The Nine Disney Animated Masterpieces
Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty
The use of shadows in this segment is especially pronounced. As the sorcerer abandons his chamber ascending a curved staircase and diminishing into the distance Mickey’s shadow on the subterranean wall grows larger and larger visually “overshadowing” his master. Also...
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the only segment of Fantasia that features a star out of Disney’s – literal! – “stable” of cartoon performers. Originally it was to showcase Snow White’s Dopey but had been recast with Mickey Mouse in the...
Though this segment of Fantasia was the inspiration that got Disney connected with Stokowski in the first place, it seems somewhat a misfit in the finished film. In October of 1937, only a couple months before the premiere of Snow...
With a simple cut-away transition, suddenly we are looking down on a surface of water and seeing a reflection of flower blossoms falling toward us from above. The actual blossoms meet their reflections and then skim away downstream on the...
By the 1930s Tchaikovsky’s (1840-1893) 25-minute suite of eight dances had completely eclipsed his full-length three-hour ballet written in 1892 a year before the composer’s death. No longer, however: the full two-act ballet nowadays has become a Christmastime staple. Still,...
“Our object is to reach the very people who have walked out on this Toccata and Fugue because they didn’t understand it. I am one of those people,” confessed Walt Disney, “but when I understand it, I like it.”[1] Originally,...
During September, 1938, Disney convened a series of meetings with Stokowski along with Fantasia’s onscreenhost Deems Taylor (1885–1966), supervising directors Joe Grant (1908–2005) and Dick Huemer (1898–1979) and other staff to audition many many 78rpm recordings of classical music in...
An absolutely singular accomplishment! Upon the film’s release Otis Ferguson of The New Republic described Fantasia as “…one of the strange and beautiful things that have happened in the world.”[1] Fantasia premiered November 13, 1940, at the Broadway Theater (originally...
This period was the high point of Walt’s involvement with animation. He was healthy, eager, endlessly creative and completely consumed. This was far more than a job. He lived these pictures every minute of the day, thinking deeply into every...
Over the course of his career Walt avidly pursued technologies that would enable him to invite his audiences ever more immersively into his revised realities – whatever fantastic realms his imagination conjured. Disney’s drive for technical perfection, one of the...
