I Watch Every Disney Movie In Order So You Don’t Have To: Fantasia
For all you music buffs out there, this is the movie for you. Fantasia came out in 1940 and is, at the current moment, the longest Disney movie you will ever see, running at a whopping two hours and six minutes. However, like I said before, if you love classical music, this movie should fly by. This blog post should be short, as there isn’t much to say about this movie.
This isn’t your traditional Disney movie. It is both live-action and animated as some random guy talks to the audience explaining each score the Philadelphia Orchestra performs. While very informational, it could be a bit boring for someone who doesn’t really care about music. While the movie definitely keeps your attention with the animations throughout the different scores, it could lose the audience’s attention as there is no dialogue other than the random guy. Oh and did I mention there is a 15 minute intermission?
The film consists of seven segments of classical music. There are multiple that everyone is familiar such as The Nutcracker Suite and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which is the iconic wizard Mickey Mouse animation. Every animation was full of color and was mostly very bright. The one thing I didn’t like about the film was the fact that in The Nutcracker Suite, when the song “Waltz of the Flowers” came up, it showed the beginning of winter, which, made no sense to me.
This movie had a lot of interesting animations as they had to put a disclaimer in the beginning to let the audience know that some scenes may be offensive for some viewers. They put it in a way where it was like “hey we know that this is bad, but we want to learn from our mistakes, so please watch.” In my opinion, I didn’t see anything too offensive. There were some scenes that I thought were a bit disturbing as I watched an animated dinosaur kill another animated dinosaur or Black centaurettes, which are female centaurs, fanning the God of wine, which, yes, is no longer acceptable.
In the end though, like the previous two movies I watched, Fantasia isn’t that bad. I think this is a fun movie to watch with a friend or a partner. The good thing about this movie is that you can talk during it, as there isn’t really a story to it. It is more for just listening purposes. My boyfriend and I learned a lot about each score and composer, like the meaning of dinosaur is “terrible lizard” in Greek.
As for the lesson of the film, my boyfriend and I had to google why and where the film got its name. According to houstonsymphony.org, “In the classical tradition, a fantasia is a free-form piece of music that resembles improvisation. The imaginative nature of the project reminded [Leopold] Stokowski of a fantasia, so he suggested the term as a working title for the film. The name stuck.”
