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...
“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...
Next in 1937 Disney evolved the feature-length animated movie during which audiences could explore and savor for nearly an hour-and-a-half a completely fabricated environment as background for an elaborate story: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A significant part of...
