Top 25 Favourite Films: #8 Fantasia (Pro. Walt Disney, 1940)
#8. Fantasia. Produced by Walt Disney, 1940.
So here's a thing about my childhood. I imagine you readers, whatever age you are, you, rather inevitably, grew up, at least if you live or lived in the English speaking world, with the works of Walt Disney. In the 91 years since Mickey Mouse first appeared on cinema screens in New York City, Disney has not only become part of the cultural landscape of cinema in their animated and live action films, but has practically become multiplex cinema itself with its vicelike grip upon the blockbuster market and its increasing monopoly upon the medium at its most populist. At least, most of us did.
For, whilst the Disney Renaissance, complete with a vanguard of toys, tie-ins, CDs and the like, rolled through early 90s cinema, leaving box-office records and countless plaudits in their wake, I was devouring books as a child, including the majority of the fairytales that practically form the backbone to the Disney brand, watching more home grown animation, including the work of Nick Park and Franco-Belgian comic book artists, Uderzo and Goscinny, and their creation, Asterix the Gaul and his miscellaneous animated adventures.
To say our house was without Disney entirely, is, perhaps, however, incorrect-my parents certainly regarded, and indeed regard Disney as a lowest common denominator example of Americanisation of culture-an entirely fair thing to say given, for example, Disney's aggressively American and in particular aggressively American expansionist approach during, and indeed after, Walt's reign at the company, from the disastrous launch of EuroDisney against the French ethos, to their modern expansion into both China and India as untapped markets.However, for whatever reason, two films slipped the net, and became mainstays on our VHS, then DVD rack. The first, Sword in the Stone, a 1963 adaption of TH White's Arthurian novel of the same name, is a reasonably competent example of Disney's sketchier style, better seen in both 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book, though it lacks either's sense of fun, or indeed reputation, probably now most famous for its wizard's duel and being the final film released during Disney's own lifetime. And then, of course, there is Fantasia, a film that stands as arguably their finest piece of cinema as pure art.
But before we get into Fantasia, both as a collection of animated shorts, all set to famous classical pieces of music, and as a cohesive whole, we need to go back, to understand this film in context, for even today, Fantasia is something of a one-off in the Disney canon. It's 1936, and Disney, already hard at work on the upcoming Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that will prove the turning point from Disney the director of amusing slapstick shorts to Disney the serious film-maker, Disney the artist, turns back to the mouse that got him to this point. Having already used the Silly Symphonies, where whimsical scenarios are accompanied by music, he wants to try something altogether more artistic. As Michael Barrier writes in Hollywood Cartoons, Disney's aim was clear, and it is an ethos that eventually underpins the entirety of Fantasia. To quote Walt directly:
"We will have more Silly Symphonies in which sheer fantasy unfolds to a musical pattern: this was the idea originally behind them. In the future, we will make a larger number of dance-pattern symphonies. Action controlled by a musical pattern has great charm in the realm of unreality"
Walt wanted, in short, a more artistic take on this format, and for this, he paired Mickey, already an iconic character, but in need of a boost in popularity, and Ducas's symphonic poem, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. A chance encounter with Leopold Stokowski, the conductor of the major Philadelphia Orchestra later, with Stokowski not only offering to conduct for free, but aiding Disney and his animators in the entire process of animation, with his ideas on how each part of the orchestra could be shown in the finished film's animation. Indeed, with The Sorcerer's Apprentice there was a sense of prestige, from the team assembled to animate being composed of the best that Disney had to offer, to the no-expense spared recording of an entire 85 piece orchestra for the short. There was just one problem.
Money.
With the short running to $125,000, four times that of the normal short, and with its experimental nature making the film itself risky to release for fear of low box office returns, so the short eventually began to evolve into the idea of an animated concert, with several shorts, of differing styles and subjects put together into a program, with ideas as varied as the eventual prehistoric-set Sacre du Printempts sequence and a button being produced to a piece by Paganini discussed, until, little by little the concert began to take shape, and eventually gained the title Fantasia. With over 1000 artists working on the piece, which contains a staggering 500 animated characters (for comparison, 2013's Frozen has around 250), Disney's key aim was simple-use his mixture of animation and classical music to bring several pieces to the masses who would usually have "walked out on this kind of stuff." Whilst the film was not a resounding critical or commercial success, in part due to a small thing called World War II, the film is still arguably the height of Disney the artist as opposed to Disney the filmmaker.
