| Collector's Corner March 2007
 Fantasia
- Starring: Mickey Mouse, Leopold Stokowski,
Deems Taylor, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a cast of thousands
- Directors: James Algar, The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Dukas); Samuel Armstrong, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
(J.S. Bach), The Nutcracker Suite (Tchaikovsky); Ford Beebe, Jim Handley, Hamilton
Luske, The Pastoral Symphony (Beethoven); Norman Ferguson, T. Hee (!), Dance of
the Hours (Ponchielli); Wilfred Jackson, Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria
(Mussorgsky/Schubert); Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Rite of Spring (Stravinsky)
- Theatrical release: 1940
- DVD release: 2000
- Video: Fullscreen
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.0
- Released by: Walt Disney Video
With all the coverage accorded the Oscars last month, I
went to my film-history books to see who’d been nominated for the most Oscars. It
wasn’t an actor, an actress, a director, or a composer, but a producer: Nominated a
total of 64 times, Walt Disney walked home with 26 gold statuettes. To put that in
perspective, John Ford, often cited as the greatest director in film, won four times, as
did Katherine Hepburn, who won more than any other actor. Composers Alfred Newman and John
Williams have each been nominated 45 times, but won only nine and five times,
respectively. Disney stands on a peak by himself. He picked up so many honors by proving
that animation, an art form that had previously won little respect or shown little in the
way of ambition, could stand alongside film.
Disney began his career making silly little cartoons under
contract to a theater chain. They would show his short subjects before a movie, mostly to
get the patrons out of the snack bar and into their seats by the time the feature started.
Just when Disney was beginning to enjoy a little success, his boss, Charles B. Mintz,
fired him, hired all his staff away, and took control of a character that Disney had
developed: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Ruined but not beaten, Disney pulled himself together,
found new funding, and soon decided that he’d try that new-fangled sound thing. His
first talkie cartoon was Steamboat Willie (1928), which featured Mickey Mouse in
only his second screen appearance (his first had been Plane Crazy, released earlier
in 1928). The public fell in love with the mouse, and Disney started giving them plenty of
Mickey cartoons. In 1932, he won a special Oscar for having invented Mickey. By 1935,
Disney had added Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.
 But Disney thought there was a higher
calling for animation. He dreamed of creating a full-length feature that just happened to
be animated. When he told his family, they were horrified. Word got around Hollywood, and
the film wags labeled it "Disney’s Folly." The film took two years of his
staff’s time before Disney ran out of money. He then took a rough cut of the feature
to a bank and, based on what they saw, they gave him the money to finish the job. Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs became the top-grossing film of 1938 and won Disney his
seventh Oscar. From then on, things looked good for the Disney studios, which won at least
one Oscar every year from 1931 to 1939.
With a solid line of working capital and more than a little
hubris, Disney decided that his next step would be an animated feature based on classical
music, with a special multichannel soundtrack (Fantasound!) and road-show status complete
with reserved seats, ushers, and fancy dress. He would use the top conductor of the day,
Leopold Stokowski, to lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in a potpourri of short classical
works, and set all of our imaginations in flight with inspired animation that enhanced our
experience of the music.
The film was Fantasia, and Disney distributed it
himself, to ensure that the Fantasound system and other details functioned just as
he’d intended them to. He knew he had something special on his hands. Fantasia’s
creativity of design, its emotional arc from giggly to frightening to peaceful, the
gorgeous music, the wild soundscapes -- everything pointed to an experience that would
astonish audiences everywhere.
Fantasia premiered in New York City on November 13,
1940, and the next day Bosley Crowther’s review appeared in the New York Times.
Crowther began by stating that "motion-picture history was made at the Broadway
Theatre last night with the spectacular world première of Walt Disney’s long-awaited
‘Fantasia.’ Let us agree, as did almost every one present on the occasion, that
the sly and whimsical papa of Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Pinocchio and a host of other
cartoon darlings has this time come forth with something which really dumps conventional
formulas overboard and boldly reveals the scope of films for imaginative excursion. Let us
temperately admit that ‘Fantasia’ is simply terrific -- as terrific as anything
that has ever happened on a screen."
Even with that type of adulation, Fantasia was a
financial flop, sending the Disney studio, once again, into a nose dive. Walt’s
retort was, "I don't make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more
pictures." At the last minute, RKO offered to pick up the film as long as Disney
dumped Fantasound and the road-show trappings. When they got complaints that the film was
too long, they cut it by a third, from 125 to 81 minutes, and sent it out again. But Fantasia
drowned in Hollywood red ink.
Disney rereleased Fantasia in 1946, and again in
1956 and 1963, each time to more acclaim. Walt didn’t live to see Fantasia
enter its period of greatest success. He died of lung cancer in 1966. In 1969, hippies
rediscovered the phantasmagorical factor in the film and Fantasia at long last
turned a profit. You can only imagine how the conservative Disney must have rolled in his
grave at the late-night showings of Fantasia accompanied by a haze of ganga smoke
and wide-eyed wonderers peaking on psychedelics as hippopotami danced in tutus. Since
then, Fantasia has been rereleased dozens of times, always adding to its popularity
and its profitability.
Part of what makes Fantasia great is that it’s
a Rorschach test for viewers. Some love the incredible multiplane animation, which is
stunning to audiences accustomed to two-dimensional cartoons like The Simpsons or Shaggy
and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! Survivors of the ‘60s see it as the ultimate gospel of
Timothy Leary, a psychedelic tantra aimed at mind expansion. Classical music lovers go for
its ability to bring new listeners into the fold.
 Does all this background make
you want to go buy the DVD? Too bad. Walt Disney Video has been shameful and cynical in
regularly removing Fantasia from the shelves to try to artificially jack up
interest and prices. The company’s "get it while you can" ethos may work at
Filene’s Basement or Costco, but when it comes to classic films, I think it’s
wrongheaded and totally counter to what Walt Disney himself had in mind. It is another
example of a studio raping itself, pillaging its own property in search of more profits.
Anyway, the 2000 DVD versions of Fantasia -- either
the 3-Disc Collector’s Edition or the 60th Anniversary Edition -- are
superb, and filled with most of what anyone would want to see. Almost everything available
has been restored. The only cuts made, to keep the PC brigade from sinking the rest of the
film, were of two brief segments of racial stereotyping, which the editors worked around
by zooming in on parts of the frame that don’t include the offensive images. This
works OK, but given the film’s historical importance, we should be able to watch it
as originally screened and make up our own minds. After all, many worse things happen on
screen, even in Disney films. That quibble aside, this is the best version of the film,
and while you now see copies going for ridiculous prices, with a little diligence you can
usually find a good copy at an affordable price. But beware of any copy labeled
"Region 9" or "DTS" -- these are bootlegs. The high prices of Disney
animated features on DVD has created a huge market in bootlegged versions. For the
legitimate seller, the result of so many people getting bilked is that the price of
legitimate DVD editions is crashing. So be careful, but don’t give up.
"But wait, for a limited time only" -- or at
least I assume that’s what Disney Home Video will say. Fantasia has been
scheduled for release on Blu-ray sometime next year.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
