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Fantasia (1940)
For its technical mastery alone, the 1940 Disney classic Fantasia is an uncanny blending of animation and music unlike anything seen up to that point and since. This is a piece of cinema that demands to be experienced and applauded for a singular contribution to the history of cinema.
This film offers six animated interpretations of great classical music in completely distinct forms for each piece of music. The animation styles deal from abstract shapes and colors to actual story set to music. The music is performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski and a brief introduction to each piece is provided by a music critic and composer named Deems Taylor.
Disney must be applauded for the bold choice of only his third feature length animated film as something so out of the box. This seemed like something that the filmmaker would do after earning the reputation to bring a passion project to the screen. Watching this, I had to wonder who the intended demographic for this was, because, despite the animation, a lot of this material was not for children, especially the first couple of pieces which were steeped in the abstract. Taylor's introductions to the films were a little more detailed than necessary, making the film a lot longer than it needed to be.
I did like the fact that Disney had the wisdom to choose a lot of music that even the most general music lover is familiar with, like the music from The Nutcracker and give the music completely different animated concepts from we expected. I liked that sometimes the animation interpreted the music note by note and other times it just interpreted the mood of what was going on.
The imagery ranges from frightening to humorous to erotic (the images of those female centaurs were surprisingly adult for a 1940 Disney film). Needless to say, production values were first rate, especially sound and sound editing. Appointment viewing for lovers of music and animation. Remade in 1985 and 2000.
For its technical mastery alone, the 1940 Disney classic Fantasia is an uncanny blending of animation and music unlike anything seen up to that point and since. This is a piece of cinema that demands to be experienced and applauded for a singular contribution to the history of cinema.
This film offers six animated interpretations of great classical music in completely distinct forms for each piece of music. The animation styles deal from abstract shapes and colors to actual story set to music. The music is performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski and a brief introduction to each piece is provided by a music critic and composer named Deems Taylor.
Disney must be applauded for the bold choice of only his third feature length animated film as something so out of the box. This seemed like something that the filmmaker would do after earning the reputation to bring a passion project to the screen. Watching this, I had to wonder who the intended demographic for this was, because, despite the animation, a lot of this material was not for children, especially the first couple of pieces which were steeped in the abstract. Taylor's introductions to the films were a little more detailed than necessary, making the film a lot longer than it needed to be.
I did like the fact that Disney had the wisdom to choose a lot of music that even the most general music lover is familiar with, like the music from The Nutcracker and give the music completely different animated concepts from we expected. I liked that sometimes the animation interpreted the music note by note and other times it just interpreted the mood of what was going on.
The imagery ranges from frightening to humorous to erotic (the images of those female centaurs were surprisingly adult for a 1940 Disney film). Needless to say, production values were first rate, especially sound and sound editing. Appointment viewing for lovers of music and animation. Remade in 1985 and 2000.