Fantasia (1940)

Walt Disney practically invented the music video. Indeed, the success of Disney was from the very beginning built on creatively combining quality animation with sound. Steamboat Willie (1928), the first animated cartoon to include perfectly synchronized sound and music, made Mickey Mouse a household name and saved the Disney studios from ruin. Unsatisfied with mere success, Walt Disney pushed the envelope even farther by creating the Silly Symphonies, a long running series of cartoons that were as much clever musicals as they were great cartoons (the first of these was the fantastic Skeleton Dance from 1929). These too would bring Disney’s animation studio fame and widespread acclaim. Both the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons would also spawn knockoff attempts by rival studios....which is actually how the “looney toons” came into existence, as a rip off of a much better series of cartoons.

It isn’t clear to me whether he came to Disney first or wether Disney sought him out but in the late 1930s, after the monster success of Snow White, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, agreed to collaborate with Disney on a full length Sill Symphony style feature film set to classical music. Apparently the two met by chance at an LA restaurant and it turned out that Stokowski, like most of the learned elite of the time (believe it or not), was a huge fan of Walt Disney’s work. Stokowski was so excited by the prospect of doing a film with Disney that he even allegedly offered to provide the music for free. Thus began the work on what would become known as Fantasia.

The idea of creating a now iconic Silly Symphony short, starring Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice, was already in the works as an attempt to bolster Mickey’s popularity, which had been eclipsed by the popular and extremely funny Donald Duck shorts. But with Stokowski on board Disney was set to do something experimental and bold, transcending both Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies. Disney even worked with RCA to create, from scratch, an early version of modern stereo sound, to be installed wherever the film played, called “Fantasound”. Fantasia promised to be more than just a string of short cartoons or a classical music concert. It was to be an experience like no other.

Disney had clearly embarked upon something extraordinarily ambitious and risky with Fantasia and for the most part the risks payed off, at least in terms of the quality of the film itself. Commercially, however, Fantasia was something of a fiasco given the limited audience that precluded the usual swarms of children and since the film was dependent upon a cumbersome sound system that could only support a limited release. Carved into eight shorts of varying lengths, Fantasia presents itself to the viewer just as it is, a symphony concert that has been bonded to the visual magic making of Mickey Mouse. In fact, Mickey Mouse literally shakes hands with Stokowski at one point. Stokowski himself, at moments interspersed between shorts, provides a brief explanation about the traditional symphony music about to be played and what visual accompaniment we ought to expect. For all of its newness it’s actually a very conventional framework.

Some of the shorts are astounding. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is strikingly beautiful to watch and full of all the great humor and charm you’d expect from a great Mickey Mouse cartoon. Virtually everyone remembers it who has seen it. The Dance of the Hours, a ballet put on by large African animals, is still I think one of the funniest and most creative pantomime cartoons ever made. It just has to be seen to be believed. Who knew that an alligator juggling a hippo with his legs and tail or a gaggle of pirouetting ostriches could be so freaking awesome? The Night on Bald Mountain, a terrifying depiction of the devil torturing souls in hell, is just as impressive, until the dawn breaks to the sound of church bells and the devil and his minions are sent packing to the song Ave Maria. At that moment the short goes from impressive to astounding, the best thing in the movie. Indeed, it is amazing just how far Disney was willing to take that scene and, oddly, I am not sure that it could even be made properly in today’s politically correct climate: images of nude, flaming dancing girls being transformed into pigs and donkeys to satan’s delight? A Christian candle lit procession set to one of the most treasured songs ever made with Mary the Mother of God as as its subject matter? It leaves me with goose bumps.

Speaking of offensive. As good as these portions are, and they are unreal, the rest of the film ranges from okay to downright boring. There’s a fun short of dancing mushrooms and flowers, and the like, set to the lame ass music from the Nutcracker. There’s an ambitious yet extremely dated short about the origin of the cosmos and the rise and fall of the dinosaurs as well. But in a time when we’ve all seen Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time the dinosaurs in Fantasia are about as compelling and lifelike as those cheap plastic toys they manage to sell at every grocery and drug store in America. But worse than all this is that there is, at least in the original version of the film, a scene that actually really does enter into the offensive. You may have heard of the now long since deleted character of Sunflower who has been removed from the Pastoral Symphony.

The Pastoral Symphony is a rather drab and drawn out depiction of Greek mythological creatures set to Beethoven. It’s really, artistically, the weakest of the shorts in the whole film. The characters range from tacky little cherubs to tacky centaurs or tacky looking Gods. Seriously, they all look like they might be turned into porcelain and sold on QVC. It’s during this sequence that we see Sunflower, a little black centaur with characteristically racist, pickaninny features (crazy braids and everything) who is submissively catering to a beautiful white Centaur who towers over her. She is meant to be a comical character it seems but she just isn’t funny. Apparently the Disney corporation must have agreed because the character was discreetly removed in the 1969 re-release and has not appeared in subsequent versions. I think this represents the one legitimate case of racism in any Disney cartoon that I am aware of. I can easily apologize for the black crows from Dumbo and the very misunderstood Song of the South or even the light hearted song about Indians in Peter Pan, but it is impossible for me to come to the defense of this instance of racial stereotyping. It just is racist and wholly inappropriate.

That being said, Fantasia in large parts is every bit the masterpiece that movie critics claim (and boy do they love this movie), but in other large portions it is something of a bore. This makes it a great Disney movie even beyond considerations of its great historical importance in the history of film and sound in general, but it is far from being the greatest Disney movie ever made....which some have claimed. Boring, racist people no doubt.

I give it 3.8 enchanted broomsticks