Fantasia: Double Play (DVD & Blu-ray)

It struck me, before putting this DVD on, that I didn't recall watching Fantasia all the way through. I saw certain clips of it at school and remember going into a shop (probably Woolworths) to buy a CD and it was playing on every TV set. Aside from that, I hadn't seen Fantasia from beginning to end so this was going to be a new experience and one that I could go into with eyes wide open and no preconceptions aside from knowing that Walt Disney was some sort of pioneering genius who was responsible for the likes of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty and Dumbo.

This film was originally designed by Walt Disney as a short film based around The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1897 which itself was based on a poem by Paul Dukas a century earlier. However, the short was running over budget and becoming unwieldy so, when Disney met world-famous composer Leopold Stokowski at the Chasen's restaurant in Hollywood, they discussed the project and Stokowski recommended making a feature film with Disney animation accompanying other pieces of classical music by the great composers and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fantasia begins with Deems Taylor, a popular radio personality who spoke during the interval of classical musical broadcasts on radio, standing amidst an orchestra which is assembling for a performance of something -- we don't know what -- until Taylor explains what the night's entertainment will be. We then see Leopold Stokowski in silhouette and various members of the orchestra in shadow form with vibrant colours illuminating them against a background and, when they start playing Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the orchestra and composer fade away and animated shapes, colours and patterns emerge as an abstract interpretation of what the music may bring to mind if you were watching it being performed with your eyes closed or in a state when you are half asleep.

After each musical section, the film returns to the music hall where Deems Taylor, acting as the Master of Ceremonies, introduces the next piece of music and explains the reasoning behind the animation and why it fits the music. Following that piece by Bach, you then have the following:

Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky
The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Dukas
The Rites of Spring by Stravinsky
The Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven
Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria by Mussorgsky and Schubert


Each of these have entirely different animated accompaniments from Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice who tries his hand at magic but then falls asleep, letting the magically animated brooms go out of control to dancing ostriches, hippopotami, nymphs, fish and centaurs.

When the film was released in 1940 it bombed at the box office partly because cinemas did not have the equipment to broadcast the demanding soundtrack (known as Fantasound) and partly because audiences just weren't receptive to this mixture of popular entertainment and high art. It didn't help that Mickey Mouse's popularity had dwindled through the 1930s and, as the main feature in Fantasia, he wasn't as popular as he had been in the 1920s and early '30s. When it was re-released two years later, the film did much better because technology had caught up with Disney (the film was also remixed into Mono so that more theatres could play it) and people could listen to the music as Disney had intended and watch the film as an encompassing and involving, almost hallucinatory, experience.


After drifting in obscurity for a couple of decades, Fantasia was resurrected in the late 1960s thanks to the drug craze as dope fiends and acid heads discovered something that would be the perfect audiovisual accompaniment to their trip so took drugs during the 1969 re-release. From there, its popularity increased to the point where it was reissued several times with different cuts, mostly cutting down the Deems Taylor segments as much as possible, until the 1991 DVD and laser disc release which restored the film using camera negatives, duplicate negatives and actual prints. Ten years later, for the film's 60th anniversary, the restoration process went even further for the DVD release and it was restored to the original 125 minute running time but, because some of the Deems Taylor footage had degraded so badly, Disney brought in Corey Burton to rerecord Oliver Taylor's lines.

I have to admit that I wasn't as impressed by Fantasia as I expected although I did recognise it as a phenomenal piece of work that probably had a huge influence on music videos, the popular acceptance of classical music and experimental animation. To be honest, I prefer Disney films to have a coherent narrative and so Dumbo, which was only made to recoup some of the money that Disney had spent making Fantasia, nearly bankrupting the studio in the process, will always be one of my favourite Disney films whereas Fantasia won't. It is the sort of film that you can put on when you don't want anything too challenging and can even sit there with your eyes closed and just enjoy the music or, if you are a little bit sleepy, watch it for the incredible visuals and probably have a short doze as it lulls you to sleep.


The Disc

Extra Features
The commentary, by Disney expert Brian Sibley, is one really for Disney aficionados and those who are extremely interested in the animation process and the ins and outs of the process by which Fantasia was made. Sibley clearly knows his stuff and talks at a fair pace throughout the two-hour running time talking about which animators worked on which sections, what their history was within the Disney studio and who directed and supervised each section. This is not something for the casual fan and I have to admit being quite bored at times and would have preferred a commentary by Leonard Maltin or other more 'user friendly' Disney historians.

Disney family Museum (3:55) is a tour around the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco by Walt's daughter, Diane Disney, and really isn't as interesting as it should be.

The only other thing on the extra features menu is Dylan & Cole Sprouse: Blu-ray™ is Suite! (4:45) which is a promotional piece for Disney Blu-ray Discs by two teenage twins (and their mother) from a TV show on the Disney Channel -- to be avoided and utterly pointless when the disc on which you are watching this comes with a Blu-ray Disc anyway!


The Picture
I was only sent the DVD for review so can't comment on the quality of the high definition picture and sound. The standard definition picture is nice and colourful with extremely vibrant colours and solid blacks but there is a degree of softness throughout the film that detracts slightly from the amazing animation and some short sequences even have some flickering which is probably due more to the animation than the restoration process.

Fantasia is an incredible visual experience but one that really requires the music in order for you to gain the full effect -- it would be half the film it were shown silently or with different music playing as the animation sequences were designed specifically for the classical music that plays alongside them and the same goes for the music as there will be some people who can't listen to one of the compositions without thinking of the animated sequence from Fantasia.

Unfortunately, the DVD does not have the Disney View option in which the 1.33:1 film has animated sides added on to fill a 1.78:1 (16:9) screen which change subtly throughout the running time so that, after a while, you fail to notice them whilst they prevent screen burn due to the black bars on either side of the screen.


The Sound
The only option is the strangely named Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix in 5.1 and available in English and Dutch. I'm not quite sure exactly what the differences between normal Dolby Digital 5.1 and the version that has been 'Disney Enhanced' but, in any case, it sounds extremely good with clear dialogue from Deems Taylor (or Corey Burton) and from Mickey Mouse, with Walt Disney providing the voice of his breakthrough creation for the last time.

When it comes to the music, it really swells from the centre channel and front surrounds with the rear surrounds only used intermittently. It really is a tremendous AV experience as the music is by some of the great composers (Mozart may feel a little snubbed at being left out) and it fills the room.

There is a reasonable selection of subtitles: English, English HoH, Dutch, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian.


Final Thoughts
Fantasia is a terrific film that is a brilliant technological achievement and one that it is absolutely timeless. I wasn't as enamoured with the film or taken in as with Walt Disney's first two feature films or with his later output but do recognise this as a landmark film and one that should be recognised as a great piece of art. The problem I have with Fantasia is that there isn't a narrative structure or a protagonist with whom you identify and want to succeed such as Dumbo, Snow White or Princess Aurora.

Fans of this will no doubt want to buy this either for the DVD or improved HD picture and sound on the Blu-ray. As this comes as a double pack with both the DVD and BD, it will suit households where there is a Blu-ray player in the living room and DVD players elsewhere or if they intend to buy a Blu-ray player in the near future. I intend to rent or buy the pack for the BD in order to see what the AV picture looks like and to determine whether the improved AV package makes the film any more immersive and enjoyable.