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00:00Hello, this is Disney historian Brian Sibley welcoming you to this commentary on Walt Disney's Fantasia,
00:07the most complex and intriguing film to emerge from what is known as the Golden Age of Disney.
00:13The film opens in what was in 1940 an unexpected way for a Disney picture to begin,
00:19not with animated images, but with live action.
00:23We are in a concert hall and the members of the orchestra are taking their places.
00:28This sequence and the others running through the movie featuring the orchestra
00:32was shot by the legendary cameraman James Wong Howe,
00:35who had already filmed such pictures as The Thin Man, The Prisoner of Zender
00:39and the first Laurence Olivier Vivian Leigh film, Fire Over England.
00:44Wong later lends such well-known films as Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Sweet Smell of Success
00:49and HUD, starring Paul Newman, which won Howe an Oscar.
00:54While the rest of the orchestra arrive, let me tell you how this experiment
00:58in what was described as seeing music and hearing pictures came about.
01:04Walt Disney was having dinner one night in 1938 at a well-known Beverly Hills restaurant,
01:09Chaston's Southern Pit, when he ran into the world-famous conductor Leopold Stokoski,
01:14who was also something of a film celebrity, having appeared in the big broadcast of 1937
01:20and in the same year alongside Deanna Durbin in 100 Men and a Girl.
01:25Walt was a fan of Stokoski, having attended his concerts in Los Angeles,
01:30and he told the conductor that he was planning a new Mickey Mouse short
01:34featuring a piece of classical music, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
01:38He asked if Stokoski might be interested in conducting the music,
01:42and Stokoski, who in turn was a fan of Disney, agreed.
01:47This chance meeting led to the two men deciding to collaborate,
01:51not on a single short, but on an entire concert of classical music interpreted in animation.
01:59The film is hosted by Deems Taylor, a well-known composer, music critic and broadcaster.
02:06One of the things that's interesting about Deems Taylor's introductions,
02:10he obviously wants us to feel comfortable with him,
02:12so you notice at one point that he actually slips his hand into his pocket,
02:16trying to make it feel perhaps a little less formal.
02:21Taylor was not only Fantasia's master of ceremonies,
02:24but was involved in many of the meetings where the pieces of music for the film were selected.
02:29He was also, as it happens, an occasional member of the Algonquin Round Table,
02:33the group of New York writers, critics, actors and wits
02:37that included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Edna Ferber.
02:41It was no accident that Walt wanted Deems Taylor involved.
02:44His radio commentaries during the intermission of the Sunday broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic
02:49were a great balance of information and humour,
02:52and they helped broaden the appeal of classical music to a much wider audience.
02:57In contrast, his introductions to Fantasia have often been criticised as rather stiff and humourless,
03:03and they were severely cut down and eventually abandoned in later releases.
03:11Fantasia took three years to complete, and it eventually involved hundreds of artists.
03:17For some time, it was simply known around the studio as the concert feature,
03:21and it was Stokowski who eventually suggested the title Fantasia,
03:25a musical term for a composition with its roots in the art of improvisation.
03:30Fantasia begins, as Deems Taylor explains, with a piece of absolute music,
03:36Johann Sebastian Bach's Decartan Fugue in D minor,
03:40originally written for the organ, but which Stokowski had famously transcribed for orchestra.
03:45Stokowski's ambition was to have all the music in the film recorded stereophonically,
03:51with each orchestra section and the various soloists split out so that they could be mixed later.
03:57Ever the innovator, Walt was enthusiastic about the idea,
04:01but the studio then had to invent a way to play them back in theatres,
04:05which became what was called the Fantasound system, about which we'll talk more later.
04:14Stokowski is seen in silhouette on the conductor's podium,
04:18an image that, lit with different colours, is repeated throughout the film.
04:22This dominating figure of Stokowski is also, by the way, symbolic.
04:26One of the themes in the film is order and harmony being brought out of chaos,
04:31and various characters appear, such as the sorcerer, the gods of Mount Olympus,
04:36and Chernobog, the demon of Bald Mountain, who control the elements,
04:40rather as the conductor controls the various sections of an orchestra.
