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Rating: In 1940, Disney released two films, "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia," two of Uncle Walt's highest peaks, and at the same time, two of the biggest flops ever.
The reason is mainly the onset of military activities in Europe, which imposed the non-distribution of Disney products in the old Continent and Japan, so these were distributed only in the USA or in countries with a decidedly peripheral commercial weight. This argument applies especially to "Pinocchio," because in the end, "Fantasia," even where the possibility to go to the cinema was real, did not receive positive reviews.
While it is true that Bosley Crowther, the "New York Times" critic, wrote: "Cinema history was made last night" (referring to the premiere of "Fantasia"), other critics were harsher.
Olin Downes, "New York Times": "...much of Fantasia distracts from or directly injures the soundtrack"; Pauline Kael: "...grotesquely kitsch"; Dorothy Thompson, "Herald Tribune": "...remarkable nightmare [...] ...the perverse betrayal of the best instincts."
And to think that "Fantasia" was created to give more space to the figure of Mickey Mouse, who according to Walt Disney had not yet been elevated to the right glory.
The operation itself was truly madness, giving a figurative dimension to music (classical, in this case) was a task that would make any pulse tremble. Too elitist for a public used to something entirely different, too complex for much of a critique incapable of seeing beyond its own nose. Three years of work, started right after the surprisingly successful "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," 1937, and creation of Fantasound, a complicated gadget estimated at $200,000 that completely revolutionized the concept of stereophony.
From Wikipedia:
"The Fantasound occupied two projectors running at the same time. While one contained the film with a mono soundtrack for backup purposes, the other played a sound film mixing the eight tracks recorded at the Academy, turning them into four. Three of them contained the audio for the left, center, and right stage speakers, while the fourth became a control track with amplitude and frequency tones leading the voltage-controlled amplifier to adjust the volume of the three audio tracks.[73] Moreover, there were three speakers placed left, right, and center in the room, derived from the left and right stage channels and functioning as surround channels."
The work is an epic masterpiece, perhaps the highest point ever reached by Disney, something impossible today, and maybe even in 1940.
Divided into 7 episodes, under the careful guidance of Maestro Leopold Stokowski (who happily accepted to appear in such a complex and revolutionary film), and under the watchful eye of Mickey Mouse, who in the first sequence seems to anticipate even the wonders of live-action, divided into two distinct parts (in the intermission the orchestra members improvise a splendid jam session), presented on November 13, 1940, at the Broadway Theatre in New York with an operatic booklet as if attending a theater performance, embellished with the wonders of Fantasound, "Fantasia" is the acme of Disney's thought. Elevating something already wonderful (classical music) to glory and blending it with the childlike joy of animated drawings.
It opens with "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" by Bach, with abstract, semi-Dadaist images, perhaps the craziest and most experimental episode. Certainly the one that most disconcerted the audience.
Following is "The Nutcracker Suite" by Tchaikovsky, divided into six sections ("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"; "Chinese Dance"; "Dance of the Flutes"; "Arabian Dance"; "Russian Dance"; "Waltz of the Flowers"), where some visual inventions stand out with a remarkable impact: the dancing mushrooms, the autumn fairies, and the falling leaves. With a delightful self-citation: the fish in the fourth movement are all similar to Cleo from "Pinocchio."
Next is "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," the most famous segment, the one Disney conceived first and which brought, indeed, significant popularity to the figure of Mickey Mouse, who, as a skilled magician, gets the spell wrong, multiplying brooms and various tools risking considerable trouble. Poor Mickey Mouse, in fact, by the late '30s, after being Disney's undisputed king, was yielding to various characters like Donald Duck and Goofy, so what better occasion to re-evaluate and update him. In fact, the classic Mickey Mouse design, the one that has reached us, is largely similar to the Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey (previously he was drawn in a more spartan, skinny, bony way, lacking the famous "button" eyes), although the episode was shot mostly in live action (they even recruited athletes from UCLA). It remains, 84 years later, a piece of brilliance signed by Disney's best technicians, the real stroke of genius destined never to fade in popularity or quality.
