134. Fantasia (1940)

Produced By Walt Disney

Synopsis

A series of animations closely connected to pieces of classical music.

Review

Fantasia is the closest to experimental cinema that we have come upon since the silent era, and if only for that it is a more than respectable endeavour. Still like all collections of disparate pieces there are high and low points. Some of them work better than others and the last part with Schubert's Ave Maria as the definite lowlight, they even translated the fucking song... The toccata and fugue and the Dance of the Hours are highlights here, although in very different styles.

In my review of Snow White I had mentioned how good Disney was at connecting image and music, and this film is the natural progression from that, the imagination and skill of the animators is pretty amazing, as it is to see that the relationship between what you see on the screen and what you hear is so much closer than in any music video.

It is also great that even tough the film is slightly longer than 2 hours it manages to be entertaining the whole way through, even without a plot or much dialogue except the exposition of the narrator before each piece. It is a film that is very much worth seeing if you never have, so get it from Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

8/10


Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Not only did Fantasia establish animation as a true art form, it also introduced film audiences to multi-channel sound, which played a very important part in Fantasia. After the completion of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Stokowski enlisted the Philadelphia Orchestra, of which he was the conductor, to record the music for the six remaining segments. Walt Disney was present on the sound stage during an early session, and was very pleased with what he was hearing until he heard the playback from the recording engineers. He felt the recorded version of the music sounded tinny and undynamic, and asked his engineers to see what they could do about developing a better sound system. The engineers, led by William E. Garity, responded by creating a multi-channel sound format they called Fantasound, making Fantasia the first commercial film ever to be produced in stereophonic sound. The film also marked the first use of the click track while recording the soundtrack, overdubbing of orchestral parts, and simultaneous multi-track recording.

Always wanting to try new things, Walt Disney also had plans to film Fantasia in wide-screen and to spray different perfumes into the theatre at appropriate times during the Nutcracker Suite, but those plans were never carried out.

Offensive, yet cute: