This year Disney has involved Dougal Wilson, the director of Paddington in Peru, in directing The Invisible Horse, the promotional short film that the company produces for the Holidays. This time the visual effects, instead of staging something, occupy only one space, because the inseparable friend of the little protagonist of the rite is a presence you must believe in… otherwise you won’t notice it, exactly as happens to those who tease Jack. Here is the embed of the short: have you caught the source of some notes?
The Invisible Disney Horse, Between References and the Desire to Stay Forever Young
Just like in last year’s short, The Best Christmas Ever, in The Invisible Horse we also witness the relationship between a boy or a girl and a curious character and the Christmas festivities (among toys tied to the Disney world: Toy Story still dominates today). In the new tale, however, the child is about to become a pre-teen… and might leave behind the toys. In a situation that seems to recall Elliott the Dragon (who remembers him?), the young Jack receives from fate a reward for his imagination, confirming how it can keep him company at every moment of life. Also in the Italian edition of the short, in the climax where Jack runs on what he still thinks is a horse, some notes from the soundtrack reprise ‘Urca-Urca Tirulero’ from Robin Hood, explicitly cited in the original version (which you can also watch on YouTube; we embed it below). We were struck by the association, because indeed the setting of that film is far from the mountainous American landscape of the short. Yet, at the same time, the ballad has a very American flavor and above all evokes one of the Disney eras to which we are all very attached, as warm as a Christmas hearth: the ironic, affectionate and ‘family-friendly’ in the best sense era, between the sixties and seventies, between The Sword in the Stone and indeed Robin Hood. And it won’t be a coincidence that Elliott, one of the obvious sources of inspiration, also belonged to that period.
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