Fantasia

The runaway success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was massive enough to excuse anyone for thinking they were a new filmmaking god. With this in mind, Walt Disney decided to push the very limits he had set with that film. Pinocchio up-ended fairy tale story-telling only one film after those conventions were created and Fantasia threw out the playbook entirely.

Fantasia is the vision of artistic hubris let loose. I mean that as high praise. Only a lunatic or a genius would think of creating something this sprawling, diverse, and beautiful. Yes, it’s probably a bit pretentious, even wild to think of gaining prestige by animating classical musical pieces, but that ambition and daring is what makes it so appealing. It’s so great because it dares itself to be.

Like the prior films of this era, I first encountered this one during a revival in the early 90s. This was a favorite of mine as a child, I loved that it didn’t have a narrative, but gave me several different ones to chose from. It blew my mind about what a cartoon is, what an animated film looked like, and a deep appreciation for the technique and artistry involved. For a brief period of time I wanted to become an animator for the company, I think a field trip to their Burbank studio helped foster that dream. Then I realized I had a hard time consistently drawing the same character on model. Oh well, some things just aren’t meant to be.

Critical reaction was mixed upon its initial release. Mostly positively received, the bulk of the negative criticism was about the film being pretentious, that applying animated sequences to classical music pieces would rob them of integrity, or that the film was just pure kitsch. I can’t argue against the film being pretentious in spots, think that the second argument is purely reactionary and pearl-clutching, and find that parts of the film are pure kitsch. And god bless Fantasia for being different, for revealing a new color or tone with each new segment.

Production started on Fantasia in 1936 as a way of bringing back Mickey Mouse’s popularity. One of the few segments with a coherent narrative, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a decent enough section to begin talking about the film as a whole. It was based upon a poem by Goethe, which Disney attached to a musical composition by Paul Dukas, and produced as an extended Silly Symphony-like cartoon, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is pure fantasy. Untied to a strict narrative, it moves with a strange dream-like logic. It plays more like a coherent music video, and it’s arguable that Fantasia was the music video in embryonic form.

Over the twenty-five-years I’ve watched this film my love for various segments has changed over the years. “Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria” used to freak me out, but now I think it’s unquestionably one of the greatest achievements of the Disney studio. “Bald Mountain” owes a debt to Faust, and it’s the strangest bit of demented surrealism to come out of the studio during an era when feverish, hallucinatory sequences was a must. While a demonic figure presides over a mountain top, he raises the dead, conjures up dancing imps, nude succubus’ fly around, and hellfire explodes. It all comes to a crashing halt as the church bells ring, and monks carrying lights expel the darkness away. While the orgy of brimstone and monsters are drawn in a clearly representational manner, the monks are abstractions of black robes and yellow circles making their way towards a cathedral that is nothing but bright light.

“Rite of Spring” is one I have always loved. Granted, the composition omits some of the harder sequences of Igor Stravinsky’s piece, and the orchestration is a little blunted of its force, it’s fun to watch Disney animate a sequence detailing the Big Bang, evolution, dinosaurs, and their eventual extinction. The animation is, of course, stellar, and all of your favorites are presented in scientifically accurate (for 1940) manners, even if they shouldn’t be occupying the same frame as they’re separated by millions of years. Still, it’s freaking dinosaurs!

“Dance of the Hours,” after “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” is the most beloved sequence. It doesn’t play like something from the stately Disney brand, it plays much closer to the manic Looney Tunes. A comic ballet in four sections, there’s ostriches, hippos in tutus, elephants blowing bubbles, and horny alligators. The anarchic spirit is strong with this one, and its joyous from the first moment to the eventual destruction of the palace. If nothing else, my appreciation of this one has grown larger as the years have gone by.

Time has not been quite as kind to “The Pastoral Symphony,” a hit-and-miss Greek Mythology 101 with satyrs, cupids, centaurs, Dionysus, Zeus, and a general feeling of being too cutesy. It’s not bad, there’s some animation in spots that is quite lovely, but it doesn’t feel entirely satisfactory. A similar thing happens with “The Nutcracker Suite,” a piece of music that’s just as well-known as the dance that accompanies it. It’s refreshing to see Disney tackle the piece without the titular Christmas object anywhere in sight, but some parts of it are just better than others. The luminescent fairies are great, the bowing mushrooms are not, but it averages out to be decent.

The only parts of Fantasia that could qualify as having to be endured are the more abstract ones. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” which begins with live action shots of the orchestra, before fading away into abstractions of their instruments is pretty to look at, but not very engaging. The craft and special effects on display overpower the simplicity, and I spent more time wondering how they accomplished these effects than what was happening before my eyes. And the “Meet the Soundtrack” introduces an animated character in a straight line, then has it twist and distort itself into personifications of the various instruments. It seems at odds with the flamboyance of the rest of the film, but I guess Disney considered that the audience needed a spoonful of sugar to make the high culture go down.   

Yes, Fantasia is only as good as any particular segment is, but the batting average is insanely high. Later films like Melody Time or Make Mine Music would try to borrow the formula, but they were lacking in the bravado to make it really work. After its failure as a road show picture, Disney would never again challenge his audience quite as much as he did here. I wonder if this had been a big hit, what would the company have produced in the following years? Would Fantasia’s originally conceived plan of revivals have gone through? Who knows. We should just appreciate that he had the madness to make this at all.