Perhaps it's a tribute to his distant French roots? Walt Disney, whose family was originally from Isigny-sur-Mer in Normandy (hence his surname "Dizny") was largely inspired by our heritage which, since the creation of the famous cartoon studio, appears in several works. References offering to some monuments of France an international… and timeless visibility.
Cities, castles, landscapes, paintings, gastronomy...
French culture largely fed the imagination of the great American creator who, as early as the 1930s, launched a series of cartoons (Silly Symphonies) inspired by the Fables of La Fontaine.
This great Francophile, because of his family history and his stay in France at the end of the Great War, passed on to his teams his taste for French artists, whether they were writers (Victor Hugo and the adaptation of Notre Dame de Paris), painters (Fragonard and his Rococo style, which served as an artistic reference for Rapunzel) or chefs (Ratatouille and its homage to Auguste Escoffier, the father of French gastronomy).
Following the example of authors who have written down tales previously transmitted orally (Perrault, Andersen, the Grimm brothers...), the head of one of the world's leading entertainment empires has contributed to making these stories known by adapting them to the cinema while respecting their European and particularly French origins.
For example, the castle of Ussé (in Indre-et-Loire) was used as a reference for Sleeping Beauty and the castle of Chambord is reproduced almost identically in Beauty and the Beast.
In this adaptation of one of the oldest European tales, Belle's village is also directly inspired by the medieval cities of Riquewihr and Ribeauvillé in Alsace and, from this same region of the Grand-Est, the automatons in Gepetto's workshop, in Pinocchio, are modeled after those of Strasbourg Cathedral.
In Normandy, the house of the 7 dwarfs in Snow White reproduces the typical thatched cottages of this region hosting one of the most touristic sites in France, the Mont-Saint-Michel, which is found - indirectly - in Rapunzel, the majestic monument that served as a basis for the creation of the kingdom and the castle of the parents of the princess with long blond hair.
And of course the French capital is also represented in one of the oldest films of the big-eared house: the Aristochats, which helped promote a certain French art of living throughout the world. These different tributes surely explain, at least in part, why France has been the world's biggest tourist destination for decades. Thank you dear Walt!
Valerie from Comme des Français
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