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"Mary Poppins" on its 60th anniversary: A dazzling Disney masterpiece that hasn’t lost its shine

Julie Andrews makes for a pitch-perfect lead in a studio-saving hit that offers a spoonful of sugar with a side of salt

Travers’ whimsical books about a supernatural nanny and her charges were charming, episodic and not overtly cinematic; director Robert Stevenson had become an in-house Disney mainstay, proficient but not especially inspired; Dick Van Dyke, the biggest name in the cast, was a TV star but not an obvious blockbuster draw. It’s that frisson of the unknown and the unexplainable that keeps children and adults alike under its spell – a suggestion of otherworldly chaos, unresolved by the film’s lilting, kite-flying finale, that remains rare in Disney’s tidy, relentlessly focus-grouped family fare. Bedknobs and Broomsticks from 1971 was a naked attempt to repeat the formula, with Stevenson and the Shermans back on board, cartoon interludes, a romanticised English period setting and Lansbury in place of Andrews – but it felt like a filmed equation, all twee zaniness and forced gaiety.

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