The Cinematheque

“I can fairly report that your children will enjoy [this film], and that you will too … The stories are told simply and directly and with a certain almost clumsy charm.”

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The first film adaptation of Peter Rabbit was intentionally not a cartoon. Though Walt Disney wanted the rights to work with her stories, writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter refused, emphasizing the importance of realistic landscape and motion to any film version. This vision wasn’t satisfied until the idea was hatched among crew who worked on Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet to pair Potter’s animal creations with the British Royal Ballet. Many of Potter’s tales are adapted and mixed into this dance film, including Squirrel Nutkin, the Two Bad Mice, and Jemima Puddle-Duck. The most entrancing, unusual, amusing, and elegantly executed aspect of the film is that the world is scaled both miniature and human-sized—every special effect here is from masks, costumes, and large studio sets. Not just that, Potter’s words are completely absent, emphasizing a world of wild playfighting, careful chores, and, in brief scenes depicting a young Beatrix writing, the time it takes to get anywhere in one’s imagination.

No dialogue

“Devotes impressive attention to [Potter’s] illustrations … The film works best in its sequences of greatest disorder—particularly with Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca smashing the doll’s house plaster they had hoped to make a meal of.”

Roger Greenspun, The New York Times