When I was a child, I only wanted to watch Fantasia for one reason: to see the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment, which I enjoyed every time. Yes, the dancing crocodiles and hippos were fun, and the mountain monster near the end was impressive, if you could stay awake that long. But the rest of the movie was boring.
I’m afraid I’m not doing too much better as an adult: I have trouble enjoying the abstract segments because I‘m impatient to get to the “good parts” that have narrative structure. Alas, I too am a Philistine.
• The host introduces the first section (Toccata and Fugue in D Minor) by essentially saying, “First you’ll see this, and then you’ll see that,” and I want to tell him, “Get on with it! You don’t have to tell us what we’ll see, just show it and let us judge for ourselves!” Then I realize, when Fantasia first appeared he DID need to explain what audiences were going to see. It was too new and different.
Now when he explains the plot of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” right before we see it—that IS ridiculous.
• I doubt there are many films with a soundtrack so consistently first-rate. Even movies that use a lot of classical pieces will usually have incidental background music that’s not particularly noteworthy or memorable. But it’s the nature of Fantasia that virtually every second of non-verbal sound is of the highest quality.
And yet for some reason when I think about Fantasia, the first music that springs to my mind is the March to the Scaffold from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique . . . which is nowhere in the film.
• The host said The Nutcracker was seldom seen, but we would probably recognize the music. Was he making a joke or is it only since his time that The Nutcracker has become ubiquitous across the U.S. every December?
• We see:
– sultry fish doing veil dances
– dancing mushrooms that are just adorable if you manage to not think of them as racial stereotypes
– cute seasonal pixies that make leaves and snowflakes dance perfectly to Tchaikovsky
• Despite all the dramatic shots of volcanoes and dinosaurs, the “Rite of Spring” segment really drags.
• Who thought of pegasoi as waterfowl?
• I really have to think these two female centaurs have something going on.
• Right, there are ostrich ballerinas too. (A brilliant choice.)
And not just ONE hippo ballerina. Because that wouldn’t be enough.
• The early part of “Night on Bald Mountain” uses a creepy-marvelous effect for the rising ghosts, like curled paper wisping above the background.
• The early part of “Ave Maria” shows the beauty of the multiplane camera, as we look through the trees at the procession.
• The movie as a whole just might possibly perhaps be a smidge too long. Just maybe.