Walt Disney’s third animated function, 1940’s Fantasia, was a watershed second in American cinema. The studio’s first two animated motion pictures – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio – had been groundbreaking, and financially dangerous, works that had wowed audiences and been huge industrial successes. Unwilling to relaxation on his laurels, Walt Disney envisioned Fantasia as a brand new sort of film – a collection of kaleidoscopic and vivid animated sequences set to landmark classical music items, bringing excessive artwork to the plenty. After Fantasia, animation was by no means the identical once more.
But all of it started due to Walt’s attachment to a sure cartoon mouse. Round 1936, Walt grew to become satisfied that Mickey Mouse – the character whom he had co-created with Ub Iwerks in 1928 – was in want of a popularity-boosting automobile. Walt come across casting Mickey because the everyman hero in an adaptation of Paul Dukas’ 1897 symphonic poem, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (itself based mostly on Wolfgang van Goethe’s 1797 poem).
Hearken to the Fantasia soundtrack on Spotify or Apple Music now.
After buying the rights to make use of the music, the charismatic British conductor Leopold Stokowski – then an enormous identify in American classical music – pushed the mission to a different stage. “Well, that’s what started it. I was doing The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Mickey Mouse, and I happened to have dinner one night with Stokowski,” Walt later reminisced. “And Stokowski said, ‘Oh I would love to conduct that for you.’ Well, that led to not only doing this one little short subject, but it got us involved where I did all of Fantasia. And before I knew it, I ended up spending 400-and-some-odd thousand dollars getting music with Stokowski. [laughs] But we were in there. That was the point of no return and we went ahead and made it.”
The projected price of constructing The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as a brief, coupled with Walt and Stokowski’s pleasure within the mission meant that it shortly expanded to an eight-part function set to classical items carried out by the Philadelphia Orchestra, for whom Stokowski was music director.
Walt’s profession up to now had been a collection of spectacular gambles. He’d risked every little thing by making Snow White and was rewarded with a large essential and industrial success. However slightly than resting upon his laurels and having fun with his new-found monetary safety, Walt doubled down. He financed the development of a brand new state-of-the-art studio in Burbank, California, and assembled a dream staff of the best expertise in animation. This funding supplied the impetus for a interval of untethered creativity and stimulation, paving the best way for Fantasia.
The standard of the sound recording was essential. The primary session, for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, emphasised the studio’s ambition – a sound stage at Culver Studios needed to be tailored to accommodate the handpicked orchestra of 100 Los Angeles-based session musicians and the coffee-fuelled periods continued via to the wee small hours. Fox Carney of Disney’s Animation Analysis Library later stated “Fantasia was not only an experience of sight but of sound as well. [The film’s tech team developed] a new technique of sound recording and playback, called ‘Fantasound’, [which] was an early precursor to today’s multi-track stereophonic sound systems and would expand upon the immersive abilities of theatrical presentations.”
The music of Fantasia
After an introduction from Deems Taylor, the famed critic and broadcaster who’d labored with Disney and Stokowski on choosing the items to set to animation, Fantasia started with the drama of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata And Fugue In D Minor.” The orchestra are lit from totally different views in a kaleidoscope of colours, creating mesmerizing shadows earlier than animated bolts of sunshine abstractly act out the music in a dreamlike method, influenced by avant-garde European animation. Subsequent, Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite” scores a magical telling of the altering of the seasons, with illuminated fairies, dancing toadstools, floating lilypads, spinning flowers and synchronized fish creating a luxurious ballet of nature.
Fantasia’s centerpiece, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was the sequence that almost all faithfully matched the intentions of its composer, with Mickey Mouse taking part in the apprentice of the magician Yen Sid. When he’s given tiresome chores to do, the cheeky mouse wears Sid’s magical hat, casts a spell over a brush, and lets the magical object do the onerous work for him. Nevertheless, he quickly loses management of the magic and must be bailed out by his elder.
Utilizing Stravinsky’s “Rite Of Spring” exhibits how formidable Disney was. The ballet had proved so controversial it was inflicting riots simply many years beforehand. Now, it was being utilized in a Hollywood animation to soundtrack the evolution of life on Earth. Its highly effective realism is a distinction with the world of unicorns, centaurs, and decadent feasts soundtracked by Beethoven’s “The Pastoral Symphony.”
The comedian ballet sequence for “Dance Of The Hours” by Anilcare Ponchielli was one other first for Disney, as he later stated, “While ballet has inspired many beautiful works of art, it had scarcely been touched upon in the field of animation. In fact, our animators knew very little about it. And because a thorough knowledge of a subject is essential in order to caricature it; a new course was added to our studio school curriculum – classical ballet.” At Disney’s insistence, the animators gained an appreciation for ballet which allowed them to present the solid of ostriches and hippos a convincing – and within the case of the latter, unlikely – magnificence.
The pairing of “Night On Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky and “Ave Maria” by Franz Schubert supplied Fantasia with a spectacular finale. The sense of terror conjured up by the pairing of the tense first piece and Disney’s depiction of a demon summoning the undead was one thing completely new to animation. And, in ending with a dawn set to the beatific “Ave Maria,” Fantasia leaves us with a message of hope.
The discharge and reception of Fantasia
Fantasia was clearly a groundbreaking masterpiece, but it surely took a while to win the hearts of the general public. Walt initially envisioned it as a hybrid of a movie presentation and live performance and determined the complete two hours and 5 minutes (plus intermission) of Fantasia ought to go on the highway. 13 roadshows have been held throughout the USA, every involving two each day viewings. The primary roadshow opened on the Broadway Theatre, New York Metropolis, in November 1940 and proved an awesome success, as did preliminary viewings nationwide. However prices have been excessive and the onset of the Second World Struggle stalled plans to launch it in Europe.
Variations of Fantasia have been put out over time and, slowly, it grew to become seen as a real traditional, appreciated for the groundbreaking work that it was. The movie lastly went into revenue on its return to cinemas in December 1969, when it was adopted by hippies who dug the psychedelic vibes of the film. When it was lastly launched on VHS in 1992, it grew to become the highest-selling cassette of all time in the USA, promoting 14.2 million copies. Since its launch, Fantasia has not solely grow to be a beloved film, however has impressed numerous youngsters to fall in love with classical music.
Hearken to the Fantasia soundtrack on Spotify or Apple Music now.
