What You Will See Are the Different Things That Might Pass Through Your Mind If You Sat In a Concert Hall Listening To This Music

If there was any doubt that Walt Disney was an ambitious man (and there shouldn’t be… at all) look no further than 1940’s Fantasia. I always found it so cool that just after 2 films, Uncle Walt goes balls to the walls with an abstract feature film with no storyline. Meant to be an ever evolving Concert Feature, this one was always kind of lost on me has a child. The imagery was fun, but in all reality I was just waiting for the Mickey Mouse part. Oh, and dinosaurs, because dinosaurs are awesome. In re-watching, the film is just pure eye and ear candy.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor starts the program with everything that Fantasia sets out to be, what you might see in your head as you hear music. I love how the backlit orchestra melts away to abstract patterns. When the sounds gets fuller so do the images, it’s such an astounding exercise in art and imagination.

Instead of going for the obvious Christmas scene, this Nutcracker Suite features the changing seasons. The fairies are particularly beautiful, and who can forget the funny little slightly racist mushrooms?

Sorcerer’s Apprentice is pretty much Mickey’s most famous and memorable role. It’s hard to think of a time that Mickey dropped so hard in popularity that Walt had created this vehicle to showcase him again. It worked spectacularly as this is really one of the best Mickey Mouse shorts. One of my favorite scenes is Mickey Mouse getting all murderous toward the runaway brooms with an ax all in silhouette. Some imagination, huh?

Oh, boy, do we get heavy during Rite of Spring. Depicting the Earth’s beginning to the extinction of the dinosaur, this segment always dragged on a little long for me. It’s strange since it featured one of my all-time favorite things in the entire world, the might dinosaur, and it is pretty action packed, but it is the longest segment and it feels it. It is pretty fascinating that it’s very honest with the life and death struggle of the time with some haunting and gruesome images of the dinos dying of dehydration and starvation.

Pastoral Symphony was a favorite as a kid obsessed with Greek Mythology. I wish there was a few more scenes featuring the gods, the image of Diana shooting a bow and arrow to fill the night sky with stars is striking.

Dance of the Hours is another comedic delight setting the beautiful ballet music to our ample starlet, Hyacinth Hippo. There is some really great character animation here.

Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria is possibly the 2^nd most famous segment mostly due to the powerful presence of Chernabog. Not very many characters have been created that are so intimating. He is pretty much the embodiment of evil. I feel a lot of people forget that it’s paired with Ave Maria, and it beautifully closes out the feature as the sound of bells announce the dawn and the camera pans into the sunrise.

Way ahead of its time, Fantasia was a failure during its first run but now there is no disputing that thisa masterpiece in film and animation. Bravo, Maestro Disney.