Fantasia

Bela Lugosi served as a live action model for Chernabog, the demon in Night on Bald Mountain. Lugosi spent several days at the Disney studios, where he was filmed doing evil, demon-like poses for the animators to use as a reference.

Fantasia was the first film released in a multichannel (stereo) sound format (see Fantasound). The film also marked the first use of the click track while recording the soundtrack, overdubbing of orchestral parts, simultaneous multitrack recording and lead to the development of a multichannel surround system.

The composers and their works used in order are:

• Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 (animation of abstract pieces)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a (featuring fairies and humanised plants, fish etc.)
• Paul Dukas - L'apprenti sorcier (English title: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, with Mickey Mouse shown in the role of the apprentice)
• Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring
• Ludwig van Beethoven - 6th symphony in F, Op.68 'Pastorale'
• Amilcare Ponchielli - La Gioconda: Dance of the Hours (the 'Hello Mother, Hello Father' song performed by elephants, ostriches, hippos and crocodiles as a ballet.
• Modest Mussorgsky - A Night on Bald Mountain
• Franz Schubert - Ave Maria

The movie won two Honorary Academy Awards:

• Walt Disney, William E. Garity and J.N.A. Hawkins - For their outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia (certificate).
• Leopold Stokowski (and his associates) - For their unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music in Walt Disney's production Fantasia, thereby widening the scope of the motion picture as entertainment and as an art form (certificate).

Fantasia was not a box-office hit upon its initial release, and critics of the time felt that Disney was attempting to reach a "high-brow" audience. The movie did not turn a profit until its re-release in the late 1960s. Its failure left Disney in financial straits, which is why he followed Fantasia with a relatively low-budget feature, Dumbo.

The 1960 theatrical re-release was edited, and at least one character--Sunflower, a centaur--was eliminated from the edited version. According to the Memory Hole, "Performing menial duties for the blonde, white female centaurs, Sunflower is a racial stereotype along the lines of Amos and Andy, Buckwheat, and Aunt Jemima."

In the 1970s, Fantasia was a favorite movie of those who liked to take illicit drugs and watch the film's colorful sequences. Though that association eventually faded, the film's reputation has grown steadily until it now is generally acknowledged as one of Disney's legitimate masterpieces and a shining example of American animation at its finest.

In 1976, Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto released a parody of Fantasia called Allegro non troppo.

Disney had wanted to Fantasia to be an ongoing project, ideally with a new release each year, but this proved too costly. The plan was to repeat some of the scenes will replacing others with different music and animation, so that each version of the film would include both familiar material and new segments. This ambition was belatedly realized with the 1999 release of Fantasia 2000 in IMAX theaters. Fantasia 2000 reused The Sorcerer's Apprentice with Mickey Mouse, but otherwise consisted entirely of new material.

The original film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

External Links

• The Character Cut From Fantasia
• Fantasia at JustDisney.com

Referenced By