Fantasia
Release date 13th November 1940
Country : USA
Running time : 120 mins
Genre : Animated
Starring Mickey Mouse



  Disney animators visualise various pieces of classical music.

A movie that should be commended for its ambition and it has the happy byproduct of making classical music accessible to a wider audience. For the most part it works really well even if Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is polluted with my little pony this can be forgiven when most of the sequences are jaw-droppingly brilliant and often very funny and beautiful too.

 

Originally conceived as a short featuring Mickey Mouse as the apprentice to the sorcerer in Dukas' work the film was a natural progression from the earlier Silly Symphony shorts. It was meant to be an evolving film with new segments added and others replaced intermittently. This sadly fell by the wayside and we had to wait 60 years for a sequel : Fantasia 2000, a film disappointing only when compared with the original.

The music includes "Toccata and Fugue In D Minor," (Bach), "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," (Dukas), "The Nutcracker Suite," (Tchaikovsky), "The Dance of the Hours," (Ponchinelli), "Night on Bare Mountain," (Mussorgsky), "Ave Maria," (Schubert), "The Rite of Spring," (Stravinksy)