Fantasia (1940 film)
Fantasia is a 1940 film which was a Walt Disney experiment in color and music. Originally designed as a single cartoon episode of The Sorceror's Apprentice, Disney realized that it would be too expensive to do. Taking the advice of Leopold Stokowski, he decided to expand it into a single film with several musical pieces.
Bela Lugosi served as a live action model for Chernabog, the demon in Night on Bald Mountain. Lugosi spent several days at the Disney studios, where he was filmed doing evil, demon-like poses for the animators to use as a reference.
Fantasia was the first film with stereo sound.
The composers and their works used are:
- Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565
- Paul Dukas - L'apprenti sorcier
- Modest Mussorgsky - A Night on Bald Mountain
- Amilcare Ponchielli - La Gioconda: Dance of the Hours
- Franz Schubert - Ave Maria
- Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a
- Ludwig van Beethoven - 6th symphony in F, Op.68 'Pastorale'
The movie won two Honorary Academy Awards:
- Walt Disney, William E. Garity and J.N.A. Hawkins - For their outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia (certificate).
- Leopold Stokowski (and his associates) - For their unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music in Walt Disney's production Fantasia, thereby widening the scope of the motion picture as entertainment and as an art form (certificate).
In the 1970s, Fantasia was a favorite movie of those who liked to take illicit drugs and watch the film's colorful sequences.