Fantasia (1940)
.jpg)
Starring: Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor
Honors:
The studio that had brought the world Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and the
myriad of colorful and creative animated characters breaks the mold on the
world of animation as Walt Disney presents Fantasia,
a motion picture that marries classical music with stunning visuals. During
production the film was called “The Concert Feature” and it was meant to be
presented similarly as a traveling concert series. Exhibiting some of the
finest artistic animation, stunning special effects, and a revolutionary new
process of sound recording and mixing that far predates sophisticated stereophonic
sound that would come decades later, this motion picture was no ordinary movie.
A critically misunderstood picture of its time, the feature was would take be
one of many films hurt by the weakened markets due to the war, but would find
great favor with the passage of time as a wonderful piece of cinematic art and mastery
of animation.
Fantasia is an animated
picture presented as an orchestral concert where classical music is matched
with creative animated visuals, ranging from artistic and impressionistic
imagery to straightforward storytelling and whimsical cartoons. The picture
features a collection of eight classic orchestrations composed by the famous musical
maestro Leopold Stokowski with each segment introduced by Deems Taylor, a
popular musical critic of the period.
 |
| The Nutcracker Suite- Disney intentionally created original images fro this segment. |
Each piece, or in a the case of the finale which was two pieces pair
together, is combined with a highly kinetic visual representation of the music
that could either simply give the impression of Technicolor images to represent
the music playing, or set the music to a story either inspired or directly
related to the music itself. A wide arrangement of images and character where
created for the various animated segments from elegant fairies and imaginative
images of the Earth evolving through the ages, to fanciful anthropomorphic
animals dancing a ballet and even a segment starring Disney’s greatest star
Mickey Mouse.
The film contains no definite, overarching storyline as it is presented
in a style of a formal orchestra concert which begins with the orchestra
entering, taking their places, and even testing their instruments, while also
containing an intermission, but simply ends with the final number with no real
credits. It may be abrupt in conclusion, but its representation of a concert is
true to the inspirational source as the film as a cinematic concert, more than
a common narrative based motion picture.
This creation of Walt Disney was a dramatic variation on what audiences
came to expect from his animated productions, let alone the average movie
watching experience. In a period filled with black and white images of actors,
crude (non-Disney) cartoons, and monaural sound, Disney and his talented
artists burst through the doors of the cinematic word to present a motion
picture that literally explodes on the screen, through a new sophisticated
sound system that surrounds the audience, and combines the world of the simple
cartoon with the more high class-thought of world of classical orchestral
concerts.
Studio mind Walt Disney was never one to lie on the laurels of what was
already working for him, his studio, or his pocket book. Instead he always
invest his earning to further push the boundaries of what his artists could
achieve in the medium of motion pictures and animation. He was the first to
produce a talking cartoon, the first full Technicolor cartoon, the first full
length feature animated feature, and with Fantasia
he would push the boundaries of sound and the overall experience of going to
the theater.
 |
| Mickey Mouse re-invented with a new look that would become a new classic. |
The genesis of Fantasia goes
back to Walt Disney’s original star, Mickey Mouse. Mickey exploded on the
silver screen back in 1928 and had long been a staple of the Disney studio, but
time would weaken the appeal of the studio’s original cash cow that was losing
some of his thunder to even Donald Duck. Since the initial success of Mickey Disney,
the man, had moved his attention to big and better things; first to his “Silly
Symphonies” shorts to the feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1938 Walt wanted to bring a new
life to his star character by featuring a freshened up Mickey in a longer and
more elaborate cartoon and much like his Silly Symphony line of cartoons and
basing its source around a musical piece. The piece would be composer Paul
Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice which was written inspired by a poem, for
which Disney would have Mickey play the title role.
 |
| Yen Sid makes an eyebrow gesture, animators mimicked from Disney himself. |
Disney had mentioned his idea to his new friend, famed composer of the
Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski and Stokowski was excited
enough to help Disney enough to compose the music for free. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
was no average short, as it ran longer than the usual seven to eight minute
length, helped to redesign Mickey Mouse, adding eyes with pupils instead of the
“pie-eyed” character he had always been. Disney’s animators were so pushed to
make this short the best work they ever done at the time that the animators
designed the stern sorcerer in the picture after mannerisms of their boss, Walt
Disney, naming the character “Yen Sid” (Disney spelled backwards) amongst
themselves.
Discussions between Disney and Stokowski about The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice during the production led the two minds to flesh out a new idea and
create a whole line of shorts animated to classical music and run them together
to form a longer show, and the idea of Fantasia
was born.
 |
| Deems Taylor introduces the next piece... |
Stokowski and Disney would choose a handful of orchestral classics to
form a concert for the motion picture theater and Disney hired famed composer
and music critic Deems Taylor to help produce introductions for each segment,
providing a bit of background to the audience setting them up for each number.
Stokowski would record “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with a studio assembled orchestra
before the idea of Fantasia was
structured, but once what was originally entitled “The Concert Feature” was in
motion Stokowski has his Philadelphia Orchestra play the remaining numbers for
the feature.
The talented artists of the Walt Disney Studio would go beyond the
animator’s table in creating the breathtaking images of this picture. Richly
colorful, stylized cinematography and lighting was used for the live action
scenes with the orchestra, Stokowski, and Deems Taylor. The special effects for
the feature are so artistically executed it would rival the creativity of
Industrial Light and Magic which would not be founded for another three and a
half decades. Most of the special effects which including live images, mechanisms,
and various practical creations were recorded and spliced so flawlessly with
the animation the untamed eye would not notice. This art of imaginative creations
would have been lost in time as records were only kept by one Disney artist in
personal notebooks and not unearthed for many decades later revealing the movie
magic used in many of the best sequences of the picture.
