Fantasia

Fantasia

Along with Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, the anthology set contains a third disc that examines a segment of both movies in detail. Each segment has an introduction that has experts (including Leonard Maltin), producer Roy E. Disney, or the animators setting up the piece's history. Notes on the music and dozens of design photos are included on all the segments, although others offer more intriguing features. Abandoned animation is shown on many segments, as are a few behind-the-scenes shorts; the most intriguing are experts from Walt Disney's hosted documentaries on how his company made movies. As for the photos, they are awkwardly catalogued and only the most patient of viewers would want to look at all of them. In some segments, though, these images are entertainingly produced as a "story reel," presenting these images--rough animation, sketches, pastel paintings--with the musical accompaniment. For those looking for a more well-rounded view of the films, the two one-hour documentaries on each film's disc lay the groundwork, but none of the anthology looks at how the first film was seen through the years or gives time to anyone who wasn't gung-ho about every element of the films. There is hardly a mention of embarrassing stereotypes that were matted (and still are) out of the "Pastoral" segment, or the intriguing aspect of the film as a '60s icon for the ultimate head-trip. Disney does let their guard down to show sequences that were being readied in 1940 for future editions (including a recently restored short scored to "Clair de Lune"). Most tantalizing is a look at how the special effects were done in the original film. The guide is a scrapbook that one of the technicians kept and was discovered only in 1990. Fans can only hope a reproduction will be made available someday. --Doug Thomas

Production: Walt Disney Productions
  8 wins & 1 nomination.
 
IMDB:
7.8
Rotten Tomatoes:
96%
G
Year:
1940
125
5,158 Views

Narrator (Deems Taylor):
[First Lines and Introduction to "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"] How do you do? Uh, my name is Deems Taylor, and it's my very pleasant duty to welcome you here on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski and all the other artists and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia. What you're going to see are the designs and pictures and stories that music inspired in the minds and imaginations of a group of artists. In other words, these are not going to be the interpretations of trained musicians, which I think is all to the good. Now, there are three kinds of music on this Fantasia program. First, there's the kind that tells a definite story. Then there's the kind, that while it has no specific plot, does paint a series of more or less definite pictures. Then there's a third kind, music that exists simply for its own sake. Now, the number that opens our Fantasia program, the Toccata and Fugue, is music of this third kind, what we call absolute music. Even the title has no meaning beyond a description of the form of the music. What you will see on the screen is a picture of the various abstract images that might pass through your mind if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you're more or less conscious of the orchestra, so our picture opens with a series of impressions of the conductor and the players. Then the music begins to suggest other things to your imagination. They might be, oh, just masses of color. Or they may be cloud forms. Or great landscapes or vague shadows or... geometrical objects floating in space. So now we present the Toccata and Fugue In D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, interpreted in pictures by Walt Disney and his associates, and in music by The Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski.

Narrator (Deems Taylor):
[Introduction to "Rite of Spring"] When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet, The Rite of Spring... [a crashing chime sound is heard] I repeat, when Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet, The Rite of Spring, his purpose was, in his own words, to "express primitive life." And so Walt Disney and his fellow artists have take him at the word. Instead of presenting the ballet in its original form, as a simple series of tribal dances, they have visualized it as a pageant, as the story of the growth of life on Earth. And that story, as you're going to see it, isn't the product of anybody's imagination. It's a coldly accurate reproduction of what science thinks went on during the first few billion years of this planet's existence. Science, not art, wrote the scenario of this picture. According to science, the first living things here were single-celled organisms, tiny little white or green blobs of nothing in particular that lived under the water. And then, as the ages passed, the oceans began to swarm with all kinds of marine creatures. Finally, after about a billion years, certain fish, more ambitious than the rest, crawled up on land and became the first amphibians. And then, several hundred million years ago, nature went off on another tack and produced the dinosaurs. Now, the name "dinosaur" comes from two Greek words meaning "terrible lizard", and they certainly were all of that. They came in all shapes and sizes, from little, crawling horrors about the size of a chicken to hundred-ton nightmares. They were not very bright. Even the biggest of them had only the brain of a pigeon. They lived in the air and the water as well as on land. As a rule, they were vegetarians, rather amiable and easy to get along with. However, there were bullies and gangsters among them. The worst of the lot, a brute named Tyrannosaurus Rex was probably the meanest killer that ever roamed the earth. The dinosaurs were lords of creation for about 200 million years. And then... Well, we don't exactly know what happened. Some scientists think that great droughts and earthquakes turned the whole world into a gigantic dustbowl. In any case, the dinosaurs were wiped out. That is where our story ends. Where it begins is at a time infinitely far back, when there was no life at all on earth. Nothing but clouds of steam, boiling seas and exploding volcanoes. So now, imagine yourselves out in space billions and billions of years ago, looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet, spinning through an empty sea of nothingness.


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