Fantasia (1940)

Fantasia movie storyline. Disney animators set pictures to Western classical music as Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” features Mickey Mouse as an aspiring magician who oversteps his limits.

“The Rite of Spring” tells the story of evolution, from single-celled animals to the death of the dinosaurs. “Dance of the Hours” is a comic ballet performed by ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators. “Night on Bald Mountain” and “Ave Maria” set the forces of darkness and light against each other as a devilish revel is interrupted by the coming of a new day.

Fantasia (1940), a Disney animated feature-length “concert” film milestone, is an experimental film integrating eight magnificent classical musical compositions with enchanting, exhilarating, and imaginative, artistically-choreographed animation. The conceptual framework of the individual pieces embraces such areas as prehistoric times, the four seasons, nature, hell/heaven, the themes of light vs. darkness and chaos vs. order, dancing animals, classical mythology, and legend.

This Disney production was an ambitious experiment to try to popularize classical music, especially by accompanying it with animation. Originally, the film was to consist of only The Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment, but it was expanded to include the full anthology of shorts. And it was slightly controversial for its depiction of bare-breasted centaurettes in the Pastoral Symphony segment and other stereotypical racial depictions. [At the request of the Hays Production Code, the figures were garlanded with flower bras for cover-up after swimming in a brook.

Also, in later releases of the film, in the Pastoral Symphony segment (again), two black Nubian/zebra centaurs who attend the Bacchus celebration were edited out, along with a female pickaninny centaurette with braided hair who shines the hoof of a white female centaurette.] Other segments, such as Ride of The Valkyries, Swan of Tuonela, and Flight of the Bumblebee were storyboarded but never fully animated, and thus were never put into production for inclusion in future Fantasia-style releases.

Directed by: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong
Starring: Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor, Corey Burton, James MacDonald, Tim Matheson, Julietta Novis, Paul J. Smith
Screenplay by: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer
Cinematography by: James Wong Howe
Production Management: Ben Sharpsteen, Walt Pfeiffer
Art Direction by: Ken Anderson, Bruce Bushman, Arthur Byram, Tom Codrick
Music by: Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra
Distributed by: RKO Radio Pictures
Release Date: November 13, 1940