Fantasia (1940 film)
- For other uses, see Fantasia (disambiguation).
| Fantasia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | See "Credits" below |
| Written by | See "Credits" below |
| Produced by | Walt Disney |
| Starring | Deems Taylor Leopold Stokowski The Philadelphia Orchestra Walt Disney (voice) |
| Distributed by | Walt Disney Productions RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. |
Release dates | November 13, 1940 (roadshow) January 6, 1942 (wide) |
Running time | 124 minutes (original 1940 version, 2000 restoration) 81 min. (1942 edit) 115 min. (all versions, 1942 - 1990) |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2,280,000 (est.) |
Fantasia is a 1940 motion picture produced by Walt Disney. The third film in the Disney animated features canon, it is an experiment in animation and music. The soundtrack of the film consists of eight pieces of classical music, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Animated artwork of varying degrees of abstraction or literalism is used to illustrate or accompany the concert in various ways. The film also includes live-action segments featuring Stokowski, the orchestra, and American composer and music critic Deems Taylor, who serves as the host for the film. Besides its avant-garde qualities, Fantasia was notable for being the first major film released in stereophonic sound, using a process dubbed "Fantasound".
Originally released by Walt Disney Productions (without then-distributor RKO Radio Pictures) as a two-hours-plus roadshow film with booked engagements, Fantasia was eventually picked up by RKO for release in 1941 and edited drastically in 1942, being left with only 81 minutes of running time. Future re-releases restored various amounts of the deleted footage, with the most common version being the 1946 re-release edit, which ran two hours. The original version of Fantasia was never released again after 1941, and although some of the original audio elements no longer exist, a 2000 DVD release version attempted to restore as much of the original version of the film as possible.
Music program
The musical pieces used in the film:
- Johann Sebastian Bach — Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 (Stokowski's own transcription for symphony orchestra) (abstract images)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a (a variety of dances, just as in the original, but danced by animated fairies, mushrooms, fish, etc.; no actual nutcracker is ever seen in this version)
- Paul Dukas — The Sorcerer's Apprentice, (the story of an apprentice who cannot control the magic that he has tried to use, with Mickey Mouse in the role of the apprentice)
- Igor Stravinsky — The Rite of Spring (early history of the planet Earth, dinosaurs and their extinction)
- Ludwig van Beethoven — 6th symphony in F, Op.68 "Pastorale" (centaurs, fauns, and other creatures of classical mythology lounge about, cavort, fall in love, etc.)
- Amilcare Ponchielli — La Gioconda: Dance of the Hours. Also a ballet in the original, performed in the film by elephants, ostriches, hippos, and alligators.
- The last part of the film links:
- Modest Mussorgsky — Night on Bald Mountain (the nocturnal demon Chernabog summons from their graves empowered restless souls, until driven away by the sound of a church bell); to
- Franz Schubert — Ave Maria (a candlelit procession in early morning)
Most of the works played in the film are program music; that is, instrumental music that depicts stories in sound. However, the Disney program is generally not the same as the original. This criticism was addressed in the film itself. The host and narrator of the film, Deems Taylor, introduces each piece in the program and gives background on the original intent of the composer. There is no intent to deceive anyone into thinking that the Disney visual accompaniment was the "original intent" of the composer.
Some of the selections are slightly or drastically shortened from their full length; of the eight pieces, four are presented virtually complete. They are the Toccata and Fugue, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the Dance of the Hours, and the Ave Maria. The Nutcracker Suite is shorn of its Miniature Overture and March, the Rite of Spring (the longest cartoon in the film) has about ten minutes cut from Stravinsky's original thirty-five minute work, the Pastoral Symphony segment is played in a twenty-minute version rather than Beethoven's complete forty-minute one, and there are small internal omissions in Night on Bald Mountain which only someone totally familiar with the piece would notice. Practically speaking, this was necessary, in order to present all eight selections within a running time of 124 minutes; otherwise the film might well have run three hours.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
In the late 1930s, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse was losing his popularity with movie audiences. The Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts series had spawned the spin-off Donald Duck series, which was proving to be more popular (and profitable) than the Mickey Mouse series. However, Walt Disney wasn't ready to give up on his favorite character just yet. He devised a special short that would be produced as a "comeback" film for Mickey Mouse: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which would be completely silent save for the classical music piece by Paul Dukas. The writers who developed The Sorcerer's Apprentice originally suggested Dopey from Snow White for the title role, but Disney insisted upon using Mickey.
As work began on The Sorcerer's Apprentice in 1938, Disney happened to meet famed conductor Leopold Stokowski in a Hollywood restaurant. Stokowski offered to record the score for no charge, and assembled over one-hundred professional musicians in Los Angeles to record the score for the nine-minute cartoon.
The animation department worked to make The Sorcerer's Apprentice one of their most ambitious works. Animator Fred Moore redesigned Mickey to give his figure more weight and volume in keeping with the modern efforts at the studio, and to give him eyes with pupils for greater expression. Everything about the film was done with extensive attention to detail and creativity: the color styling, the pacing and layout, the character animation, and the effects animation. The unnamed sorcerer in The Sorcerer's Apprentice was nicknamed "Yen Sid": "Disney" spelled backwards.
All of this excess came at a high price: $125,000, a price Walt Disney, and especially his brother and business partner Roy, knew they could never make back. In comparison, most Disney shorts at the time averaged a cost of $40,000, which was $10,000 above the average budget for an animated cartoon made outside the Disney Studio. Disney's most successful short cartoon ever, Three Little Pigs (1933), had made $60,000 in revenue. Taking Stokowski's advice, he decided to expand The Sorcerer's Apprentice into a "Feature Symphony" with several animated sequences set to music, of which The Sorcerer's Apprentice would be one. To provide continuity and explanation, the composer and music critic Deems Taylor was recruited to provide live-action narrative introductions at the beginning of each segment. Stokowski suggested the title "Fantasia" (which literally means "A medley of familiar themes, with variations and interludes." [1]), which became the film's final title (a working title for the film was The Concert Feature).
Production and synopsis of the other segments
With The Sorcerer's Apprentice nearing completion, the rest of Fantasia entered production in early 1939, and the same attention to detail that was given to The Sorcerer's Apprentice was given to the other segments as well:
- Toccata and Fugue in D Minor contains abstract animation — a first for the Disney studio — and was inspired primarily by the work of German abstract animator Oscar Fischinger, who worked for a brief time on this segment. The first third of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is in live-action, not animation, and features an orchestra playing the piece, illuminated by abstract light patterns set in time to the music and backed by stylized (and superimposed) shadows. Although the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded the music for the film (excepting The Sorcerer's Apprentice), they do not appear on-screen; the orchestra used on-screen in the film is made up of local Los Angeles musicians and Disney studio employees like James MacDonald and Paul J. Smith, who mime to the pre-recorded Stokowski / Philadelphia Orchestra tracks.
- The Nutcracker Suite is a personified depiction of the changing of the seasons; first from summer to autumn, and then from autumn to winter. It features delicate fairies, fish, and flowers, many rendered carefully and painstakingly using techniques such as drybrush and airbrush.
- The Rite of Spring, a condensed version of the history of the Earth from the formation of the planet, to the first living creatures, to the age, reign, and demise of the dinosaurs, showcased realistically animated prehistoric beasts, and utilized extensive and complicated special effects to depict volcanoes, boiling lava, and earthquakes. There are some inaccuracies; a Dimetrodon is shown amongst the dinosaurs, and Stegosaurus was extinct well before the end of the age of the dinosaurs. The large carnivorous dinosaur attacking the Stegosaurus is a Tyrannosaurus according to the preliminary sketches by the artists, and has three fingers. Despite the fact that by then paleontologists had come to believe that the dinosaur had two fingers, Walt Disney decided for the Tyrannosaurus to have three fingers, saying "it looks better that way."
- The brief Meet the Soundtrack sequence gives audiences a stylized example of how sound is rendered as waveforms to record the music for Fantasia. The sequence features animation by effects animator Joshua Meador and his team, who give the soundtrack (initially a squiggly line which changes into various shapes based upon the individual sounds played on the soundtrack) a distinct personality.
- Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony utilized delicate color styling to depict a mythical ancient Grecian world of centaurs, centaurettes (a Disney studio creation), a pegasus and his family, and the gods of Mount Olympus. It tells the story of the mythological creatures gathering for a festival to honor Bacchus, the god of wine, which is interrupted by Zeus, who decides to have a little fun by throwing lightning bolts at the attendees. This portion of the film was criticized for brief yet blatant nudity on the part of the centaurettes (although Night on Bald Mountain and The Nutcracker Suite also contain nudity). Other criticisms center on the racial images of a centaurette servant who is part African Human, part donkey, and two attendants to Bacchus who are part African Amazons, part zebra. The servant has been excised from all prints in circulation since 1969, while the zebra-centaurettes have always remained in the film.
- The Dance of the Hours featured comic ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators all attempting to perform the actual ballet. The segment is animated with an energy and franticness rarely seen in Disney films.
- Night on Bald Mountain segment is basically a showcase for animator Bill Tytla, who gave the demon Chernabog a power and intensity that was rarely equaled in subsequent Disney films. Noted actor Bela Lugosi served as a live action model for Chernabog, and spent several days at the Disney studio, where he was filmed doing evil, demon-like poses for Tytla and his unit to use as a reference. Tylta later deemed this reference material unsuitable and had studio colleague Wilfred Jackson perform in front of the cameras for the reference footage.
- The horror of the demons, ghosts, skeletons, and harpies in Night on Bald Mountain comes to an abrupt end with the sound of church bells, which send Chernabog and his followers back into hiding, and the multiplane camera trucks far, far away from Bald Mountain to reveal a line of monks with lighted torches, and the camera slowly follows them as they walk slowly and solemnly through the forest to the sounds of the Ave Maria. The animation of the monks is some of the smallest animation ever done: the camera had to be so close to some of the work that it had to be rendered at only an inch or so high. Even a slight deviation in the width of the final painted line would have been distracting to a movie audience on the big screen. In fact, as told by animator Frank Thomas in the book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life the entire sequence had to be re-shot twice, once because the wrong focal length lens was used, and once because of a small earth tremor that shook the animation planes out of alignment. The multiplane camera then finally trucks through the trees to reveal a sunrise as the film fades to its conclusion.
Fantasound
Not only did Fantasia establish animation as a true art form, it also introduced film audiences to multi-channel sound, which played a very important part in Fantasia. After the completion of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Stokowski enlisted the Philadelphia Orchestra, of which he was the conductor, to record the music for the six remaining segments. Walt Disney was present on the sound stage during an early session, and was very pleased with what he was hearing until he heard the playback from the recording engineers. He felt the recorded version of the music sounded tinny and undynamic, and asked his engineers to see what they could do about developing a better sound system. The engineers, led by William E. Garity, responded by creating a multi-channel sound format they called Fantasound, making Fantasia the first commercial film ever to be produced in stereophonic sound. The film also marked the first use of the click track while recording the soundtrack, overdubbing of orchestral parts, and simultaneous multi-track recording.
Always wanting to try new things, Walt Disney also had plans to film Fantasia in widescreen and to spray different perfumes into the theater at appropriate times during the Nutcracker Suite, but those plans were never carried out.
Film presentation
Walt Disney intended for Fantasia to be more than just a film. It was to be an event, complete with reserved seating and fancy dress. Special program books were prepared for the film, featuring production artwork and photographs, dedications by both Walt and Stokowski, and the credits and synopsis for each segment. Each theater was rigged with 30 or more speakers, all lined around the perimeter of the ceiling, to provide the full Fantasound experience. The format of the film follows that of a concert rather than a motion picture. Besides the Deems Taylor narration passages, a proper presentation of Fantasia features a 15-minute intermission, which falls between The Rite of Spring and the Meet the Soundtrack segment.
Unusual for an American animated film, Fantasia had no opening or closing credits in its original version. The film opens with curtains parting to reveal the orchestra entering and taking their places. During the film's intermission, a solitary title card was to be played over the movie theater's closed curtain, reading:
- "Fantasia. Copyright 1940 by Walt Disney Productions (Inc). Color by Technicolor. RKO Radio Pictures. MPPDA. RCA Sound System."
For the film's 1946 re-release, and for all later theatrical releases, the title card seen during the intermission was transferred to the very beginning of the film (in regular main title fashion), but no other credits appeared. This was the way the film was shown until 1990, when closing credits, listing the entire technical staff and those involved with the 1990 restoration, were added to the end of the film. These credits were shown against a background of the orchestra exiting, using footage taken from the "intermission" segment, which had not been seen since its original 1940 release.
