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Before the release of “Fantasia” in 1940, cartoon figures had hard edges and many of them danced to rinky-tink music. It is correct to say Walt Disney did not create animation, but he surely cultivated it in a manner such that it could compete with any movie that was deemed as “realistic.” Before sitting down with his artists to work on what would eventually turn into “Fantasia,” he certainly had the urge to experiment with something new.
The basic idea of the film would already have been resolved at an earlier stage. The film was set to contain a few most renowned pieces of classical music and it had to be accompanied with drawings that were animated. To elaborate further, some of the passages in the film would be presented in a manner that would be considered very familiar to the Disney artists. For example, Mickey Mouse’s escapades in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” section placed him in the visual world that anyone who has seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon is aware of.
Outside of other parts of the film, Disney wanted to test different things. According to Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s book, “Disney Animation,” published in 1981, Disney studio artists remember how Walt always pushed for originality in the part of the clip showing a fairy schooling through the woods and scattering fairy dust everywhere. “Disney recalled he had a meeting and, to his surprise, there was a pastel fairy drawing. He appreciated the drawing and its soft ‘glowy’ look.” That is exactly what he wanted in his movie.
The book puts across the point clearly that there is so much more to animation than just sketching cute animals or characters and making them dance. The artists worked for multiple weeks on the fairy section and in the end painstakingly put together a diverse set of methods such as simple sketch work or photography, traditional animation, paint layers for the background and foreground, gels, dissolves, multilayered paintings, and a plethora of other effects. It is hard to believe, but that very simple and effortless magic in the scenes requires so much work.
In “Fantasia,” Disney has tried to break boundaries and this is highlighted with their 50th anniversary restoration of the film. The original version, complete with its capture of Disney’s imaginativeness and magic, was unique in its own right, known as the very first to ever be released in stereophonic sound. Disney also referred to this process as “Fantasound.” The movie was produced with three speakers: one behind the screen and the other two on either side of the audience.
The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Leopold Stowkowski, had its original soundtrack remastered to remove hisses and pops. This version sounds like it was recorded a long time ago, but now it has gotten the credit it deserves – glowing with amazement. The Fantasound remaster also showcases the opening sequence where Stowkowski initially guides one section of the orchestra, and then another, followed by the whole ensemble which allows the audience to identify the different sources of sound.
The image quality has also been modified; it is now brighter and cleaner. One astonishing fact about the movie is that this anniversary release of “Fantasia” marked the first true national release of the movie. In the past, the movie was only shown in selected regions to places that had special sound enhancing equipment, and then simply sprinkled all over America without ever showing in bulk.
To the delight of purists, the Disney people have taken the bold step of making the film accessible in its unaltered form whereby its aspect ratio is 1:1.33. This means it is around four feet wide for every three feet in height. This is also the form in which “Fantasia” and practically all other films produced before ‘53 were filmed.
In other attempts to re-release their older classics like “Pinocchio” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Disney did an upwards or downwards cropping of the original art to give an erroneous impression of the movie being ‘wide screen‘. This did nothing and was an act of violence to the art where everything is painstakingly framed in the first place. While reviewing those films, I cannot resist admitting that I nagged the studio on the phony wide screen until, for sure, everyone got tired of the entire thing. It may seem trivial to some, but we are talking about masterpieces of cinema. Would anyone consider it fine to crop the side off a great painting, simply because it no longer fits a newly fashionable frame? With “Fantasia,” Disney, for once, got it right.
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