One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

"My only true love, darling. I live for furs. I worship furs! After all, is there a woman in all this wretched world who doesn't?"

“Wouldn’t they make enchanting fur coats?” said Cruella to her husband. “For spring wear, over a black suit.”

From The One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (1956).

You know, I rather like this time of year, as in-between and as weird as it feels. London’s empty; the streets are deserted — it’s like living in one of those old black-and-white episodes from The Avengers. The Christmas tree’s still up, set to come down on Twelfth Night. And the Sunday papers are full of self-help advice, which seems to get barmier by the year: “Transform your body in 21 days!” In a refreshing twist, The Pegan Plan (a Paleo diet combined with veganism, as recommended by Bill Clinton’s doctor) urges us to “eat more fat”. Jack Sprat, eat your heart out.

‘London in the hands of Disney…’

‘…a street near Regent’s Park…’

Yup. It's a short period of calm after the manic exhaustion of Christmas (love it that I do): a time to take stock, to make plans and chuck out all the accumulated metaphorical rubbish stacked up over the previous year. That is until the blues of deepest, darkest January take root. Over the last few years, we've developed our own little 'in-between' Christmas and New Year ritual. And that’s to watch a Disney animation. None of the tacky, schmaltzy modern stuff, mind you — but an earlier film. Like Snow White (1937) or the charming Fantasia (1940); Dumbo (1941), which reduces me, still, to a blubbering wreck; the worryingly disturbing Pinocchio (1940) or The Sleeping Beauty (1959) with its Evil Queen — like a dead-sexy, Thirties vamp. And so, last night, we dug Disney's One Hundred Dalmatians (in DVD) from 1961, a film I haven't seen for yonks, based on Dodie Smith's novel. And it was splendid.

Cruella de Vil: from the original Puffin edition, illustration by Anne and Janet Grahame-Johnstone, 1956.

I loved Dodie Smith's books as a boy: The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956), the less well-known sequel, The Starlight Barking (1967), and then as a grown-up, I Capture the Castle (1948). Dodie Smith was an interesting woman. During the 1920s she worked on the shopfloor of Heal's (London's famous department store in Tottenham Court Road), where she began an affair with the chairman, Sir Ambrose Heal, who then supported her early career as a writer. Dodie Smith liked dogs: The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) is a seriously doggie film.

‘… a jumble of rooftops, crooked chimneys and architecture of the Second Empire.’

But if there are other reasons for watching One Hundred and One Dalmatians, it is these: Disney's beautiful interpretation of Foggy Old London Town, which is delightful, and Cruella de Vil, herself (voiced by Betty Lou Gerson) — who has to be one of English lit’s All-Time Top Villains. At the same time, it's quite clear that the American animators had never been to the Big Smoke, let alone England. In the hands of Disney, London looks like a cross between Montmartre and a neon-lit Manhattan, a jumble of rooftops, crooked chimneys and architecture of the Second Empire. Like a Ronald Searle cartoon, or an illustration by Philippe Jullian or Rowland Emett. It’s very Sixties. Primrose Hill lit by starlight. The Dearlys are supposed to live near Regent's Park (which looks suspiciously like Central Park), but instead, we get something like a cross between one of Manhattan's more chi-chi quarters, Greenwich Village perhaps, and a provincial but smart and sophisticated French town like Montpellier. I would very much like to live in the London of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. It's desperately bijou.