Reel Classics: Fantasia

A few days ago (as I write this) my daugh­ter told me of a dream she had.  I was pre­sent­ing her with a VHS copy of the Walt Disney ani­mat­ed fea­ture Fantasia.  That led to our rem­i­nisc­ing about sit­ting in the liv­ing room when she was a young child and watch­ing my VHS copy of the film.  I have always loved that film from the time I first watched it on Disney’s tele­vi­sion show when I was a child.  I have seen it in the­atres in California, New Orleans, and at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington.  And yes, I still have a copy of it on VHS. 

All this rem­i­nisc­ing led to me choos­ing Fantasia as the Reel Classic for this edi­tion.  Fantasia was released in 1940 by Walt Disney Productions and is an ani­mat­ed musi­cal anthol­o­gy.  There are eight seg­ments con­sist­ing of clas­si­cal music pieces con­duct­ed by the famous Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Those pieces include selec­tions from The Nutcracker Suite, Ave Maria, Night on Bald Mountain, and the infa­mous The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (fea­tur­ing Mickey Mouse). 

Fantasia was unique for its time in that it com­bined clas­si­cal music and art in the form of ani­ma­tion to bring to life the images to the pop­u­la­tion at large.  The film was the first American film to use stereo­phon­ic sound.  Animation in 1940 was very dif­fer­ent from today’s com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed ani­ma­tion.  Over one thou­sand artists and tech­ni­cians were uti­lized to bring this film to the screen.  There are more than five hun­dred ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters in the film.

A cou­ple of well-known fig­ures were used as mod­els for a cou­ple of the char­ac­ters appear­ing in Fantasia.  Bela Lugosi served as the mod­el for the demon in Night on Bald Mountain.  He report­ed­ly spent sev­er­al days at the Disney stu­dio pro­vid­ing “demon-like” pos­es for the illus­tra­tors.  They uti­lized his man­ner­isms and expres­sions in cre­at­ing the char­ac­ter of the “god of evil” from Slavonic mythology. 

A sec­ond famous indi­vid­ual was Walt Disney him­self.  Animators told that they secret­ly mod­eled the Sorcerer after Disney.  A key clue was report­ed­ly the raised eye­brow — some­thing Disney was known for in the stu­dio.  They named the Sorcerer Yen Sid — Disney spelled backwards. 

Walt Disney told the sto­ry of a lucky meet­ing with Leopold Stokowski while din­ing at a restau­rant.  He told Stokowski of an idea to uti­lize clas­si­cal music pieces as music for an ani­mat­ed fea­ture (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and was sur­prised at Stokowski’s response: “I would like to con­duct that for you.” 

Needless to say, Disney imme­di­ate­ly took him up on the offer.  At the time, Stokowski was one of the two most famous con­duc­tors in the coun­try (Arturo Toscanini was the oth­er).    Disney also brought on Deems Taylor (music crit­ic and com­pos­er) to serve as the mas­ter of cer­e­monies and to intro­duce each segment.

Surrealist artist Salvador Dali (my favorite artist) cre­at­ed some illus­tra­tions for the film.  However, they were not uti­lized.  But some of them did appear in the sequel from 1999, Fantasia 2000. Another inter­est­ing tid­bit is with regard to the Chinese Dance in The Nutcracker Suite. There is a scene where Hop Low, the mush­room, does a jump while criss­cross­ing his legs.  Reportedly the ani­ma­tor, Art Babbitt, took that move from Curly Howard of The Three Stooges — one of his basic routines. 

It is not uncom­mon at all to find scenes in films from the 30s and 40s that were lat­er deemed racist or a neg­a­tive stereo­type.  Fantasia had such a scene.  In the seg­ment Pastoral Symphony there is a char­ac­ter named Sunflower, a Centuarette (female cen­taur).  She is a com­bi­na­tion of don­key and a young Black girl who essen­tial­ly serves as a ser­vant to the oth­er Centaurettes.  In the 1969 re-release of the film her scenes were delet­ed from the film due to the racist por­tray­al.  In the sub­se­quent re-release in 1990 the scenes were restored but Sunflower was cropped out of the scenes.  However, Sunflower has been the focus of many crit­ics and schol­ars dis­cussing the por­tray­al of minori­ties in film.

