Fantasia (1940)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1940
	Director: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer
	Actors: Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Music
	Conditions of visioning: 18/26.03.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Walt Disney's team creates moving pictures to accompany pieces of classical music.
Review: I had seen the section with Mickey Mouse (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) on TV when I was a kid, and maybe also the one with the Hippos (Dance of the Hours), but never the entire film. The whole thing would actually be boring for children, but as adult I found it fascinating. As introduction, the virwer is explained that what he will see is the interpretation in moving images of classical music pieces by (drawing) artists which are not professional musicians. Then each piece is introduced and explained by the same Deems Taylor. The first segment (Toccata and Fugue in D Minor) tries to put some abstract images on what happens in our head when we listen to the music. Then some segments take you through a story that was created to fit the music, not the other way round like is usually the case in cinema. I learned that The Rite of Spring was originally written by Bach to describe the renewal of life at spring, and was extended by Disney's team to the description of the early days of Earth and the apparition of life on it, until the extinction of dinosaurs. This was an interesting piece, although sometimes scientifically innacurate but I guess it was 70 years ago, and the idea may have inspired Jens Harder for his beautiful comic book: Alpha... Directions. The Pastoral Symphony is also an interesting mythological story created to fit the music. But the piece that impressed me the most was Night on Bald Mountain (music by Modest Mussorgsky). It is filled with demons, skeletons and ghosts. It is pretty scary and the special effects are great. It reminded me of the1922 cult movie Häxan or Withcraft through the ages (reviewed here). It also made me think of the recent music video by director Phil Mucci for the band Opeth: The Devil's Orchard. On the negative side, I found that the movie abuses of pastel colors, maybe to give a more magical tone, I would have liked more pronounced colors. Then it could have been a good idea to provide on the Blu-ray a new recording of the Soundtrack, because the recording technique are today much better than 70 years ago, and you can hear that the music is weak during the whole movie. Actually Fantasia was played last December in Munich's Gasteig by a philarmonic orchester, and now I regret not going there. A very interesting bonus on the Blu-ray describes The Schultheis Notebook, a piece of collection that was filled by special effects designer Herman Schulteis at the time of filming Fantasia with many behind-the-scenes pictures and detailed technical description of how many special effects were achieved. Some of those techniques were unknown until the book was found some years ago in a storage. It has been restored, can be seen at the Walt Disney Museum, and hard-copies will be sold starting November 5th 2013. I have already pre-ordered one.
Rating: 8 /10