Like a heavy metal video, "Fantasia" features a stunning display of evil in its musical segment "Night on Bald Mountain."
THE RELEASE of "Fantasia" in November 1940 marked a turning point in the career of Walt Disney and in American popular culture.
The film was an unparalleled artistic and creative triumph, but a commercial failure. That was enough to convince Disney that art and experimentation must defer to the bottom line.
"It was very painful for Walt," Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, said in a recent video documentary about the movie. "The critics said he was trying to be something more than he was, and I think it affected him the rest of his life."
"Fantasia" was the first film to combine animation, music and stereophonic sound. It took nearly three years to make and featured the efforts of more than 1,000 artists and technicians. Conductor Leopold Stokowski and the 100-member Philadelphia Orchestra also appeared in the film.
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The cost was a then-astronomical $2.3 million, not counting the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to install brand-new stereo sound systems in movie theaters.
"Fantasia" not only lost money, but was panned by most classical music critics. The double whammy left a scar on Disney's psyche.
"I think the rest of Walt Disney's career was sort of trying to make up for it in a commercial sense," Roy Disney said. "He was saying: 'OK, I know where the line is now between me and the critics, and me and the world of art. And I'm going to have to do what I can to make money, and I'll have to make this a business instead of an art.' "
Think about that the next time you're standing in line for the Space Mountain ride at Disney World.
What might have been created if Walt Disney's unique genius and studio power had been unleashed to pursue art, instead of always thinking about profit?
We'll never know, but one thing is certain: A half-century after its original release, "Fantasia" is going to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in home video.
The video was released nationally this week, and a spokesman for Disney Studios said it will ship advance orders of 9.4 million copies. That likely will make "Fantasia" the studio's top-selling video ever.
"Bambi" sold 8 million copies, "The Little Mermaid" 9 million. There is a difference between pre-orders and copies sold, but "Fantasia" appears headed for the No. 1 spot.
There will be two editions: a standard tape with a suggested price of $24.99 and a deluxe collector's video for $99.99. The deluxe version includes "Fantasia" and "The Making of a Masterpiece" and two compact discs of the movie soundtrack.
The animation and sound of "Fantasia" have been restored using computer technology. It may lose something on the small screen, but for generations of Americans touched by this film, it remains a powerful experience.
Charles Aquino was 9 years old when he first saw "Fantasia."
"Everybody thought it would scare kids, but I remember I was kind of bored," said Aquino, who now teaches journalism and mass media at Buffalo State College.
Today, Aquino finds "Fantasia" anything but boring. "It was so far ahead of its time, I don't think the public understood it when it first came out," he says.
"People expected a Disney cartoon, boy meets girl, something like that. For Disney, this wasn't a story but cinematic art."
Aquino says "Fantasia" expanded the medium of film. It wasn't a story in traditional words and plot, but used animation and music in a series of video episodes. It's not a movie, but an experience based on sensory perceptions.
In fact, "Fantasia" gained its greatest popularity when it was re-released in 1969. Those who came of age during the psychedelic era of the late '60s embraced the film, with its visual imagery, lack of story and free-form structure.
In concept, "Fantasia" is strikingly similar to MTV: the use of video images to enhance music. In fact, like a heavy metal video, "Fantasia" features a stunning display of evil in its musical segment "Night on Bald Mountain," by Modest Mussorgsky.
That segment is based on sketches of Chernabog, the god of evil and death. The segment includes everything from devils romping around the mountain to sinners descending into hell.
In the end, as in all Disney films, good triumphs over evil. "Night on Bald Mountain" is followed by the film's final segment, a beautifully animated version of Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria." It begins with the serenity of sunrise and pans over a forest landscape. Probably the most famous scene in the movie is the one featuring dancing mushrooms from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite."
Actually, "Fantasia" originated as a film short for Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney was concerned that another of his creations, Donald Duck, was becoming more popular than Mickey.
So Disney decided to star Mickey in an expanded film short to the music of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," by Paul Dukas. After meeting with Stokowski, however, Disney decided to expand the short into a full-length movie.
Other musical segments in the film include Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" and Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours."
Herman Trotter had little interest in classical music when he first saw "Fantasia" late in 1940. He was 15 when he entered the theater to see a film that forever changed his musical outlook.
