This weekend, the Austin Symphony will be performing a live accompaniment of select scenes from Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000 (1999) as part of their Butler Pops series.

Walt Disney’s Fantasia is a film that told the future of cinema. With its release in 1940, audiences were introduced to a never-before-experienced quality of animation, sound, and musical production. It’s for these reasons that Fantasia is still remembered today, and oddly, why it was a box office bomb.

Sadly, Fantasia was a little too ahead of its time. What started as a simple musical short became a massive passion project that Walt Disney described as “our most exciting adventure”--an adventure that starred the music of Stravinsky, Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, and more. By fusing classical music and animation, creating bold new narratives, and inventing cinema’s first stereophonic experience, Walt Disney assured both Fantasia’s legacy and doom.
 

^{Simpson, Gareth. "Walt Disney Animation Studios." Digital Image. Wikipedia. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

Despite its initial failure, Fantasia would go on to symbolize a major part of Disney’s identity.
 

The Classical Crossover

Work began on Fantasia as early as 1937. Initially, Walt just wanted to make another Silly Symphony (Disney’s cartoon musical series) starring Mickey Mouse, but later had the idea of doing a musical short that went beyond the cheaper graphics and slapstick comedy that the Silly Symphonies were known for. Walt wanted to create a Silly Symphony where “sheer fantasy unfolds,” and where imagination wouldn’t be hindered by “the illusion of reality.”
 

^{Hildreth, Richard. Still from the Silly Symphony “The Skeleton Dance,” 1929. Digital Image. “Silly Symphonies, 1929-1935” Silent Film. http://silentfilm.org/archive/silly-symphonies-19291935. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

Though the Silly Symphonies did feature orchestral music, Walt always stipulated that the music should have a not-too-formal sound.
 

Though the music of Silly Symphonies was always newly composed, Walt decided to base the story (and name) for this new project on an already existing work, the tone poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, by Paul Dukas. One evening while brainstorming for the production at dinner, Walt happened to cross paths with famed Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski. Walt told Stokowski about his idea of bringing together well-known classical music with animation. Stokowski, who was already a big fan of Disney’s, loved the idea and offered to record the music for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice for free (though his contract was later renegotiated for the full-feature film).
 

^{Sporn, Michael. Digital Image. “Fantasia Flowers” Michael Sporn Animation. 
http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1734. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

Walt and Stokowski shared the same goal of finding new ways to bring classical music to the masses.
 

Soon after Stokowski came aboard, Walt decided to extend the project well beyond its one-piece inspiration. Walt had Disney animators Joe Grant and Dick Huemer listen to hundreds of classical recordings in order to find music that had potential in telling an animated story. In adding new music and scenes “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” became an anthology of musical sequences with the talents of the Philadelphia Orchestra tying them together. The working title was changed at this point to The Concert Feature. Later, Stokowski came up with the name Fantasia, in reference to its traditional meaning in music terminology: structureless music in the fanciful search for form.
 

^{Concept Art of Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Digital Image. Disney Wikia. http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Mickey_Mouse/Gallery. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

While previous incarnations of Mickey Mouse lacked a consistent personality, Fantasia Mickey Mouse was the introduction of a more youthful, childlike version of the beloved character.
 

The involvement of Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Walt’s eyes, would lend Fantasia the prestige it needed to appeal to the classical music world. Conversely, the animation of the film would interpret and demystify the classical genre for everyday audiences, or at least, that was the hope. “There’s a great mass of people who would appreciate this music if they didn’t have to sit through stuff like that – the opera,” Walt said during a story meeting for Fantasia. “They want excitement.”
 

^{Deems Taylor in Fantasia, 1940. Digital Image. “Fantasia (1940).” IMDB. 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032455/mediaindex?ref_=tt_mv_close. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

In chasing classical approval, Fantasia would even cast composer Deems Taylor, then radio commentator for the Metropolitan Opera, as the narrator.
 

Today it’s easy to appreciate Fantasia as a colorful, audience-friendly primer for classical repertoire. Sadly, this exact sentiment was the focal point for some of Fantasia’s most dissenting reviews, which were of course, written by classical music critics.  Olin Downes and Virgil Thomson howled at Disney for editing out parts of the scores, and even considered Stokowski’s orchestrations poor. Other critics abhorred the very attempt of visual companionship with classical music and saw it as blasphemy.

