"Fantasia" (1940)

Fantasia is abstract art masquerading as mainstream entertainment. It seems almost unimaginable that that the film came out of Disney, and minus a few cute touches, an appearance of Mickey Mouse, and a few interludes that play like dull educational exercises the film really isn’t concerned with having mass appeal. It is a series of short animated segments set to classical orchestral music (one definition for "fantasia" according to Random House: “a composition in fanciful or irregular form or style”); the sequences are often devoid of narrative and feature almost no other sounds besides the music. This is pure cinema, a film concerned with overwhelming us with the force of its images and the essential power of cinema as a visual medium. What is some of this for, you may ask, and that would be the wrong question. It exists for its own sake. The segments that do feature narrative are underwhelming on a narrative level, but it is in the details, the fanciful and bizarre flourishes, that these scenes are imbued with that makes them so fascinating and enjoyable. Walt Disney was doing experimental and audacious things in 1940 with the film; he threw out the rulebook for what was expected of an animated film. Its animation is soft and radiant – something completely unheard of (and only just hinted at by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio). It pushed what animation was capable of, testing new techniques and styles, and it demanded that you not only take it seriously but animation in general. It succeeded beautifully.  

Grade: A