" 'Fantasia' was my first experience with classical music that really meant anything to me," said Trotter, now classical music critic for The Buffalo News.
"Seeing those images and listening to that music was an amazing experience. Up until that time, I, like most kids my age, thought anything with violins was sissy music. After 'Fantasia,' I understood for the first time that this was music of a higher level."
Like most people, Trotter believes Disney was far ahead of his time, describing "Fantasia" as "the first significant multimedia event in history."
Disney Studios has mastered the art of marketing and selling videos. Instead of selling the video itself, Disney has turned it into a collectible. It is that desire to keep a movie and play it over and over that entices consumers to buy instead of rent Disney videos.
"Fantasia" is "a different kind of movie from what we usually do. Really, there's nothing else like it at Disney," said Tania Steele, vice president of worldwide marketing for Disney.
More than any other Disney animated release, "Fantasia" is being aimed at adults. "This has a much wider adult appeal; it spans generations," Steele said.
"Fantasia" will be available to retailers for only 50 days, and then, Steele says, it will be off the video market forever.
"They're very serious about the time limit," said Bob Stilson, film buyer and advertising director for Video Factory in Buffalo. " 'Fantasia' has the shortest release time of any video I can remember."
One reason is that Disney plans to make a new version of "Fantasia" during this decade. Walt Disney's original plan was to make "Fantasia" an ongoing work of art, to be updated every few years.
All this adds up to more sales and making "Fantasia" a more attractive collectible. "There is some manipulation, but I think it's good manipulation," Stilson said. " 'Fantasia' is not a typical Disney video aimed at kids.
"It's a high-quality work, but there is some risk involved. They want an adult audience to buy this video. It's hard to predict how it will do, but my gut feeling is that it's so wild and unique, it's going to be very big."
Oliver "Ollie" Johnston, a veteran Disney animator, worked on "Fantasia." Now 79, Johnston recalls how Walt Disney turned his creative vision into reality.
"There was something different about 'Fantasia' right from the start," Johnston said in a telephone conversation from his California home. "I was glad to be a part of it, but I didn't know there were so many different parts. "There were over 1,000 artists who worked on that film. How Walt controlled all of them, I'll never know. He was sort of a benign dictator. He was very parental. You couldn't say no to the guy."
Ironically, Johnston said, Disney was not a fan of classical music at the start of the movie. "Honestly, he didn't really care for it at the beginning, but by the end you could hear Walt whistling Beethoven when he walked down the hall.
"I think that's what he wanted 'Fantasia' to do: introduce this music to people who normally wouldn't care for it."
Disney had trouble selling the concept of "Fantasia" to the Hollywood studios.
"The people at RKO said, 'Who's going to go see a Disney movie that doesn't have Dopey in it?' " Johnston said. "The audience expected something else, but when they saw it, I think they loved it."
Still, with World War II on the horizon and the excessive costs, "Fantasia" was doomed as a commercial project. "It's a shame, because Walt gave so much of himself to that movie," Johnston said. "I think it established animation as the art form of this century."
At times, Disney had to control the urge to take animation too far. Originally, Johnston said, Disney wanted to have an animated orchestra of bugs, instead of the real musicians in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
"Stokowski wasn't too excited about the bug idea," Johnston said. "He told Walt, 'If you're going to have a bug orchestra, do they have to have little union cards?' That was enough for Walt to decide to use real people."
Johnston believes "Fantasia" marked Disney's coming of age as an artist. "Walt became much more sophisticated in his work during that movie. He took it to another level."
There would be no more "Fantasias" in his lifetime, but in works like "Bambi," Disney proved he could still push the limits of animation and still earn acceptance from a mass audience.
" 'Fantasia' was wonderful, but the movie failed because nobody wanted it," critic Leonard Maltin said in a recent film interview. "It was Walt's great dream, but it didn't meet the audience's expectations. They thought of it as highbrow, so they didn't come to see it."
Despite its failures, Disney was proud of "Fantasia." In a way, it was his defining moment as an artist and a businessman. He once said of the movie: "I didn't make any money with it, but I don't regret doing it. This is what I should have been doing."