All the hard work and animation literally led to the very last hour as
the final segments of the picture were needed to be reshot due to
complications, a process that took days, and immediately put on an airplane and
flown directly to New York City to be spliced into the other reels for the
premiere at the Broadway Theatre.
 |
| Mickey meets Stokowski. |
Along with the animation Disney and Stokowski envisioned a way to recreate
the orchestra sound by surrounding the audience with the music instead of
relying on the usual motion picture sound process. In the recordings sessions multiple
microphones where used throughout the orchestra to capture the sound form
various angles and sound mixers were able to assemble a mix that played back in
the theaters lined with multiple speakers throughout the room. This would
literally make music swell from various parts of the theater giving a sense
that the orchestra surrounded the audience instead of the music being delivered
from simply speakers behind the screen. This process, dubbed by Disney as
“Fanata-sound,” was a precursor to multi-channeled, stereophonic sound, but would
require theaters to assemble new sound system speakers to achieve the desired
effect, something most theater owners saw as pointless novelties.
Fantasia would open in the
same theater that premiered Mickey Mouse in New York and at the theater that
premiered Snow White in Los Angeles. Show business audiences were blown away by
the highly creative, detailed, and technologically superiority that was
displayed on the screen when Fantasia
first premiered. Audiences applauded with every number and Disney, Stokowski
were given a standing ovation. These events were handled like a real concert
with complete with playbills and intermission just as the men dreamt them up.
At first it looked like an artistic and financial success for sure for Walt
Disney.
The film was never meant to be played in wide release, but rather as a
traveling engagement in various cities. Walt Disney envisioned a bill that
would be ever changing, much like any concert series. Fantasia was be in town for an engagement for a time and treated
like a special event before it left, one day perhaps a year or so later to
return with some new segments along with some old.
Disney’s distributer, RKO Radio Pictures, was not pleased with this
idea. In a world where war took away international markets and Americans were
expecting similar narratives fairytales as Snow
White or Pinocchio from Disney
they were bored with classical music with no single story lacking goofy,
lovable characters. When RKO saw very low numbers that were to come from Disney’s
original “road show” idea they had editors trim out the live action segments,
due to their slow nature, and had the stereo mix made mono making the film a
completely animated feature with a singular mono track to play in average
theaters to make a wide release in hope to make money. This is the cut that
most people would see and scoff at as a poor product, despite the fact that the
animation alone is spectacular.
 |
| Music critics saw images like this as dumbing down the classics. |
Audiences wanted something different and perhaps less sophisticated
from Disney. Music critics tended to bury both Disney and Stokowski with
attempting to dumb down great classical pieces with Disney’s “childish cartoons.”
The film was a critical and financial failure. It was not the right time for Fantasia as general audiences were not
ready to accept such a feature into their hearts as a piece of cinematic
beauty. It would take many re-releases for Disney to make its money back from
this very expensive production.
Fantasia also marked one of
the few features in which the Walt Disney Company would censor itself years
after its release. In the “Pastoral Symphony” sequence where centaurs and
cantaurettes mingle in a mythical world at the base of Mount Olympus there are
depicted racially-stereotyped black centaurettes serving their white
counterparts. For the 1930s and 40s this was not see controversial, but as the
world transformed in the 1960s Disney Pictures decided it would be best to cut
out these animated pieces of political incorrectness. For the 1969 re-release
editors either zoomed in the frames to cut out the controversial images or
completely eliminated the frames containing these stereotyped creatures. Years
later for home release the stereotypes were painted out by Disney artist,
literally erasing them from existence. It is rare to find recordings of the
original animation since Disney has adopted its own self-censorship of its
classic features, as the company believes they have an image to uphold as
family entertainment in the contemporary age.
 |
| From "Night on Bald Mountain" |
Walt Disney for a very short period held out for hope of his idea of a
feature that was ever changing as he had his animators working of hopeful
future segments to be added to Fantasia in upcoming running of the film. With
World War II literally knocking down the door of the United States and the Walt
Disney Studio turned to greatly serve as a base/studio for the US Armed forces,
ideas changed. These future segments turned into ideas for what would become ideas
for the feature Make Mine Music in
1946, which had two similarly assembled sequels and were referred to as
“package films.”
It was not until 1999 when Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney saw his uncle’s
dream to reality as he produced the official sequel to Walt’s original feature
with the release of Fantasia 2000.
The sequel would play in the general multiplex circuit, but Roy made sure it
ran special road show engagements in large formatted IMAX theaters, both
permanent and temporary structures just for this film, to allow for wider distribution
of the glorious picture. Fantasia 2000
contained seven new sequences and included The Sorcerer’s Apprentice to keep
something old within it, while presenting the picture in a similar style as Fantasia complete with introductions
from celebrities. During the time of the sequels release the original Fantasia was restored, with exception of
the politically incorrect parts, with the full road show format as originally
intended.
Fantasia remains a
masterpiece achievement of animation and cinema. It would be years until
mainstream movie would begin to pick up on stereo sound mixing. Walt Disney had
major dreams for this film, and was quoted as even stating that if he had more
money he wished he would have produced the picture in widescreen, yet another
unnecessary extravagance seen my theaters owners of the time that would become
the norm for all feature films decades later. Fantasia would be named to many all-time best film lists, including
the 1998 list by the American Film Institute. Continually the picture is named as one of the
very best animated features ever produced, and it is easy to see why even
decades later. The picture is a true piece a remarkable art in cinema history
as a film well ahead of its time, a beautiful piece of moving art, imagery, and
sound all rolled up into one marvelous feature to be enjoyed for all time.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment