Mary Poppins

1964, US, directed by Robert Stevenson

I hadn't seen this since childhood, and watched it with my kids on a very rainy school holiday afternoon. They absolutely loved it, and I took great pleasure in hearing them ask, in this age of digital wizardry, how did they do that?! There's an unexpected, and perhaps underestimated, power in a little straightforward visual trickery. Personally, I also enjoyed the choreography, in particular for the marvelous chimney sweep sequence. I'm hardly the first to comment on it, but what on earth was going on with Dick Van Dyke's "accent"? Didn't they have dialect coaches in 1964?!