Release history
Fantasia was originally released in 1940 by Walt Disney Productions itself as a roadshow release, since Disney's distributor RKO Radio Pictures backed out of the film. Its first playdate, the film's premiere, was in New York City on November 13, 1940. The final scene to be shot (the long multiplane pan in the Ave Maria sequence) was shot, developed, printed, and rushed via airplane to New York that same day, where it was spliced into the film a mere four hours before showtime. Primarily because of the amount of audio equipment required and the time necessary to make the installation, the full-length Fantasound version of Fantasia was only shown at 12 theatres, and only 16 Fantasound-equipped prints were ever made. The financial failure of Fantasia left Walt Disney in financial straits, which is why he followed Fantasia with a relatively low-budget feature, Dumbo.
Starting with the January 29, 1941 play date in Los Angeles, California, RKO assumed distribution of Fantasia. They had the film's soundtrack remixed into monophonic sound, to make it easier to distribute, and added their logos to the film's solitary title card.
In late 1941, RKO had the 125-minute Fantasia edited down to 81 minutes (done by deleting the entire Toccata and Fugue in D Minor segment and shortening the live-action Deems Taylor sequences as much as possible). This version of the film was released nationwide on January 6, 1942 — the first time Fantasia was given a wide release — with the infamous tagline "Fantasia Will Amazia!" Audiences were not responsive to the film, and it played as a B-film in most movie houses.
Fantasia was edited once again in 1946, restoring Toccata and Fugue, but still keeping the Deems Taylor sequences at a minimum. This is the version most familiar to the public and the version most future releases of Fantasia would be based upon, and is therefore called the "General Release Version". It retains all of the animation from the original, but omits portions of the live-action.
Fantasound was returned to Fantasia in 1956, when it was released in CinemaScope-compatible SuperScope, remixed into four-channel stereo. The film was formatted into widescreen by removing the top and bottom portions of the frame.
The film did not turn a profit until its 1969 re-release. By then, Fantasia had become immensely popular among teenagers and college students, many of whom would take illegal drugs such as marijuana and LSD to "better experience" the film. Disney therefore promoted the film as a "trip-film" for its 1969 re-release, even creating a psychedelic-styled poster to match this campaign. The re-release was a major success, especially with the psychedelic young adult crowd, many of whom would come lie down in the front row of the theater and experience the film from there.
The film was once again edited for the 1969 release, this time to remove Sunflower, a centaur depicted as an African-American girl in the Pastoral Symphony segment. 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."
For its 1982 reissue, as motion picture sound technology was advancing, Disney decided to completely re-record the film's soundtrack with a new digital recording arranged and conducted by Irwin Kostal, marking the first ever release of a motion picture with digital stereo sound. However, judicial edits were made, including replacing Deems Taylor's original narration with a sound-alike. This would be the version released numerous times throughout the 1980s.
For its 50th Anniversary in 1990, Walt Disney Pictures decided to go back to the original Fantasound tracks, and using whatever film elements were still available, restored the film to more or less its original format to closely resemble the 1946 General Release Version. Both the picture and the Fantasound tracks were digitally remastered, and thus a new generation was able to experience the film with Leopold Stokowski's original Philadelphia Orchestra recordings. This was also the case for the film's release on home video the following year. The only major addition to the film at this point was a closing credits sequence, which had never been added to any previous version of the film (scroll above to Film Presentation for details).
Finally, for its 60th Anniversary DVD release in the year 2000, Disney restored all of the visual elements from the Deems Taylor segments that had been cut from the film in 1942 and 1946, and was able to reconstruct the original 124-minute 1940 version, complete with intermission. However, most of the audio for the long-unseen Taylor scenes was unusable or missing, so Disney brought in voice actor Corey Burton to re-record all of Taylor's lines. Although it was advertised as the "original uncut" version, portions from Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 were censored by zooming in to avoid showing the centaur Sunflower. The Disney editor responsible, John Carnochan, is quoted as saying, "It's sort of appalling to me that these stereotypes were ever put in." With the exception of these changes (and the lack of a credit sequence as the restored version resembled the original 1940 release), this is the most complete version of the film that currently exists. The restored version of Fantasia debuted in June 2000 at the Animation Film Festival in Annecy, France; accompanying its sequel, Fantasia 2000.
A Platinum Edition DVD/Blu-Ray Disc reissue of Fantasia is scheduled to be released no earlier than 2008.
Critical reception and legacy
The film 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).
