also made the ranking at No. 68.
You can read the full list at Variety.com.