Fantasia, thus, in short, is a selection of animated shorts, beginning with the abstract Toccata and Fugue in D Minor accompanying abstract but beautiful animation, followed by The Nutcracker Suite, in which the seasons change, with fairies, fish, and even mushrooms dancing, and the piece that started the entire concept, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Following this, to Stravinksy's strident Rite of Spring, comes a history of the earth, including the dinosaurs that Walt himself suggested be included, and then a live action section, after an intermission(!), in which we get a brief jazz jam, and then an explanation of sound rendered as animation. Back to the animated sections, and a Greco-Roman scene scored to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, followed by the equally comic Dance of the Hours. And then comes the film's other iconic moment, the spectacular finale of Night on Bald Mountain and Schubert's Ave Maria, in which the Devil, Chernabog summons evil and dead spirits, only to be driven back by the Ave Maria and morning.
Fantasia itself begins much like a concert-almost the entire first two minutes are simply silhouetted performers entering the stage and tuning up, and with this film initially released as a road-show, by the time master of ceremonies (and musical critic) Deem Taylor enters the picture, introduces the concept of the film, as the work of artists, not of musicians, and the three types of classical music accompanying the animation, it may have felt like a night at the concert hall. Taylor lays out the Toccata and Fugue's abstract concept, as he does for every subsequent piece. The segue from the concert footage to the film itself is done subtly, with the background around Stokowski changing colour in time to the music, and a second sequence in which the orchestra's various instruments are seen in silhouette, which cleverly introduce the various instruments, moving back and forth between these two sequences for this piece of absolute music before a transformation to full animation. It's a surprisingly moody opening, almost in the style of the heavily shadowed German expressionism.
Certainly, alone among the film's sequences, and positively unique in Disney as a whole is the purely abstract-even The Nutcracker, which immediately follows this, has recognisable objects and creatures as its stars, rather than colour and movement. In places, particular instruments-the violins, for example, or the brass, are represented by moving groups of colour, up or down, or side to side, or colour to colour, or shape to shape as the music flows-it, in places, looks like the work of Kandinsky and other abstract painters, dominated, as Kandinsky's work was by lines and blocks and areas of colour, elsewhere it is an art all of its own, the minds of Disney's animators completely unfettered from the figurative, as various sequences play back and forth, various visuals accompanying each element of the piece of music, from celestial clouds to beams of light to explosions of sparks and colour in time with cascading chords. The animation fades, in a skillful match of animation and live action, and we return to our master of ceremonies.
These in-between sections are, in essence, Disney giving a potted history of the piece, and they work nicely. The Nutcracker Suite is far more typical of Disney's animation of the period, full of faeries slowly bringing the forest around them to life, and, whilst sharing a few visual tricks with the previous sequence, is perhaps overly familiar-it's easy to imagine this, with lower quality animation (at least for Disney) ending up in a A Silly Symphony. That said, it is still an enjoyable sequence-the animation work, for example, has a pleasing solidity to it, and its easy to see the increasing ambition of Disney's animators in showing the natural world around them that would come to the fore in Bambi less than two years later, not to mention the visual complexity of some of the shots in showing, what, in essence is animated ballet, albeit beautifully rendered. What it does perfectly is to create a mood of the changing seasons, with the sequence of the falling leaves among my favourite moments in the film, adding a sense of grandeur and grace to the change of the year.
Back to the concert, and cue Mickey. As the genesis of the entire Fantasia concept, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is, alongside the finale, the highlight of this entire concept, rendering Mickey as comic mime and apprentice to Yen Sid (as this character has subsequently been dubbed, particularly by the Japanese videogame Kingdom Hearts (my, uh, actual entry point into Disney fandom). It's a pitch perfect bit of slapstick comedy, musical drama, and the melding of animation and score is simply sublime-even in a film that has all manner of visually impressive moments, Sorcerer has its own, with the dreaming mouse playing the very stars and constellations in accompaniment. the animation on the crashing waves is nothing short of spectacular.