04:45In addition to the eight compositions used in Fantasia,
04:48there was much discussion about what other pieces might be included.
04:52Walt wanted to use what he called the great music of all times,
04:57and hundreds of recordings were listened to.
05:00Other pieces considered included Claire de Lune by Debussy,
05:03which eventually ended up in the film Make My Music,
05:06with a different piece of music under the title of Blue Bayou.
05:10Rimsky-Korsakov's The Flight Of The Bumblebee,
05:13Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries,
05:15and Mussorgsky's Song Of The Flea,
05:17that might have been sung by the famous baritone Laurence Tibbett.
05:21Disney had used popular classical music many times in the Silly Symphony series,
05:26and in a way Fantasia became the ultimate Silly Symphony.
05:30The one difference was that some of the composers and the pieces chosen for the feature
05:35were considered rather more serious or important,
05:38and therefore required a greater degree of respect.
05:42There was, however, no question about what was to open the film.
05:45Bach's Staccato and Fugue in D minor was Stokowski's signature piece.
05:50A staccato is a musical composition essentially for a keyboard instrument,
05:56designed to exhibit the performer's touch and technique,
05:59while a fugue is a succession of musical themes
06:02that repeat and interweave in a strict pattern.
06:06The section was planned as being very experimental,
06:09Walt even toyed with the idea of filming it in 3D,
06:12and it opens with a visual equivalent of the fugue's overlapping musical patterns.
06:18There's an element of fantasy creeping into the imagery of the orchestra,
06:23because obviously instruments do not glow as they're played,
06:27or in the case of the kettledrums, hit.
06:30Today these multicoloured silhouettes may not seem very sophisticated,
06:34but they were at the time extremely difficult to film,
06:38involving huge lamps that were required to cast the necessary shadows.
06:44Disney was very much a popularist.
06:46He understood what he liked,
06:49and I think Fantasia is a testimony to what he wanted to do,
06:52which was to bring the elements of music,
06:54which he quite honestly admitted he didn't necessarily understand,
06:58but to convey them in a way that audiences could take something from them.
07:04Walt had first become interested in abstract filmmaking
07:07after seeing Len Lye's 1935 film A Colour Box,
07:11in which images were painted directly onto the film itself.
07:15Another abstract artist who caught his imagination was Oscar Fischinger,
07:20who had worked at both Paramount and MGM.
07:23Born in Germany in 1900, Fischinger's initial interest was in music,
07:27but he trained in architectural drawing and tool design.
07:31Later, inspired by Walter Ruckman's 1921 film Lichtspiel Opus I,
07:36Fischinger began devoting himself to creating abstract films,
07:40combining his love for music and graphic art.
07:44Fischinger won the Grand Prix at the 1935 Venice Film Festival
07:48with his film Composition in Blue,
07:51and the following year, Fischinger was in touch with Stokowski
07:54about the idea of using the conductor's arrangements
07:57for the Bach, Toccata and Fugue in a feature-length concert movie.
08:01Stokowski wouldn't sign over the rights without an assurance
08:04that there would be financial support to make the movie,
08:07and nothing further happened.
08:09But two years later, in 1938, Fischinger,
08:11who was then struggling financially and had a family to feed
08:14and was desperately in need of work,
08:16joined the Disney studio with the help of the European Film Fund.
08:20He came to the studio as a motion picture cartoon effects animator
08:24and was paid $68 a week,
08:27very little, in fact, compared with the more than $200 a week
08:30that he'd received from Paramount.
08:32Nevertheless, he began work on the Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
08:38It's been said that Fischinger believed
08:40Walton Stokowski stole the idea
08:42of putting an animated version of the Toccata into a feature,
08:45but Fantasia didn't grow out of the Toccata,
08:48it grew out of The Sorcerer's Apprentice,
08:50as Stokowski had already performed the Bach piece on film
08:54in 100 Men and a Girl.
