Movie – Fantasia

Movie – Fantasia

Score : 9/10

Year : 1940* 

Director:  multiple**

Cinematography: James Wong Howe (only for the live-action part) ; multiple artists**

Music: multiple**, Classical 

Country: USA

Language: English (presentations, the rest is only instrumental)

Duration: 2h00 (French dvd, used as reference in this review) ; IMDB 2h05

Writers: multiple**

Disney's animated fantasy movie Fantasia is divided into 8 segments, including an intermission, and where each segment is introduced, live-action, by Deems Taylor.

Leopolod Stokowski conducts the orchestra in all pieces, which are played closely enough to the originals to be recognised, but with some variations. 

** for details about directors, artists, writers, and more about the composes, in imdb (hyperlink in the movie title) 

Also of note, there are at least 5 different cuts, with duration around 1h55-2h05 for each, except for the 1942 re-release, marked at 1h20. This doesn't count Pal speed-up on vhs and dvd's outside of USA. 

The movie blends imagined stories, where 7 of these segments are set to Western classical music, with hand-drawn art, set to match the chosen compositions - which are played either in full (such as the very first, by Bach), or in part (such as Beethoven's). 

Each segment has one of three types of music pieces: 

those which tells a story ;

those with pictures, but without a specific plot, and

music for its own sake

After a short introduction during which the musicians take seat and Taylor explains the purpose of the movie, the segments start. 

Images for the first segment, with Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor (BWV565)  as soundtrack, and which is my favorite Bach piece, start with the musicians and conductor are shown in half-light half-shadow, and over the course of this piece, become animated, just like the instruments, into notes and moving lines, becoming gradually something else.

After Bach mentioned above, the rest of the segments are all animated from their start, each telling a different story, either a definite plot, or something more surreal or abstract in tales, set to the following musical program : 

• Selections of Tchakovsky's Nutracker suite, with scenes of changing seasons, and a series of dances ; 
• Paul Dukas' The sorcerer's apprentice, is based in a poem by Goethe from 1797, but where Mickey Mouse is an apprentice who sets a broom to carry his water buckets ; 
• Stravinsky's Rite of spring, has interesting imagery of Earth's prehistory, up to the dinosaur's extinction - before science understood the cause ; 

Just over an hour into the movie, it goes into  a small intermission, during which the musicians jam some jazz music, and then Taylor introduces... the soundtrack, personified as a line in the center of the screen, and becomes animated for each instrument. I guess they needed something funny after that extinction? 

Music resumes with...

• a bit over half of Beethoven's Pastorale (Symphony #6), with 22 or so minutes of a very comedic ballet, divided into 4 segments itself. Really, it's surreal and hilarious! 
• The last segment is a mix, both visually and musically. Indeed, it contrasts Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, with Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, where the former is about the evil spirits and death, and the latter is about replacing darkness with light and where minks had towards a cathedral.

Overall, Fantasia is quite enjoyable, very often very funny, or cute. I'm glad to read that the final version I watched (albeit with, I assume, a Pal speedup) is the result of some more controversial pieces which were taken away, such as racially offensive ones. The music is usually close enough to the original that you can enjoy the sound for itself, too, and the visuals are an amazing piece of work - that required years, and probably a lot of head-calculations to match images to sounds, including highs and lows, and thus are an astonishing technical achievement of a huge staff. 

However, the finale is uneven in quality, both to its own 2 parts, and to the rest of the movie. indeed, the arrangement of Ave Maria lacks in depth, and imagery is less interesting than the rest of the movie in its entirety. I personally would have place dit much earlier, to gradually improve, but I can imagine the reason behind this choice is to finish with a note of religiosity.

There are, however, two counter-balancing points to this ending :

Something highly blasphemous part in the first segment with Mickey Mouse, and a pro-science part with the dino's. 

These and the sheer amount of work, laughs and originality in this project keep the overall score to 9/10, highly recommended!