Fantasia (1940)
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Fantasia Movie Review
Fantasia is a 1940 animated musical package film which is Disney’s third animated feature film. It is their most artistic, but far from their greatest works.
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“Congratulations to you, Mickey!
Gee, thanks! Hehe! Well, so long! I’ll be seeing ya!“
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Fantasia is a movie for art lovers in particular. Both visual and the classical music art. It combines those two arts perfectly and is just wonderful to watch for anyone with high artistic sensibilities. But I am not too artistically inclined so watching this film is a bit of a boring, slow experience and I cannot imagine any child liking this experiment.
With that being said, the movie grows on me upon each subsequent viewing and I am more impressed after each new viewing and maybe someday I will love it more than I love it now because it does have a high repeat value for some reason. But for now, it is a movie which I hugely respect, but I’m just not in love with and I find it somewhat overrated among Disney classics.
So it uses the package formula which was repeated six more times during and after WWII by the Disney studio. But this is the most artistic and ambitious out of all package films, there is no doubt about that. It contains seven segments which are all linked with either no story, some story or full story. All are accompanied by iconic, amazing classical music pieces.
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Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is a boring beginning with no story to it whatsoever. It is the most forgettable segment of this entire bunch undoubtedly as it is colorful and stupendously animated, but plotless and far from memorable. But of course the music from Bach is fantastic.
Nutcracker Suite is definitely an improvement over the previous segment, but still very much a plotless, not that memorable segment. I did like how the music accompanied so well the changing seasons and the standout here for me were those beautiful fairies and of course scene stealing mushrooms.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is undoubtedly a classic. Indisputably. So the story goes like this. Mickey Mouse’s popularity was feigning during the late thirties with Donald Duck becoming much more popular so Walt decided to give him his film which ended up being incorporated among all these other segments into what we now know as Fantasia.
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The story is iconic with Mickey being an apprentice of a powerful sorcerer named Yen Sid (Disney in reverse). One day, he enchants brooms to clean in his place, but he falls asleep and the brooms make a mess. It is a typical Silly Symphonies-like message film, but it’s so breathlessly constructed, so perfect in both pacing, score and animation that it truly is a masterpiece in its own right. Mickey is wonderful here, the sorcerer is quite menacing in looks and the magic is beautifully conveyed.
Rite of Spring could have been great, but is just good unfortunately. That’s because the film is very problematic in its slow, highly dragging pace which hurt it in the long run as this story should have been immersive. But still following the history of life on Earth is intriguing, especially for its time it was, plus the dinosaurs are particularly realistically designed and depicted.
After the intermission comes The Pastoral Symphony which is one of the weakest segments here not only because it is dated and racially insensitive, but particularly because it is a wasted potential to tell an engaging, memorable Greek mythology story. The arrival of Zeus is well done and yes, the presence of centaurs to fauns and cupids does recreate the Greek mythology stupendously well, but the story itself is boring and lacking in memorable scenes or imagery.
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Dance of the Hours is probably the most overrated segment in this film. This is the one segment which feels silly to me as it’s a detour in terms of style and tone as it doesn’t accompany the other segments well at all. So basically, we have here one giant dance of hippos and gators. That’s about it. Why do they dance and what is the point of this segment? Those questions remain a mystery to me. It’s very well animated, but too reminiscent of the earliest plotless dancing Silly Symphonies.
Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria are my favorites. Yes, even better than The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This is the pinnacle of the film and a reminder of how amazing this movie could have been had they made the other segments as great as these two. Chernabog is a powerful villain who remains very mysterious, mythical and highly intriguing. He looks fantastic and highly creepy and he proves to be very menacing and an iconic devil. I wish he’d gotten more screen time though.
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Those scenes with him are striking, but what struck me even more are the Ave Maria sequences. Wow, I was blown away by their sheer power. Watching those monks walk with lighted torches through the forest and into a cathedral is almost like a transcendent experience, spiritual and honestly breathtakingly beautiful. It was a perfect way to end the segment and the entire film as it offered World War II audiences hope and optimism. The music is indescribably beautiful and accompanied by that timeless imagery, it achieves a God-like quality. I adore that scene and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the history of Disney animation.
Fantasia is masterfully conducted by Leopold Stokowski, but I wasn’t a fan of Deems Taylor’s live-action components as the narration was unnecessary, though infinitely better than those bad comedic scenes in ‘Fantasia 2000’ leading to a better movie overall. The score is great, but the pacing is problematic. I would say that the animation though is probably the best, certainly one of the best in the history of the studio, along the lines of ‘Snow White’ and ‘Pinocchio’ for sure. The imagery is frequently striking and just the polished nature of animation and the artistic touches and how well they incorporated it with music is awe-inspiring.
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Fantasia is the Disney film which I most definitely respect the most, but admittedly I have never been in love with, though it does grow on me upon each subsequent viewing. The sheer ambition here is impressive, though it did prove to be too much to handle for the filmmakers. The mixing of beautiful classical music and some of the best animation ever resulted in one immensely artistic, indisputably inspired experiment. It is a flawed film because it is very uneven in quality as the first couple of segments are forgettable and some of the later segments are also far from great. However, the two best segments make it worth a watch alone. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a classic Mickey Mouse segment which is flawlessly constructed and iconic in every way, but Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria is my favorite as it features a powerful villain Chernabog and one of the finest scenes in the history of Disney animation which is that indescribably beautiful, hopeful and simply transcendent in experience ending.