08:56Walt described the mood that he wanted to convey
08:59in the film's opening sequence
09:01as being as if one was half-asleep in a concert hall
09:04and the images of the musicians began to merge
09:06with those of the imagination.
09:09So the film begins with patterns,
09:11patterns that become violin bows and bridges
09:14and then musical staves
09:16before moving into a greater realm of abstraction.
09:19Nevertheless, the images were far less abstract
09:22than Fischinger would have liked.
09:24Whilst Walt appreciated Oscar's work,
09:26he thought audiences would have difficulty
09:28in accepting the purely abstract,
09:30particularly, perhaps, from a Disney film.
09:32Stokowski agreed.
09:34Walt wanted to tone things down,
09:36but Oscar kept pushing for more and more complex designs.
09:40Walt was quoted as saying,
09:42There's a theory I go on,
09:44that an audience is always thrilled with something new,
09:47but fire too many new things at them
09:49and they become restless.
09:51In the end, Oscar's work was changed so much
09:54that he felt it wasn't even really represented in Fantasia at all.
09:58Fischinger left the studio
10:00and his name does not appear on the credits.
10:02Nevertheless, anyone who has seen the visual music
10:05of Fischinger's experimental films
10:07will see his influence on this sequence.
10:10Fischinger later gave up filmmaking
10:12to concentrate on abstract painting and the Lumigraph,
10:16a device of his own invention
10:18that projected beams of coloured light.
10:22Fischinger's influences notwithstanding,
10:24effects animators Cy Young and Joshua Meda
10:27were two of the stars of this sequence.
10:30Josh Meda is also known for the underwater effects
10:33he did in Pinocchio,
10:35and he later won an Academy Award
10:37for his work on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
10:41I think one way of looking at the Toccata and Fugue in D minor
10:44is to see it as an overture to Fantasia.
10:47It is not a musical overture in any sense,
10:50but it is a visual overture,
10:52and these rushing lines,
10:54these rolling waves,
10:56these up-thrust rock shapes,
10:58all of these elements are repeated throughout the picture,
11:02and it's as though subliminally and subtly
11:04they were being established right at the beginning of the film.
11:10These rolling wave-type forms are very much Fischinger's construction,
11:15as demonstrated by the concept sketches he made,
11:18but those concepts lack what his biographer William Moritz calls
11:22the needless realism of a clouded sky.
11:26It was just such realism that upset Fischinger,
11:29as insistent as he was on pure abstraction.
11:35These arches and bursts of light
11:39will recur right at the end of the film
11:42in the section devoted to Ave Maria.
11:51The cascades of sparkles and lights
11:53are found again in the Nutcracker Suite,
11:56and these bursts of flame-coloured and deep red
12:00and browns and oranges seem to foreshadow
12:03the sequence of the Rite of Spring.
12:11Other films which have tried to put together
12:13compilations of images and sounds
12:16have tended to be rather disparate.
12:18The extraordinary thing about Fantasia
12:20is that it has, intentionally or accidentally,
12:24a creative hole.
12:26It's hard to realise now, because we're so familiar
12:29with classical music and its representation
12:32on film and on television,
12:34just how revolutionary this film was.
12:39Walt and his artists challenged the audiences of the day
12:42with a mind-boggling, almost hallucinatory mix
12:45of sounds and visuals.
12:47It was the first time in the history of film
12:50equally keen to challenge the orthodoxy
12:52of the classical music world,
12:54they were respectful whilst being determined
12:57that nothing was sacred.
12:59Many cuts were made in the music,
13:01and Disney even once suggested
13:03cutting the Tocartan fugue's ending.
13:05Stokowski responded,
13:07''Over my dead body.''
13:09And this sacred passage at least remained.
13:14It is amazingly powerful.
13:16It is an amazingly powerful image of Stokowski
13:19silhouetted against this great red sunburst
13:22as Bach's music comes to its climax.
13:29The writers of the official programme
13:31when the film was released in 1940 said at this point,
13:34''Bach has spoken.''