Fantasia

Fantasia is a 1940 animated film produced by Walt Disney. The movie is composed of interesting images alongside beautiful pieces of music that are conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The images included in Fantasia are what the animators believed the listener would create in their heads while hearing to the compositions. Although these images can be seen as strange and bizarre, they truly depict what the people in the audience may be feeling while listening to the music and the scenes shown will stick with the listener when hearing the pieces of music in the future. Perhaps even seeing a portion of a certain scene from Fantasia could resurface the piece of music that was played during that scene. Three scenes that happened to stick out to me are Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite", Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", and "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli.

Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" came first chronologically out of the three scenes mentioned. When introducing the piece, Deems Taylor states that Tchaikovsky actually detested this piece. When I began to listen to “Nutcracker Suite” and study the images on the screen, I noticed the various plants and animals dancing all represented a specific season, summer, fall, winter, spring. The images included fairies and forest nymphs gliding throughout the nature of the forest. The fairies began lighting up the flowers and placing dew on the plants which represented summer. Next, there were tiny, dancing mushrooms that surprisingly looked slightly angry. Then, flowers that appeared to look like ballerinas began dancing. Next, underwater goldfish began to dance very gracefully. I enjoyed watching the fish because I thought it was slightly amusing. Shortly after, there was a dance of more flowers...

... middle of paper ...

...ether. However, the troop of crocodiles begins to surround the hippo. The finale of this piece includes all the animals chasing after each other or running away. In the end, the animals all decide to dance together and are at peace, but ironically the palace that they have been dancing in, collapses on itself.

Ultimately, Walt Disney’s Fantasia is a jumble of strange scenes all corresponding with various pieces of music. The scenes that stuck out in my mind most are Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite", Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", and "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli. All of the weird images depicted help the viewer and listener to remember the compositions because the visuals will resurface when hearing the music. After, watching Fantasia, I can remember key events from the film to remember the pieces of music even thought the scenes are very bizarre and unique.