My First Foray Into Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1979 film)

My first foray into Narnia was seeing The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the 1979 animated made-for-television film, in its syndication on the Disney Channel. I have very vivid memories of the scene with the White Witch meeting Edmund for the first time, and Edmund meeting Maugrim (who in this version is referred to as "Fenris Ulf," the name given to him for the US revisions of the novel until 1994). I didn't remember very much else from it.

There are two different dubs of this film, the American version (which I saw), and the UK version (which I have yet to sit through). It was broken up into two parts, and was apparently seen by 37 million viewers and won two Emmy Awards (according to Wikipedia). It was directed by Bill Melendez of Peanuts fame. Ironic that it made its way onto the Disney Channel, because Melendez was a well-known and insufferable Disney-hater. The animation is.... not great. What may have been charming for Peanuts looks...just plain bad when it comes to everything else.  It's very Americanized, and the costumes of the children and the colour schemes are very 1979. 

It is missing certain key things, such as why the children go to stay with the professor in the first place and Father Christmas, but it includes much of the novel, including whole passages of dialog from the book. Of the three adaptations I have seen thus far, this includes the most dialog from the novel, although almost all of them greatly utilize Lewis' text. The overt religious tones are more present in this one than in others, and the scene with the Beavers, which works in the novel, goes on for too long in this version. It also has the jingling bells scene, but you never see Father Christmas directly. I will say that this version is dry and boring; you don't get the sense of magic at all, because much of the voice acting reminds me of a GPS voice.

I will say that the Beavers are very charming in this adaptation and the voice acting of the White Witch is very good. Too good. In fact, I do wonder what this film would have been like had it been animated better.

I know that this version is near and dear to people's hearts, so I won't speak too ill of it, but I would also recommend it for completionism's sake.