Fantasia is an extremely popular Walt Disney Film. It has won six awards, including an Academy Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award. The movie is the “22nd highest grossing film of all time in the US”, making over $76 million, as of 2012. Released on November 13, 1940, the movie was originally shown as part of a thirteen city roadshow.
The movie itself is a unique blend of classical music, colorful animation, and live action orchestral scenes. Each scene features a different classical piece played by a live orchestra, while an animated short plays, that reflects the mood or tone of the piece. For example, in the “Dance of the Hours” by Amillcare Ponchielli, four ballet dancing groups (representing morning, afternoon, evening, and night) take turns dancing in order. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas features Mickey Mouse attempting magic that a sorcerer is trying to teach him. Fantasia was actually the product of a modest idea for a short Mickey Mouse cartoon featuring classical music, but after working on the idea, Walt Disney had exceeded his budget and realized he wouldn’t make a profit from it. He decided to make a whole series of similar shorts and combine them into a full-length film. Fantasia became a massive production. New stereo sound technology called Fantasound was created for the sole purpose of showing the film in theaters. Many of the technologies used by Fantasound are still used in today’s modern theaters and sound systems. More than one thousand people (not including the orchestra and conductor) were employed to be artists and assistants, and to draw and design the 500+ characters that appear in the film. The first thirteen roadshow showings of Fantasia made about $300,000 each, meaning the show didn’t even come close to making a profit, but it still broke a record for the longest run time at the Broadway Theater (forty nine consecutive weeks and fifty seven weeks total). After the premiere of fantasia as a roadshow, the film was edited and shortened before public release, in September of 1946. In 1963 it was re-released with stereo sound, but it wasn't until 1969 that it began making a profit, when college students and teenagers took a sudden interest in the film. It was edited and re-released three more times before 1999, when a sequel featuring all new songs and animation, called Fantasia 2000, was released. A two-disc Blu-ray set of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 was sold for six months in 2010 and 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4H3icCCiXY&list=PL1702A64B2B129283 |