The fun is only just beginning, however, as the sequence to cut back to the now flooded castle as Mickey's attempts to save time with magic only leads to chaos, and, in a surprisingly brutal moment for Disney, Mickey taking an axe to the unfortunate broom. This only makes this worse-in a brilliant double-take-that then sees Mickey trampled by a broom army, who by now begin to flood the entire castle. Not only is a great comedic and indeed dramatic scene, but the pure number of animated figures on screen is spectacular, until the Sorcerer reappears, and ends the chaos. Now penitent, Mickey returns to work, and promptly appears in the live action segment, to thank the conductor, and end what is perhaps his single greatest moment of celluloid.
If there is one unsung section of Fantasia, it is Rite of Spring-not only is this sequence, far more than most, Disney's own idea, but certainly, in a film that skews to the lighter side, is certainly its darkest and most serious alongside Bald Mountain. It is Disney at his most scientific, in a film otherwise driven by flights of fancy, as the film cuts to animation and the Rite begins-that a piece of music that incited riots on its premiere less than three decades before Fantasia's release, (and only a decade after its American premiere) indicates that Disney was both forward-looking and bold enough to use a piece that still seems remarkably avant-garde today.
The other masterstroke is combining the strident and chaotic nature of the Rite with the chaotic formation and history of our own planet, the slow woodwinds giving way, as we reach earth to the stabbing staccatos of volcanic eruptions, magma pools, earthquakes and other natural phenomena, the agitated and discordant accompanying the violent creation on-screen. The violence of this sequence gives way to the formation of life, phantasmagorical as it is, with the passing millions of years done in neat sweeps, our camera following one creature as it evolves, and eventually makes land, as the age of Dinosaurs and other reptiles dawns, in a sequence of surprising savagery. And then comes arguably the sequence's most famous moment-whilst most of the dinosaurs are comparatively portrayed as dumb and somewhat brutish-not to mention somewhat inaccurate by modern standards, as the chaos begins to return to the Rite, the dinosaurs all turn and look at something off screen. The camera pivots
A flash of lighting, and into the action storms the Tyrannosaurus Rex-if one film made this creature an icon, it may well be this-the fight may be a more savage version of the 1925 The Lost World, but paired with Stravinski, it is breathtaking and brutal, with the T-Rex becoming the victor over a hapless Stegosaurus. A change of sequence, and with a drought, the dinosaurs simply begin to drop where they stand, or become fatally trapped in the sand, with the sequence ending on a surprisingly downcast ending, lit in hellish red, until with a final chaotic ending, the earth itself begins to collapse and shudder, as the water from which life first arrived returns with a triumphant crash, and surprisingly impressionistic water. We are left with a final longshot of the earth, and then an intermission, as the film returns to live action, the orchestra walk off, and the curtain closes.
Go on. Go get a cup of tea. Stretch your legs
Done?
Where were we?
The curtains reopen, the orchestra slowly returns, and from the tune up, we get jazz, with the only sequence shot with the orchestra in its entirety, followed by a smartly done bit of animation, in which the very sound waves of miscellaneous instruments are beautifully rendered across the screen. Following this is Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and its Greco-Roman setting. The Pastoral is, once again, beautifully rendered Disney animation, but perhaps also the slightest of the segments, and certainly that which floats closest to being typically cutey Disney fare, particularly when compared to the surrounding pieces more impressionistic and certainly more cutting edge, as adorably rendered Pegasus give way to equally sweetly rendered centaurs and cherubs.
It is also the only sequence subsequently cut, as two obviously-and in modern sensibilities, jarringly- racist shots, both of black centaurette serving girls have been removed from the film as far back as the 1960s. Nevertheless, it is still a well-crafted mix of animation and music, and certainly the storm and coming of night at the end of the section, with its strongly impressionist and surprisingly muted pallet-with characters often shot as silhouette against the elements, is still visually impressive. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the weakest sequence of the entire film, and in my humble opinion, the only one that drags.
