While it doesn't have the soft-edged sense of wonder that the Travers books have, Walt Disney's 1964 version of the Mary Poppins story does manage to avoid the usual saccharine excesses of his live-action work. It goes without saying that the semianimated sequences work best—the chimney-sweeps number may be bastard Broadway (with the aimless athleticism rented from Michael Kidd), but the grace of the effects makes it some kind of classic. With Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke; directed by Robert Stevenson.
By
Dave Kehr