This week my husband and I only had time to watch one Disney Classic. Fantasia is the third Disney animated film that came out. I love Fantasia 2000, so I was excited to watch the 1940’s version.
What is Disney’s Fantasia?
Fantasia is an anthology film, meaning it’s made up of several short segments set to different pieces of classical music. Each segment features a different style of animation, ranging from abstract shapes and colors to more traditional storytelling.
One of the most iconic segments from Fantasia is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which features Mickey Mouse as an apprentice who attempts to use magic to make his chores easier. Of course, things don’t go quite as planned, and chaos ensues. It’s a classic Disney moment.
Other fun segments include “The Nutcracker Suite,” which features dancing flowers, mushrooms, and other woodland creatures, and “Night on Bald Mountain,” which is a darker, more dramatic piece set to the music of Mussorgsky.
Overall, Fantasia is a true work of art that showcases the incredible talent of both Disney’s animators and the composers they collaborated with. If you’ve never seen it before, it’s definitely worth checking out!
Before I get into the trivia, I want to give my review of the movie. It is amazing! My favorite short is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I love the way the Disney animators combined the music and the animation. The stories and music go so well together. To have seen this in the theater would have been awesome, especially with Fantasound!
Fantasia Fun Facts
A Little Bit of Live Action. The primeval Earth scene was filmed using a mixture of porridge, mud, and other ingredients and was enhanced by animation; apart from the orchestra sequences, it is the only live-action sequence in the whole movie.
A 3 Stooges Nod At the beginning of the Chinese Dance segment of “The Nutcracker Suite,” Hop Low, the little mushroom, does a little jump while crisscrossing his legs. Animator Art Babbitt got the idea from The Three Stooges – it’s one of Curly Howard’s signature moves.
It’s a long Movie! At 124 minutes in length, this is the longest Disney animated feature.
Who is the Sorcerer? The animators secretly modeled elements of the Sorcerer in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” on their boss, Walt Disney. The raised eyebrow was regarded as a dead giveaway. They call the character Yen Sid, which is “Disney” spelled backward.
An Early Philharmagic? If you have ever been to Walt Disney World and watched the show Phiharmagic, you know Disney has added scents to the experience. They first wanted to do this in Fantasia but couldn’t figure it out.
Early on, Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski considered having fragrances dispersed in the theater at certain points in the movie to heighten the experience. Suggestions included cereus for “Claire de Lune,” jasmine for the “Waltz of the Flowers” segment of “The Nutcracker Suite,” incense for “Ave Maria,” and gunpowder for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Disney dropped the idea because of the difficulty of clearing one scent from the theater before spraying in the next one. ***I think that would have been cool****
Jodi Whisenhunt / Magical Mouse Schoolhouse
Thursday 21st of February 2013
Fabulous trivia! Makes me want to go watch Fantasia now :) Thanks for linking up!