Following this is The Dance of the Hours, a beautifully rendered, if still obviously balletic sequence featuring miscellaneous groups of animals representing the various times of day as the piece progresses. Dance of the Hours is the formula of Pastoral done right-a highly energetic piece, beautifully animated, and at once a neat mix of the artistic, the comedic and a clear love of ballet, with various performers, including various ballerinas, used as references for the sequence. Certainly, the piece captures, at once, the languid flow, and sudden energy of the piece in all the ways that the Pastoral sequence fails to, its series of what are essentially animated vignettes flowing beautifully into each other.
In particular, the sequence in which a group of alligators sweep from the shadows to threaten the peace of the villa in which the action takes place has some wonderfully timed comedic moments, which capture the tone of the music, whilst still being a perfect rendition of ballet, is a highlight. Whilst the Silly Symphonies, and indeed much of Disney's early work contained anthropomorphic characters, it is here, arguably that Walt begins to use them best, and the influence on the studio's later films, Robin Hood and Zootopia is clear and obvious here. The segment ends in beautifully orchestrated chaos, and we're back with Taylor.
If The Sorcerer's Apprentice was the reason for this film, then Night on Bald Mountain and the Ave Maria are its masterpieces. It is an astonishing piece of animation and of story telling. and, alongside the underrated The Black Cauldron, it is the darkest and most adult animated Disney ever gets With Bill Tytla's animation of Chernabog, for which Bela Lugosi was intended, and rejected as a reference, we get one of animation's greatest single moments, as he unfurls his wings as the piece rises to its famous opening horn section. It is dark and unsettling, and for a studio that have always shied away from religious imagery, it is remarkably close to the bone-Disney would not come as close to this in its depiction of religion and, indeed hell until the 1990s with The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
But it is also a triumph of artistry; the influence of the German Expressionists is writ large, especially the lighting on Chernabog himself and the slightly crooked appearance of the entire town section, whilst the animation is almost deliberately the anti-thesis of much of what the rest of the film uses-extremes of colour, with shadows, heavy blacks and ghostly whites, the sickly yellow of Chernabog's eyes, giving way to lurid and almost neon-ish flames, and almost enjoyably grotesque. Chernabog is Max Schreck Nosferatu on colossal scale, whilst his followers and underlings are twisted and strange creatures that one barely recognises as Disney, at some points closer to the sort of creatures that would haunt a fairground darkride.
Chernabog stands triumphant, his underlings and the damned returning to Hell. And then, a bell tolls, echoed by successive blooms of light across the demon and his followers, from which they cower. The dead slowly drift back to their graves in pearlescent white, the camera pans up to Chernabog once again becoming the peak of the nearby mountain, and the dawn slowly breaks across a misty landscape, as the indistinct figures of monks move across the landscape, lit only by lanterns, eventually reaching a ruined abbey. Together, the two parts of this section are as close to Disney ever comes as a director, as a studio, to perfection, the emotional journey of an entire Disney film, the triumph of good over evil, of light over dark, rendered in wordless perfection, in barely fifteen minutes. It is Disney at their finest. The sun rises, a new day begins, the Ava Maria fades, and the film fades to black.
Fantasia is unique among Disney's works. Never again would the studio risk such a venture, with the film nearly making Disney bankrupt, and the studio only surviving through work for the war effort, and a series of comparatively low budget films, some of which refined the animation techniques of Fantasia or that were already in production alongside it. Never again, at least in Walt's lifetime, would the studio make a film as effortless beautiful, or abstract, or entirely given to simply exploring the possibilities of animation, and even the eventual sequel, released at the turn of the millennium, simply pays homage, whilst showing some of Disney's new tricks
It stands today, simply, as the pinnacle of the films made under Disney, a series of tonepoems, of visual and music indelibly entwined, of the greatest Western animation studio at this point let loose to tell eight stories for eight pieces of classical music. Perhaps, even before the film grew its huge audience in subsequent re-releases, together with its colossal influence over animation as a medium, Walt himself knew that Fantasia was a one-off, unique. As he himself commented,
"Fantasia’ is timeless. It may run 10, 20 or 30 years. It may run after I’m gone. ‘Fantasia’ is an idea in itself. I can never build another ‘Fantasia.’ I can improve. I can elaborate. that''s all"
So here's a thing about my childhood. I imagine you readers, whatever age you are, you, rather inevitably, grew up, at least if you live or lived in the English speaking world, with the works of Walt Disney. In the 91 years since Mickey Mouse first appeared on cinema screens in New York City, Disney has not only become part of the cultural landscape of cinema in their animated and live action films, but has practically become multiplex cinema itself with its vicelike grip upon the blockbuster market and its increasing monopoly upon the medium at its most populist. At least, most of us did.
