Disney's Fantasia - [DVD] [1940]

Great film and story.

A wonderful series of cartoons set to some wonderful classical pieces of music.

It will always be one of the greatest masterpieces not only of Disney but all cinema.

Hard to believe that 85 years after it's original release, Fantasia is still entertaining families today.

Disney is so much part of popular culture now that it's easy to forget how strange his world is (e.g., having little kitsch pink centaurs to represent the music of Beethoven's pastoral symphony, or weirdly eyelashed ostriches and 'Hyacinth Hippo' dancing to Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours - reminders of the extraordinary bathos of Disney sometimes). And his anthropomorphism is particularly potent: what is distinctive about his 'humanised' nature is that it always tends to be from a child's perspective - mischievous, cute, frustrated. In fact it's not really anthropomorphic but pedamorphic - in the form of a child. And a specific sort of child at that - both an idealised or stylised 1940s American kid, full of wants and "blind frustrated rages" (as Noël Coward memorably summed up Donald Duck's appeal), but also one growing up in a very maternalised world, one both curiously sexualised and sexless (coy). There's also a notable absence of fathers in Disney films: from Bambi and Dumbo to The Lion King and Toy Story, dads are either absent or killed off - here we have foals being brought up and going to sleep in largely single-unicorned families. I imagine that this may have something to do with Walt's own childhood (perhaps reflecting the "deep feelings of distance and distrust that he had for his father" according to biographer Marc Eliot), but it seems inadvertently to have had a profound influence on twentieth century children's culture, through the Disney ethos. Or perhaps his animations simply reflected these wider social dynamics and dissociated family dimensions. Where Fantasia excels is in its ambition, forging a new status for animation in the early decades of the twentieth century. Whilst it received mixed critical reaction and failed to make a profit on its release, it established animation (and Disney animation in particular) as something of an art form: the vision of the demonic god Chernabog summoning the souls of the dead from their graves, to the music of Mussorgsky, is both terrifying and electrifying (and largely the work of the astonishing Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen), but there are touches of extraordinary technical and aesthetic brilliance throughout the film. Steamboat Willie seems a lifetime a way - or would do, were it not for the reappearance of MM here as the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice', showing Disney's occasional deftness at mixing high art (Goethe, Paul Dukas) with popular and comic lightness (and giving plenty of fodder for later critics on the look out for 'illuminati' symbolism in Disney's work). Disney was a fascinating and influential figure: for someone whose vision has extensively permeated the last eight or nine decades of culture, his work remains strangely unstudied and unexplored. That he aspired to having an enormous impact on culture, and in particular on the imagination of children, is evident - not only in the ground-breaking, hugely influential animations but also in the plethora of other extensions into popular culture that the Disney studios have reached out into - everything from films such as Mary Poppins and Pirates of the Caribbean to The Mickey Mouse Club (launching the careers of Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears), Disneyland and EPCOT. Fantasia is a useful glimpse into some of the big ideas that formed a major part of the early Disney ethos and 'world': the animation revolves around the core idea of "order and harmony being brought out of chaos", as the useful audio commentary by Brian Sibley (on this DVD) observes. "Order" is a crucial concern for Walt (hence his collaboration with the FBI, his distasteful involvement in the 'anti-communism' trials of the 1940s and so on), and it is everywhere here linked with his worship of "light", from the bathos of the Dance of the Hours sequence (where "the hours of darkness are overcome by the hours of light") to the the rays of the rising Sun which conclude the animation, and which will be an obvious symbolism in Disney's "illuminati" context. This easy 'light defeating darkness' ideology is pathological (an inability to engage with the complex contraries of life, and one that has had a baleful effect on children's culture in the twentieth-century, excepting Philip Pullman's wonderful and challenging confrontation of this religion), as is the narcissistic and infantile world of Walt Disney generally, but it is also part of his appeal: much of the charm and effect of cinema, and Disney animation in particular, resides simply in its use of light and colour in motion, and Fantasia is a wonderful playground for Disney and his animators to mesmerise and enthral us with their craftsmanship. If only Disney had gone down this track more - daringly and brilliantly bringing Stravinsky, Bach and Mussorgsky into mainstream cinemas and children's imaginations - instead of its subsequent series of rather lame Tinkerbells and charmless CGIs. Fantasia remains a beguiling testament to the potential of cinema, a breathtaking synaesthetic experience, and a landmark in animation and what was later to become music video.

I remember being taken to see this when I was 7 years old, the end section was a bit scary at that age.

Came quickly, in great condition very happy thank you

Fantasia is every bit as good as I, my husband and our sons remember it, so we purchased it for our daughter who has never seen it, but who was mesmerised throughout (she's 9). I read the other reviews on here, and I was quite surprised by the comments from people saying that they sent it back because of all the talking! It is part of Fantasia! The narrator is/was famous at the time the film was made as is/was the conductor - there is meant to be talking in it to give an explanation and commentary prior to the piece being played so that people who may not understand classical music and the arts are helped by the commentary - but it is prior to the pieces of music and cinematography, there is no speaking during the pieces.

Ein Disney Klassiker der in keiner Sammlung fehlen darf. Mit dem Kauf eines Disneyfilms macht man nie etwas falsch.

A classic. Now I can watch it anytime.

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Im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes! Die absolut elitäre aber doch so passende und wunderbare und auch eingägliche Auswahl der klassischen Stücke ist herausragend. Gerade Kindern kann hier so ein wunderbares Stück Kultur spielend näher gebracht werden. Ein Film den man so schnell nicht vergisst mit atemberaubenden und angenehm komponierten Bildern!

La cosa piu' grave per me che vivo in Italia è la mancanza della traduzione in Italiano. il costo di questo dvd è piuttosto caro e non ritengo corretto non avvertire il compratore che l'opera manca della traduzione in italiano