Johann Sebastian Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: The opening toccata displays the performing musicians as shadows and silhouettes in variously colored light. Each segment, except for the last, is preceded by a brief onscreen introduction by Deems Taylor, a well-known music critic of the time. Here then is a brief sketch of how Fantasia maps the world. Not in any detail, of course, but by analogy, implication, and indirection. In the short compass of two hours it presents us with the world, all of it. But more generally, the world.Īnd that is the film’s singular achievement. When you examine those eight episodes carefully you realize that they traverse an astonishing range of … of what? “Human experience” would be a good phrase here, but one major segment, The Rite of Spring, concerns things that no human being could possibly have experienced. The film that premiered in 1940 is only version we’ve got. Though other episodes were planned, and work had begun on some, this aspect of the plan never unfolded. In Disney’s original conception the film would tour constantly, with new episodes being exchanged for old ones from time to time so that there would always be something to see. Rather, it is a set of nine unconnected episodes arranged in a convenient order. But a masterpiece of what?įantasia has no story. I have little sense of where it stands among more general arbiters of culture. The film was a financial failure, though it finally managed to break-even in the late 1960s, after Disney had died.įantasia is highly regarded among students of animation and has sold well in videotape and DVD. Music critics were offended, film critics didn’t quite know what to think, though some liked it. The film premiered in late 1940 under a new name, Fantasia, and received mixed critical notices.
#FANTASIA WHEN I SEE YOU HOUR FULL#
But he also wanted to showcase the powers of this new medium – one in which Disney had a considerable investment, both in time and imaginative effort, and in money – in a way that had never been done before.ĭisney secured the collaboration of Leopold Stokowski, the best-known conductor of the day, and who had already been parodied in a cartoon or two, and devoted the full resources of his studio to the effort.
#FANTASIA WHEN I SEE YOU HOUR MOVIE#
Get it out of the concert hall, into the movie palace, and dress it up. He would use the power of animation to present Classical Music to the Masses. In 1938 Walt Disney decided to bet the farm on an extravaganza originally entitled The Concert Feature.
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