TCHAIKOVSHY’S NUTCRACKER PART II
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 current. Thus begins Disney’s interpretation of Tchaikovky’s “Dance of the Reed Flutes” (sometimes called “Dance of the Mirlitons”, which are some sort of pear-shaped gourd). Walt dubbed this scene “Blossom Ballet”. Cy Young (1897-1964) of the Effects Department drew the entire animation. After a number of different-colored blooms have touched down, the starkly white “prima” ballerina descends in a gliding close-up and alights. During the music’s contrasting middle section all these blossoms, floating on the water’s surface, rise up inside-out, their pods now resembling a head; their stamens and pistils, a headdress; their petals, a skirt. They proceed into a shadowy vortex and the darkness highlights the glowing tips of their stamens, swaying exotically. Next, the music decelerates back into the opening theme. Whisked along by wind and current through the roots of a swamped tree these transformed blossom ballerinas rush forward to spill over a waterfall, the white one last of all as though directly into the camera, filling the entire screen as she too tumbles over.
Next, panning downward through bubbles into the underwater realm below, Disney’s superb interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s “Arabian Dance” ensues. Here Pinocchio’s flirtatious goldfish Cleo gets extrapolated into a whole harem of similar fantails performing an arabesque among undulating seaweeds that resemble Arabian tapestries. (A similar design concept is used nearly fifteen years later in the background ferns and other foliage behind the hookah-smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.) Their long sinuous tails swirl in the water around them, veiling their coquettish glances out into the audience.
“There is a natural hoochy-kootchy motion to a goldfish that can be made use of here”, Walt suggested.[1] His animators definitely got it! And especially effective is the rippling distortion of the entire screen whenever one of these finny courtesans skitters out of sight behind a latticework of coral as though to avoid the audience’s prying scrutiny. Again the “prima” ballerina is a figure distinguished from the others by her stark white coloration. The scene dissolves behind a bevy of bubbles and…
A dramatic pause as inside one large bubble a clump of thistles trucks into view. Then all of a sudden, Tchaikovsky’s “Russian Dance” blasts off! And so do those thistles, bursting out of their cluster, leaping, whirling and kicking their way through a traditional trepak, a Russian/Ukrainian folkdance featuring alternate thrusting forward of legs from a squatting position with arms crossed horizontally in front. (The same dance concludes the “I’ve Got No Strings On Me” number performed in Pinocchio by Stromboli’s marionettes.) Against – again – a plain black background with just the bare suggestion of ground at the bottom, these thistle Cossacks are soon paired with peasant orchid maidens in an ever-accelerating and frenetic folkdance, filling the screen with rapidly changing patterns of bright color until the final two notes upon which the animator (again Art Babbitt) returns them – with a violent jolt! – into the stillness of the original cluster. That jolt is just the kind of little extra detail that so often goes unnoticed in these animated features. It must have been achieved through some never-divulged trick of animation and camerawork.
Next one of the most famous waltzes in the entire classical repertoire Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” concludes this segment of Fantasia by bringing back that race of slender sprites who appeared at the beginning spreading dew. This time they are “autumn” fairies tasked with adorning foliage in the vibrant colors of fall, followed by “frost” fairies who trim the edges of fallen foliage with delicate white filigree…
…and then freeze the water’s surface by skating curlicue patterns across it…
…followed at last by “snowflake” fairies who spiral down from above skirted in crystalline tutus to blanket all in sparkling snow. This segment features another of Fantasia’s most iconic visuals: a milkweed pod splitting open to release graceful fluffy-skirted seeds parachuting each with a little bounce and gently drifting down to earth behind a foreground of silhouetted defoliated Queen Anne’s lace.
A wind comes up and mixes these seeds with multicolored leaves all swirling like confetti, flashing sporadically and appearing to “shiver” across the scene – another trick of ingenious camerawork. As they alight on the ground these milkweed seeds assume the lovely balletic pose wherein they appear to fold forward at the waist, arms extended in front, heads bowed low between. At the waltz’s final grand cadence, nature dissolves into the image of Stokowski conducting and we are back in the concert hall for more.
[1] Culhane, John: op. cit., p. 61.