It continues with "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky. It's a powerful segment, a precursor of many things, including all dinosaur cinema which, although already existent (think of "The Lost World," 1925, or more simply "King Kong," 1933), would reach its peak only many years later. Very careful studies on the various geological eras and the dinosaurs present at the time led Disney to perform a true visual miracle. Dividing it into five geological eras (the Hadean, Archeozoic, Cambrian, Silurian, Mesozoic, further divided into Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous) and faithfully reproducing, through museum visions, the dinosaur figures (including the triceratops, stegosaurus, brontosaurus, tyrannosaurus) Disney composed a segment so innovative and at times visually powerful enough to indicate the route to all those who would later venture into the world of dinosaurs.
It continues with "The Pastoral Symphony" by Beethoven, finishing in the world of the Olympian gods. The episode is funny, at times even comic, and is one of the most successful within "Fantasia," though perhaps stretched a bit too long. It must immediately be said that the "roundness" of the landscapes, akin to the roundness of the protagonists, from Bacchus to Zeus, all rather chubby, undeniably succeeded in enhancing the comic effect. All figures of Greek mythology are present: satyrs, Dionysus (i.e., Bacchus), Hephaestus, Zeus, Nyx (Night), and the centaurettes, who, abundantly endowed with voluptuous breasts, created some (small) issues with censorship.
The continuation is "Dance of the Hours" by Amilcare Ponchielli. Among dancing hippos and tutu-wearing ostriches, we are faced with the most amusing and childish episode of the entire work. Real ballerinas (Marge Champion, Tatiana Riabouchinska, and Irina Baronova) were studied and caricatured anthropomorphically. Quick, nimble, hilarious, it is perhaps the most famous segment after "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
It ends with "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria." And here the tone changes completely. If the previous episode titillated the imagination, and joy, of the youngest, here it ends by scaring them and perhaps estranging them from the entire work. The segment in question is deliberately lugubrious with semi-horror tendencies (an absolute novelty in an animated film, which certainly did not pretend to cater only to children): Walt Disney wanted to address the theme of the Devil, with the ascent to Bald Mountain so much that the episode is almost entirely dominated by the evil Chernabog, drawn on the features of Bela Lugosi, the famous Dracula of the 1931 film of the same name. But not only, drawing inspiration from some very remote Ukrainian legends ("every June 24, the wizards organize rites on the Triglav mountain near Kiev"), Disney inserted into the episode the solemn "Ave Maria" by Schubert, which concludes the film with a taste of death, not even vaguely hidden. And it happened that:
"Some parents resisted paying higher ticket prices for their children, and many complained because the Night on Bald Mountain segment frightened them."
In fact, the finale of "Fantasia" stands between Snow White's witch, Bambi's mother's end, and Dumbo's mother's enforced imprisonment, small childhood traumas that one carries around (the youngest would have been traumatized by Mufasa's death in "The Lion King").
"Fantasia" was re-edited several times, and in Italy was only seen in 1946. But among all the re-editions, the most important is dated 1985.
In an unhappy era for Disney (only a few films were released, all of modest quality, some rightly forgotten), "Fantasia" was re-released in cinemas with audio sound as clean as never heard since the famous Fantasound times (obviously already shelved for a long time since the mid-eighties). The success was such (but even in the '60s, the work was significantly re-evaluated) that from that moment "Fantasia" became one of Disney's greatest successes and was counted as the masterpiece it deserves to be. The various home video editions (VHS, DVD, and the notable Blu-ray) did the rest.
A milestone in animated cinema, a total masterpiece signed by Disney. It is appropriate to remember all the directors (the technicians would make for too long a list) who collaborated in its realization, some of these, see Wilfred Jackson and Ben Sharpsteen, real Disney pillars, directors of later masterpieces such as "Dumbo" or "Cinderella" (just to name the most famous): Sam Armstrong; James Algar; Bill Roberts; Paul Satterfield; Ben Sharpsteen; David Hand; Hamilton Luske; Jim Handley; Ford Beebe; T. Hee; Norman Ferguson; Wilfred Jackson.
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