The Nine Disney Animated Masterpieces
Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty
After the intermission, there is a jam session of jazz music led by a clarinetist in the orchestra, followed immediately by the brief Meet the Soundtrack sequence which gives audiences a stylized example of how sound is rendered as visual...
At this point in the segment, Life has yet to emerge. Then-current scientific conjecture about Life’s origin suggested that the settling and cooling of the seas might have provided a catalytic atmosphere propitious for this eventuality. So with a final...
As it stands however, Disney’s scenario for The Rite of Spring depicted fairly accurately the scientific theories current at its time. …the animators knowingly took some creative liberties — the climactic battle between a Stegosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus rex could...
The most lengthy segment in Fantasia. At the time of the film’s release in 1940 this “pantomime ballet” by Russian émigré Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) had been composed only 27 years earlier, making it the newest music included in the program....
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,...
