FANTASIA (1940) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Directors: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe, Norman Ferguson, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, and Ben Sharpsteen Writers: (look at this list of Directors. The list for writers is 10 times longer, and I'm not going to write them all out for obvious reasons, sorry) Starring: Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Walt Disney (voice)
Disney films are famous (or infamous) for their Utopian presentation of the world through most of their movies. They present a bright-as-the-sun angle to the world, filled with a bit of melodrama, and always ending with happily, even if that means altering the story of their source. They promise a world that's always quenched of evil-doers, and ends with a little song and a bunch of smiles. And that's what's so cool about "Fantasia."
"Fantasia" presents a wide oeuvre of short little animated films by Disney, all silent, and all set to pieces of classical music, and not always the bright, cheery, sun-shiny promises of perfection that Disney "masterpieces" are known for. The music is done by the famous Philadelphia Orchestra, who are conducted by the even-more-famous Leopold Stokowski, who show up between pieces, sometimes actually doing other stuff than playing (one time Leo shakes hands with Mickey Mouse). But this isn't really the great part (seems too PBS-y to me). The cartoons are fascinating little vignettes, all unique, and each one interesting and hypnotic. Well, most of them are.
"Fantasia" starts off kind of on a down-note with a rather boring cartoon for Bach's "Tocatta and Fugue in D minor" (the music made famous in the original version of "Phantom of the Opera"). Nothing much happens in it, and it lasts a good 10 minutes. Yes, it goes by faster than it probably usually would, but it's still not up to par with the other ones.
But in the second little film, "Fantasia" takes off and never really comes down. The second film does a little adaptation of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite," but with the brilliant idea of not having to do anything with the Nutcracker, but rather on mother nature. With the six different movements they chose from the suite, we get a lot of little fairies running around, mushrooms and flowers dancing, a goldfish dancing like an arabian wife, and even a bunch of little flowers spinning on the water. Although having nothing to do with the suite, it makes up for that lacking by making each of the parts of the little vignette unique, humorful, and fascinating.
The third one seems like it's just the oligatory use of Mickey Mouse's fame. But what results is a classic story set to the music of Paul Dukas's "The Sorcerer Apprentice," and dealing with exactly that. In it, Mickey is, well, a sorcerer's apprentice, who takes the sorcerer's hat and begins playing around with magic when the guy leaves for a bit. He ends up creating one broom to carry water for him (which is his job), but accidentally turns it into thousands of brooms, all carrying water, and then there's a bit of a mishap. It's wonderfully done, with a great silent job by Mickey (seriosuly, he's much better without that annoying voice of his).
The best of the vignettes takes place following the Mickey one. Set to Stravinsky's "Rite of the Spring," it deals with the beginning of earth, and up to the death of the dinosaurs and the reconstruction of earth following. Each of Stravinsky's long piece is set perfectly, sometimes erupting with violence, and then shifting to a more serene setting. In it, we get to see many different dinosaurs, the great scene where the Tyranosaurus Rex shows up out of nowhere and wreaks havoc, and the sad demise of the dinosaurs in a proposed idea by Disney that there was just a lot of heat and all vegetation died (which doesn't explain why the T-Rex wasn't just eating everyone else till there was no one else left). But anyway, this is the best part of the film despite this little trip-up in the dinosaur-death-propoganda.
There's a bit of a break between these two little Acts (the film's 2 hours long, there had to be a little intermission), and we get to see a little pointless thing about a sound wave which makes, you guessed it, sound. Not great or anything, but the film picks up again.
The fifth little film is set to Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony," which ends up dealing with ancient and mythological Greece in three movements from the Symphony. There's a bit about unicorns, another one about centaurs falling in love with the help of little cupids, and one about a big party that is crashed by Zeus, who was in one of his PMS/lightning throwing moods at the time. It's great to see it and all, and it gets most of the mythology right (a biggie after seeing what they did to Greece in "Hercules"...oh, I mean "Jercules" - besides, it has better music).
The sixth film is a really, really silly litle vignette about elephants and alligators (great pairing there), which is set to the very familiar "Dance of the Hours" by Amilcare Ponchielli (you'll recognize it when you hear it). There's a lot elephants pretending they're ballet students, and there's a lot of weird stuff with alligators, and it really doesn't mean anything, but who cares: it's fun.
The seventh and final one, and the second best one, deals with the procession from dark to light, from death to hell to heaven, and from night to morning. In other words, it shows the devil fooling around, then showing everyone he screwed with going to heaven. The first part is set to the ominous piece "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky, which deals with him looking fantastic, and emerging from the top of a mountain, then preying upon all the souls in a little town. This fantastic little bit is then interrupted by chimes and a lot of light from above, where the souls march into heaven set to Franz Schubert's beautiful "Ave Maria." And thus ends the film.
"Fantasia" bombed when it opened, and I suppose believably. It's not the typical Disney fare. There's no real point to it, other than to include a lot of great little animated films set to awesome music. And that's what makes it one of Disney's best, if not it's best cinematically. There doens't always have to be a great happy ending. I mean, even in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice," it ends with Mickey getting kicked in the ass. And at the end of "The Rite of the Spring," all the dinosaurs die miserably. And the artistry is better than usual Disney. I don't know why, but the visuals look even more beautiful than they usually do.
This film proves that you can find escapist Disney, meaning you don't always get the Disney formula of happy characters, bad villains, and a bright ending, filled with hokey and hummable tunes, and, well, having a coherent storyline which goes from point A to point B. I usually don't like Disney films because of this (and well the pious fact that they insist on every film being a "masterpiece," when only an elite few of them are even better than "good"), but "Fantasia" breaks all the rules, suceeds, and even entertains. So, anyway, it's just far superior than most of the Dinsey flicks.
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
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