Fantasia opened in thir­teen cities across the United States. Theatres had to be equipped with “Fantasound” equip­ment to accom­mo­date the stereo­phon­ic sound­track.  This was quite expen­sive, as were the pro­duc­tions costs.  World War II also kept the film from the European the­atres and impact­ed rev­enues.  It did not make a prof­it.  In fact, it was con­sid­ered a box-office fail­ure.  However, ini­tial­ly the film did well.  In New York the film ran for 57 weeks.  At the Los Angeles pre­mière 5,000 peo­ple attend­ed includ­ing such famous names as Shirley Temple, Cecil B. DeMille, James Cagney, and Edgar Bergen (no men­tion of Charlie McCarthy).

Critics were com­pli­men­ta­ry of the film.  Edwin Schallert, crit­ic for the Los Angeles Times iden­ti­fied Fantasia as a mag­nif­i­cent achieve­ment and a land­mark film.  He described it as “caviar to the gen­er­al, ambrosia and nec­tar for the intel­li­gentsia” and “coura­geous beyond belief.”  The music crit­ic for the same paper described it as a “dream of a sym­pho­ny con­cert” and an “enor­mous­ly var­ied con­cert of pic­to­r­i­al ideas.”  Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote “motion-pic­ture his­to­ry was made last night . . . Fantasia dumps con­ven­tion­al for­mu­las over­board and reveals the scope of films for imag­i­na­tive excur­sion . . . Fantasia . . . is sim­ply ter­rif­ic.” Disney and Stokowski were both recip­i­ents of an “Honorary Award” at the Oscars for the use of music in the film.  Stokowski’s read, “For their unique achieve­ment in the cre­ation of a new form of visu­al­ized music . . . there­by widen­ing the scope of the motion pic­ture as enter­tain­ment and as an art form.”

Over the years  the film has been re-released mul­ti­ple times and has proven to be a prof­itable endeav­or.  It was re-released in 1969 and pro­mot­ed to attract the teens and col­lege stu­dents who per­ceived it as a “psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence.”  Disney cap­i­tal­ized on this by pro­mot­ing Fantasia with a psy­che­del­ic themed poster.  Animator Ollie Johnston stat­ed that young folks “thought we were on a trip when we made it . . . every time we’d go to talk to a school or some­thing, they’d ask us what we were on.” It appeared in art hous­es through the mid-seventies.

More recent reviews have also been very pos­i­tive.  The crit­ics con­sen­sus on the Rotten Tomatoes web­site describes Fantasia as “A land­mark in ani­ma­tion (and a huge influ­ence on the medi­um of music video).  Disney’s Fantasia is a relent­less­ly inven­tive blend of the clas­sics with phan­tas­magor­i­cal images.”  TV Guide described it as “the most ambi­tious ani­mat­ed fea­ture ever to come out of the Disney stu­dios.”  They also said that it “inte­grates famous works of clas­si­cal music with wild­ly uneven but extra­or­di­nar­i­ly imag­i­na­tive visu­als that run the gamut from danc­ing hip­pos to the pure­ly abstract.”  Roger Ebert gave the film four of four stars stat­ing “Disney push­es the edges of the envelope.” 

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of Fantasia has led to the devel­op­ment of Disneyland attrac­tions, video games and, as men­tioned above, a sequel enti­tled Fantasia 2000.  The sequel was pro­duced by Walt Disney’s nephew, Roy E. Disney.  It includes music by Beethoven and Stravinsky as well as one of my all-time favorites, Rhapsody In Blue by George Gershwin. It also includes the orig­i­nal seg­ment of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

As with many films we have dis­cussed here at Reel Classics, the suc­cess and admi­ra­tion of the film has grown since the ini­tial release in 1940.  There have been mul­ti­ple reis­sues and it has reached new audi­ences over the years, includ­ing the release on VHS and lat­er DVD.  It has been deter­mined to be the 23^rd high­est gross­ing film of all time in the United States. 

In 1990 Fantasia was select­ed into the National Film Registry for preser­va­tion and in 1998 the American Film Institute list­ed it at #58 on their list of 100 Best American Films. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates Fantasia at 7.7 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics score of 95% and an audi­ence score of 83%.  In search­ing my Roku device I could find no free stream­ing sites nor does the Clark County Public Library have a copy on the shelf.  However, I am sure they will obtain a copy if you ask.

Dancing hip­pos, fly­ing uni­corns, buck­et-car­ry­ing broom­sticks — what more could one ask for on a mid-sum­mer’s night?  I high­ly rec­om­mend that you seek it out and enjoy it.  And, no, I am not giv­ing away my VHS copy.

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.