For, whilst the Disney Renaissance, complete with a vanguard of toys, tie-ins, CDs and the like, rolled through early 90s cinema, leaving box-office records and countless plaudits in their wake, I was devouring books as a child, including the majority of the fairytales that practically form the backbone to the Disney brand, watching more home grown animation, including the work of Nick Park and Franco-Belgian comic book artists, Uderzo and Goscinny, and their creation, Asterix the Gaul and his miscellaneous animated adventures.
To say our house was without Disney entirely, is, perhaps, however, incorrect-my parents certainly regarded, and indeed regard Disney as a lowest common denominator example of Americanisation of culture-an entirely fair thing to say given, for example, Disney's aggressively American and in particular aggressively American expansionist approach during, and indeed after, Walt's reign at the company, from the disastrous launch of EuroDisney against the French ethos, to their modern expansion into both China and India as untapped markets.However, for whatever reason, two films slipped the net, and became mainstays on our VHS, then DVD rack. The first, Sword in the Stone, a 1963 adaption of TH White's Arthurian novel of the same name, is a reasonably competent example of Disney's sketchier style, better seen in both 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book, though it lacks either's sense of fun, or indeed reputation, probably now most famous for its wizard's duel and being the final film released during Disney's own lifetime. And then, of course, there is Fantasia, a film that stands as arguably their finest piece of cinema as pure art.
But before we get into Fantasia, both as a collection of animated shorts, all set to famous classical pieces of music, and as a cohesive whole, we need to go back, to understand this film in context, for even today, Fantasia is something of a one-off in the Disney canon. It's 1936, and Disney, already hard at work on the upcoming Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that will prove the turning point from Disney the director of amusing slapstick shorts to Disney the serious film-maker, Disney the artist, turns back to the mouse that got him to this point. Having already used the Silly Symphonies, where whimsical scenarios are accompanied by music, he wants to try something altogether more artistic. As Michael Barrier writes in Hollywood Cartoons, Disney's aim was clear, and it is an ethos that eventually underpins the entirety of Fantasia. To quote Walt directly:
"We will have more Silly Symphonies in which sheer fantasy unfolds to a musical pattern: this was the idea originally behind them. In the future, we will make a larger number of dance-pattern symphonies. Action controlled by a musical pattern has great charm in the realm of unreality"
Walt wanted, in short, a more artistic take on this format, and for this, he paired Mickey, already an iconic character, but in need of a boost in popularity, and Ducas's symphonic poem, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. A chance encounter with Leopold Stokowski, the conductor of the major Philadelphia Orchestra later, with Stokowski not only offering to conduct for free, but aiding Disney and his animators in the entire process of animation, with his ideas on how each part of the orchestra could be shown in the finished film's animation. Indeed, with The Sorcerer's Apprentice there was a sense of prestige, from the team assembled to animate being composed of the best that Disney had to offer, to the no-expense spared recording of an entire 85 piece orchestra for the short. There was just one problem.
Money.
With the short running to $125,000, four times that of the normal short, and with its experimental nature making the film itself risky to release for fear of low box office returns, so the short eventually began to evolve into the idea of an animated concert, with several shorts, of differing styles and subjects put together into a program, with ideas as varied as the eventual prehistoric-set Sacre du Printempts sequence and a button being produced to a piece by Paganini discussed, until, little by little the concert began to take shape, and eventually gained the title Fantasia. With over 1000 artists working on the piece, which contains a staggering 500 animated characters (for comparison, 2013's Frozen has around 250), Disney's key aim was simple-use his mixture of animation and classical music to bring several pieces to the masses who would usually have "walked out on this kind of stuff." Whilst the film was not a resounding critical or commercial success, in part due to a small thing called World War II, the film is still arguably the height of Disney the artist as opposed to Disney the filmmaker.