Critics to this day differ in their evaluation of the film. There are certainly many critics who admire the film greatly, particularly the animation work, and as an American animated feature film made with an unprecedented level of artistic ambition. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Others have taken a more negative view, sometimes labeling it as kitsch. Famed movie critic Pauline Kael wrote, "'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,' featuring Mickey Mouse, and parts of other sequences are first-rate Disney, but the total effect is grotesquely kitschy." The Beethoven sequence is frequently singled out for criticism, because of the editing of the piece and the juxtaposition of the piece with the Ancient Greek setting.
Classical music lovers who know the pieces are sometimes offended by the cuts that were taken, which were particularly heavy in the Beethoven sequence.[citation needed] The cuts in The Rite of Spring angered Igor Stravinsky, the only living composer whose work was represented in the film.[citation needed]
On the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American movies, "Fantasia" is ranked #58. Along with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it is one of only two Disney movies on the list. The film is regularly recommended as an excellent means to introduce children to classical music.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice is often considered the best sequence in the film, and was the only sequence from the original film carried over into Fantasia 2000. A comic adaptation of The Sorcerer's Apprentice was featured in Mickey Mouse Adventures #9, published by Disney Comics at the time of the film's 50th anniversary. Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice has become such an iconic role for the character that he is regularly depicted as such in the Disney parks. Mickey is seen wearing his famous red wizard's robe and blue sorcerer's hat in numerous parades as well as in the nighttime spectacular Fantasmic! at both Disneyland and Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World. The sorcerer's hat is also an official symbol of Disney-MGM Studios and also is involved heavily in the plot of Mickey's Philharmagic at The Magic Kingdom.
Updates
Disney had wanted Fantasia to be an ongoing project, ideally with a new release each year. The plan was to repeat some of the scenes while replacing others with different music and animation, so that each version of the film would include both familiar material and new segments. However, the film's underwhelming box-office performance prevented such plans from being realized.
Clair de Lune
One segment intended for the original Fantasia was completely animated, and then left out of the first release. Clair de Lune, based on Claude Debussy's piano piece, was a casualty of Fantasia's excessive length: the sequence made it to the final pencil test stages before being deleted. Ink and paint and Technicolor photography were completed in January 1942 with the intentions of releasing Clair de Lune as a short subject, which would not be done for fifty-four years. Instead, the sequence was later completely re-cut and re-scored as the Blue Bayou segment of Make Mine Music (1946).
A workprint of the original version of Clair de Lune was finally discovered, restored, and released by Disney as a stand-alone short subject in 1996; the accompanying Deems Taylor/Stowkowski footage was never found. This version of Clair de Lune can be found on disc 3 of the Fantasia Legacy DVD box set, or on the Disney Classic Fantasia DVD (released in 2000) as a special feature.
Other proposed sequences and Fantasia 2000
Other segments such as Ride of the Valkyries, Swan of Tuonela, Flight of the Bumblebee, Invitation to the Dance, and Adventures in Perambulator were storyboarded but never fully animated, and thus were never put into production for inclusion in a future Fantasia release. Both World War II and overseas costs prevented Disney from revising Fantasia during his lifetime. Other proposed segments that only made it into the conceptual stage include: The Firebird, Petrouchka, and Reynard, Baby Ballet, Danse Macabre (Saint-Saëns), Don Quixote, Hary Janos, La Mer, The Love for Three Oranges, The Magic Flute, Mosquito, The Planets, Pop Goes the Weasel, Roman Carnival Overture, Schwanda the Bagpiper, and Till Eulenspiegel.
Disney's dream was belatedly and finally realized with the December 17, 1999 release of Fantasia 2000 in IMAX theaters, and in general release half a year later. Fantasia 2000 re-purposed The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence with Mickey Mouse, but otherwise consisted entirely of new material. By the time of this film's production, the prestige of the original had became so great that celebrities such as Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin, and James Earl Jones agreed to host the various sections of the film.
Credits
- All music recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, save for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which was recorded by an ensemble of Hollywood studio musicians conducted by Stokowski.