Pushing the Boundaries of the Cartoon Narrative

Fantasia’s anthological format allowed for story sequences of vastly different styles. The tent pole philosophies supporting these bold narratives were ones that Walt held dear to his heart – that audiences could recognize and appreciate quality, even when faced with the most abstract of ideas, and that creators should aim for humor rather than belly laughs, beauty instead of flashy postcards. It’s because of these ideas that Fantasia, to this day, remains a funny, beautiful, and even confusing film. While the stories for sequences like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “The Pastoral Symphony” are pretty straightforward, other scenes in Fantasia are much more abstract and even chilling.
 

^{Walt Disney Staff. Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí, 1940. Digital Image. “Disney and Dalí: Architects of the Imagination” Walt Disney. https://waltdisney.org/exhibitions/disney-and-dali-architects-imagination. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

One of Walt’s favorite artists was Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. The two even worked on a film together called Destino, which was released in 2003 after remaining incomplete for 58 years.
 

Fantasia begins with J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor performed by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. While the visuals first show the ensemble performing against colorful backdrops, the scene transforms into a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, devoid of any obvious meaning. In the film’s final scene, Schubert’s Ave Maria plays while anonymous, cloaked figures hold a procession through an unknown forest. The branches above the individuals begin to clearly evoke the outlines of steeples, but this dialogue-free, faceless scene leaves its meaning up to the imagination.
 

^{Gabler, Jay. Still from the final sequence of Fantasia. Digital Image. “From ‘Bald Mountain’ to ‘Ave Maria’: The hell-to-heaven ‘Fantasia’ climax” Classical MPR. https://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2015/11/13/fantasia-bald-mountain-ave-maria. Accessed October 16, 2017.}
 

Mysterious, slow-paced scenes like these were part of Walt’s grand vision of using animation to present abstract and thought-provoking visuals to mainstream audiences. Walt would later report that this goal was shared among many of the artists at Disney for several years, but limitations in technology hadn’t allowed for its expression.

“[Audiences] appreciate things more when you don’t fire them too fast,” Walt said in a 1938 production meeting. “Don’t be afraid to let your audience wait for a few things in the picture.” Walt’s trust in the viewer’s interest might have been ill-begotten. While Fantasia’s abstract elements were praised in later decades, it failed to connect with audiences upon release. As music historian Charles L. Granata puts it, “People just didn’t get it.”

The Introduction of Stereophonic Sound

Perhaps the biggest of Fantasia’s technical achievements was being the first commercial stereophonic movie. With a custom rig developed by technician William Garity, the sound of Fantasia moved freely around the theater, in synch with the rhythm of the animations, creating the illusion of being at the center of the orchestra. This sound system was suitably titled “Fantasound.”

Fantasound setups included 11 amp racks, dozens of loud speakers, 400 vacuum tubes, and trained technicians for maintenance and operation. The sound system, in all its glory, would be packed into 45 cases totaling 15,000 pounds, which would take a full week to install with round-the clock workers. All in all, the manufacturing and installation of Fantasound for a single theater cost roughly 85,000 dollars. Eleven Fantasound installations were placed in select cities throughout America for first-run exhibitions.
 

^{Marquee for Fantasia being constructed, 1940. Digital Image. “The History of Fantasia and Fantasound!” Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/153064375. Accessed October 16, 2017.}

In addition to Fantasound, theaters were installed with specialty lighting, custom curtain controls, and Disney-trained courtesy staff and ushers.
 

When the film first premiered in New York, 1940, everyone was completely blown away by Fantasound, and it was quickly understood to be the film’s greatest attraction. However, despite a promising premiere, attendance for the film waned into 1941. With lower attendance, Fantasound and its constant maintenance became too expensive to continue using. Its costly installation also prevented Fantasia from being shown in more theaters.

Unable to finance a general release of Fantasia, the Disney Corporation had no choice but to fork over distribution rights to RKO Radio Pictures, who promptly developed a strictly mono version of Fantasia for general release in 1942.

Happy Ending?

By the end of this project, one that involved countless artists, technical wizards, and talented musicians, the final word was that music critics hated it, audiences didn’t get it, and the sound was so good (and so expensive) that it financially ruined the movie.
 

^{Re-release poster for Fantasia, 1970. Digital Image. “Fantasia” Past Posters. http://www.pastposters.com/details.php?prodId=14254. Accessed October 16, 2017.}