Fantasia, thus, in short, is a selection of animated shorts, beginning with the abstract Toccata and Fugue in D Minor accompanying abstract but beautiful animation, followed by The Nutcracker Suite, in which the seasons change, with fairies, fish, and even mushrooms dancing, and the piece that started the entire concept, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Following this, to Stravinksy's strident Rite of Spring, comes a history of the earth, including the dinosaurs that Walt himself suggested be included, and then a live action section, after an intermission(!), in which we get a brief jazz jam, and then an explanation of sound rendered as animation. Back to the animated sections, and a Greco-Roman scene scored to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, followed by the equally comic Dance of the Hours. And then comes the film's other iconic moment, the spectacular finale of Night on Bald Mountain and Schubert's Ave Maria, in which the Devil, Chernabog summons evil and dead spirits, only to be driven back by the Ave Maria and morning.
Fantasia itself begins much like a concert-almost the entire first two minutes are simply silhouetted performers entering the stage and tuning up, and with this film initially released as a road-show, by the time master of ceremonies (and musical critic) Deem Taylor enters the picture, introduces the concept of the film, as the work of artists, not of musicians, and the three types of classical music accompanying the animation, it may have felt like a night at the concert hall. Taylor lays out the Toccata and Fugue's abstract concept, as he does for every subsequent piece. The segue from the concert footage to the film itself is done subtly, with the background around Stokowski changing colour in time to the music, and a second sequence in which the orchestra's various instruments are seen in silhouette, which cleverly introduce the various instruments, moving back and forth between these two sequences for this piece of absolute music before a transformation to full animation. It's a surprisingly moody opening, almost in the style of the heavily shadowed German expressionism.
Certainly, alone among the film's sequences, and positively unique in Disney as a whole is the purely abstract-even The Nutcracker, which immediately follows this, has recognisable objects and creatures as its stars, rather than colour and movement. In places, particular instruments-the violins, for example, or the brass, are represented by moving groups of colour, up or down, or side to side, or colour to colour, or shape to shape as the music flows-it, in places, looks like the work of Kandinsky and other abstract painters, dominated, as Kandinsky's work was by lines and blocks and areas of colour, elsewhere it is an art all of its own, the minds of Disney's animators completely unfettered from the figurative, as various sequences play back and forth, various visuals accompanying each element of the piece of music, from celestial clouds to beams of light to explosions of sparks and colour in time with cascading chords. The animation fades, in a skillful match of animation and live action, and we return to our master of ceremonies.
These in-between sections are, in essence, Disney giving a potted history of the piece, and they work nicely. The Nutcracker Suite is far more typical of Disney's animation of the period, full of faeries slowly bringing the forest around them to life, and, whilst sharing a few visual tricks with the previous sequence, is perhaps overly familiar-it's easy to imagine this, with lower quality animation (at least for Disney) ending up in a A Silly Symphony. That said, it is still an enjoyable sequence-the animation work, for example, has a pleasing solidity to it, and its easy to see the increasing ambition of Disney's animators in showing the natural world around them that would come to the fore in Bambi less than two years later, not to mention the visual complexity of some of the shots in showing, what, in essence is animated ballet, albeit beautifully rendered. What it does perfectly is to create a mood of the changing seasons, with the sequence of the falling leaves among my favourite moments in the film, adding a sense of grandeur and grace to the change of the year.
Back to the concert, and cue Mickey. As the genesis of the entire Fantasia concept, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is, alongside the finale, the highlight of this entire concept, rendering Mickey as comic mime and apprentice to Yen Sid (as this character has subsequently been dubbed, particularly by the Japanese videogame Kingdom Hearts (my, uh, actual entry point into Disney fandom). It's a pitch perfect bit of slapstick comedy, musical drama, and the melding of animation and score is simply sublime-even in a film that has all manner of visually impressive moments, Sorcerer has its own, with the dreaming mouse playing the very stars and constellations in accompaniment. the animation on the crashing waves is nothing short of spectacular.
The fun is only just beginning, however, as the sequence to cut back to the now flooded castle as Mickey's attempts to save time with magic only leads to chaos, and, in a surprisingly brutal moment for Disney, Mickey taking an axe to the unfortunate broom. This only makes this worse-in a brilliant double-take-that then sees Mickey trampled by a broom army, who by now begin to flood the entire castle. Not only is a great comedic and indeed dramatic scene, but the pure number of animated figures on screen is spectacular, until the Sorcerer reappears, and ends the chaos. Now penitent, Mickey returns to work, and promptly appears in the live action segment, to thank the conductor, and end what is perhaps his single greatest moment of celluloid.
If there is one unsung section of Fantasia, it is Rite of Spring-not only is this sequence, far more than most, Disney's own idea, but certainly, in a film that skews to the lighter side, is certainly its darkest and most serious alongside Bald Mountain. It is Disney at his most scientific, in a film otherwise driven by flights of fancy, as the film cuts to animation and the Rite begins-that a piece of music that incited riots on its premiere less than three decades before Fantasia's release, (and only a decade after its American premiere) indicates that Disney was both forward-looking and bold enough to use a piece that still seems remarkably avant-garde today.
The other masterstroke is combining the strident and chaotic nature of the Rite with the chaotic formation and history of our own planet, the slow woodwinds giving way, as we reach earth to the stabbing staccatos of volcanic eruptions, magma pools, earthquakes and other natural phenomena, the agitated and discordant accompanying the violent creation on-screen. The violence of this sequence gives way to the formation of life, phantasmagorical as it is, with the passing millions of years done in neat sweeps, our camera following one creature as it evolves, and eventually makes land, as the age of Dinosaurs and other reptiles dawns, in a sequence of surprising savagery. And then comes arguably the sequence's most famous moment-whilst most of the dinosaurs are comparatively portrayed as dumb and somewhat brutish-not to mention somewhat inaccurate by modern standards, as the chaos begins to return to the Rite, the dinosaurs all turn and look at something off screen. The camera pivots
A flash of lighting, and into the action storms the Tyrannosaurus Rex-if one film made this creature an icon, it may well be this-the fight may be a more savage version of the 1925 The Lost World, but paired with Stravinski, it is breathtaking and brutal, with the T-Rex becoming the victor over a hapless Stegosaurus. A change of sequence, and with a drought, the dinosaurs simply begin to drop where they stand, or become fatally trapped in the sand, with the sequence ending on a surprisingly downcast ending, lit in hellish red, until with a final chaotic ending, the earth itself begins to collapse and shudder, as the water from which life first arrived returns with a triumphant crash, and surprisingly impressionistic water. We are left with a final longshot of the earth, and then an intermission, as the film returns to live action, the orchestra walk off, and the curtain closes.
Go on. Go get a cup of tea. Stretch your legs
Done?
Where were we?
The curtains reopen, the orchestra slowly returns, and from the tune up, we get jazz, with the only sequence shot with the orchestra in its entirety, followed by a smartly done bit of animation, in which the very sound waves of miscellaneous instruments are beautifully rendered across the screen. Following this is Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and its Greco-Roman setting. The Pastoral is, once again, beautifully rendered Disney animation, but perhaps also the slightest of the segments, and certainly that which floats closest to being typically cutey Disney fare, particularly when compared to the surrounding pieces more impressionistic and certainly more cutting edge, as adorably rendered Pegasus give way to equally sweetly rendered centaurs and cherubs.
It is also the only sequence subsequently cut, as two obviously-and in modern sensibilities, jarringly- racist shots, both of black centaurette serving girls have been removed from the film as far back as the 1960s. Nevertheless, it is still a well-crafted mix of animation and music, and certainly the storm and coming of night at the end of the section, with its strongly impressionist and surprisingly muted pallet-with characters often shot as silhouette against the elements, is still visually impressive. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the weakest sequence of the entire film, and in my humble opinion, the only one that drags.