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
- Directed by Samuel Armstrong
- Story development by Lee Blair, Phil Dike, and Elmer Plummer
- Visual development by Oscar Fischinger
The Nutcracker Suite
- Directed by Samuel Armstrong
- Story development by Sylvia Moberly-Holland, Norman Wright, Albert Heath, Bianca Majolie, and Graham Heid
- Key animation by Art Babbitt and Norm Ferguson
- Choreography by Jules Engel
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
- Directed by James Algar
- Art direction by Tom Codrick, Charles Phillipi, and Zack Schwartz
- Story development by Dick Huemer, Joe Grant, Perce Pearce, James Capobianco, and Carl Fallberg
- Mickey Mouse design by Fred Moore
- Key character animation by Fred Moore, Preston Blair
- Key effects animation by Ugo D'Orsi
Rite of Spring
- Directed by Bill Roberts and Paul Satterfield
- Story development by William Martin, Leo Thiele, Robert Sterner, and John McLeish (credited as John Fraser Leish)
Meet the Soundtrack
- Directed by Ben Sharpsteen and David D. Hand
- Key animation by Joshua Meador
The Pastoral Symphony
- Directed by Ford Beebe, Jim Handley, and Hamilton Luske
- Story development by Otto Englander, Webb Smith, Erdman Penner, Joseph Sabo, Bill Peet, and George Stallings
Dance of the Hours
- Direction and story by Norm Ferguson and T. Hee
- Key animation by Preston Blair
Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria
- Directed by Wilfred Jackson
- Story development by Campbell Grant, Arthur Heinemann, and Phil Dike
- Key animation by Bill Tytla
- Key effects animation by Dan MacManus, Joshua Meador, Miles E. Pike, and John F. Reed
- Operatic solo by Julietta Novis
Live-action interludes and introductions
- Hosted by Deems Taylor
- On-screen orchestra portrayed by Leopold Stokowski and various local musicians and employees of Walt Disney Productions, including James MacDonald as the percussionist and Paul J. Smith as the violinist.
- Live-action cinematography by James Wong Howe
- Mickey Mouse voice by Walt Disney
- 1982 version narration by Hugh Douglas
- 2000 version dubbing for Deems Taylor by Corey Burton
Parodies and references
The 1941 film The Reluctant Dragon features comedian Robert Benchley attempting to steal a maquette of one of the zebra-centuarettes during his visit in the maquette department.
In 1943, Leon Schlesinger Productions (later Warner Bros. Cartoons) director Robert Clampett did a Fantasia spoof short film, A Corny Concerto, with Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck acting out the musical segments (and Elmer Fudd doing an impression of Deems Taylor). Bugs himself impersonates Leopold Stokowski's conducting style in 1949's Long-Haired Hare.
In 1976, Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto released his own Fantasia parody called Allegro Non Troppo.
The animated series The Simpsons parodied Fantasia in the episode Itchy & Scratchy Land as Scratchtasia, which involved Scratchy the cat (in Mickey Mouse's apprentice garb), avoiding the sharp axe of Itchy to orchestral music. In the episode Treehouse of Horror IV there is a scene where Ned, being revealed as Satan, was insulted by Homer. He then transforms into a red version of the demonic character Chernabog from Night on Bald Mountain and disappears in a cloud of smoke.
The animated series South Park also parodied the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia in the episode "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls", in which Mr. Hankey dons a wizard outfit and drives out an independent film festival by summoning a wave of sewage, similar to Mickey's dream of summoning a storm.
The Disney animated series Timon and Pumbaa parodied Fantasia with the musical segments "Bumble In The Jungle" and "Beethoven's Whiff".
Chernabog from Night on Bald Mountain was a level boss in the videogame Kingdom Hearts. Yen Sid from The Sorcerer's Apprentice appears in Kingdom Hearts II and advises the character Sora early on in the game.
Although more of a self-parody, the House of Mouse special House of Villains, where almost every Disney villain teams up to take over Mickey's club, contains a fight sequence between Jafar and Mickey. In the sequence leading up to the fight, the villains continuously look towards Mickey's direction, mimicking the same sequence in The Rite of Spring segment.
In The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy episode Dream a Little Dream, Mandy's dream is a parody of Night on Bald Mountain, with Mandy changing into a giant monster and mimics Chernabog's movements.
In Adam Sandler's movie Big Daddy, when the homeless person (Steve Buscemi) his character encounters is asked (by Julian, the adopted son Sandler's character is pretending to be the biological father of) 'why he is laying on the ground', the homeless eventual comes to 'I watched Fantasia a lot in high school' parodying to its relation to drugs.
See also
- History of cinema
- List of animated feature films
- List of films recut by studio
- A Trip Through the Walt Disney Studios, a documentary from 1937
- Fantasia 2000
References
- Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516729-5.
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-452-25993-2.
- (2001). "Fantasia Publicity" supplemental features from The Fantasia Anthology [DVD release]. Burbank: Disney Enterprises, Inc.