Following this is The Dance of the Hours, a beautifully rendered, if still obviously balletic sequence featuring miscellaneous groups of animals representing the various times of day as the piece progresses. Dance of the Hours is the formula of Pastoral done right-a highly energetic piece, beautifully animated, and at once a neat mix of the artistic, the comedic and a clear love of ballet, with various performers, including various ballerinas, used as references for the sequence. Certainly, the piece captures, at once, the languid flow, and sudden energy of the piece in all the ways that the Pastoral sequence fails to, its series of what are essentially animated vignettes flowing beautifully into each other.
In particular, the sequence in which a group of alligators sweep from the shadows to threaten the peace of the villa in which the action takes place has some wonderfully timed comedic moments, which capture the tone of the music, whilst still being a perfect rendition of ballet, is a highlight. Whilst the Silly Symphonies, and indeed much of Disney's early work contained anthropomorphic characters, it is here, arguably that Walt begins to use them best, and the influence on the studio's later films, Robin Hood and Zootopia is clear and obvious here. The segment ends in beautifully orchestrated chaos, and we're back with Taylor.
If The Sorcerer's Apprentice was the reason for this film, then Night on Bald Mountain and the Ave Maria are its masterpieces. It is an astonishing piece of animation and of story telling. and, alongside the underrated The Black Cauldron, it is the darkest and most adult animated Disney ever gets With Bill Tytla's animation of Chernabog, for which Bela Lugosi was intended, and rejected as a reference, we get one of animation's greatest single moments, as he unfurls his wings as the piece rises to its famous opening horn section. It is dark and unsettling, and for a studio that have always shied away from religious imagery, it is remarkably close to the bone-Disney would not come as close to this in its depiction of religion and, indeed hell until the 1990s with The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
But it is also a triumph of artistry; the influence of the German Expressionists is writ large, especially the lighting on Chernabog himself and the slightly crooked appearance of the entire town section, whilst the animation is almost deliberately the anti-thesis of much of what the rest of the film uses-extremes of colour, with shadows, heavy blacks and ghostly whites, the sickly yellow of Chernabog's eyes, giving way to lurid and almost neon-ish flames, and almost enjoyably grotesque. Chernabog is Max Schreck Nosferatu on colossal scale, whilst his followers and underlings are twisted and strange creatures that one barely recognises as Disney, at some points closer to the sort of creatures that would haunt a fairground darkride.
Chernabog stands triumphant, his underlings and the damned returning to Hell. And then, a bell tolls, echoed by successive blooms of light across the demon and his followers, from which they cower. The dead slowly drift back to their graves in pearlescent white, the camera pans up to Chernabog once again becoming the peak of the nearby mountain, and the dawn slowly breaks across a misty landscape, as the indistinct figures of monks move across the landscape, lit only by lanterns, eventually reaching a ruined abbey. Together, the two parts of this section are as close to Disney ever comes as a director, as a studio, to perfection, the emotional journey of an entire Disney film, the triumph of good over evil, of light over dark, rendered in wordless perfection, in barely fifteen minutes. It is Disney at their finest. The sun rises, a new day begins, the Ava Maria fades, and the film fades to black.
Fantasia is unique among Disney's works. Never again would the studio risk such a venture, with the film nearly making Disney bankrupt, and the studio only surviving through work for the war effort, and a series of comparatively low budget films, some of which refined the animation techniques of Fantasia or that were already in production alongside it. Never again, at least in Walt's lifetime, would the studio make a film as effortless beautiful, or abstract, or entirely given to simply exploring the possibilities of animation, and even the eventual sequel, released at the turn of the millennium, simply pays homage, whilst showing some of Disney's new tricks
It stands today, simply, as the pinnacle of the films made under Disney, a series of tonepoems, of visual and music indelibly entwined, of the greatest Western animation studio at this point let loose to tell eight stories for eight pieces of classical music. Perhaps, even before the film grew its huge audience in subsequent re-releases, together with its colossal influence over animation as a medium, Walt himself knew that Fantasia was a one-off, unique. As he himself commented,
"Fantasia’ is timeless. It may run 10, 20 or 30 years. It may run after I’m gone. ‘Fantasia’ is an idea in itself. I can never build another ‘Fantasia.’ I can improve. I can elaborate. that''s all"
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