This is probably my 10^th draft of this blog post.  I have gone through so many different emotions about these two movies, and this post has taken so many forms. I just hope I can at long last come to a conclusion and accurately state all of the things I hope to tell you all about Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.  At first, this post was going to be the same “semi-disappointment + artistic significance” formula that a lot of my posts have been about because, no, I did not particularly enjoy these movies. But, more than any other Disney animated movies ever, these two films have an incredible history. I had heard nothing about this story until I started this project, so I would bargain that many of you know nothing about it either. So yes, I have gone through many variations of this blog post since I watched these two movies back in late December, but it is because along the way I have been finding out more and more, and doing some extensive research on why these movies were made and the curious circumstances that produced them.

Here are the basics. Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are joint films. The Three Caballeros has been called a sequel, but the stories don’t really have anything to do with each other. This is mostly because there is no “story” to these movies.  Like Fantasia, Saludos and Caballeros are collaborations of short films, but they also include documentary-ish clips from the artists’ trip to South America and quasi-educational bits on the heritage and culture of South American countries.

Now let’s step back a bit and remember the strike that happened at the Walt Disney Studios in 1941.  I wrote a lot about this in my Dumbo post, but as a recap: Walt was threatened with a strike, Walt refused to side with the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild without a vote from his team, and so a strike ensued, lasting five weeks.  In my research of this strike it was mentioned in passing that Walt left for a “goodwill” tour of South America and stayed there during the mediation of the strike. It was on this trip to South America that Walt and his team created Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.  Very little information is readily available on the strike or the goodwill tour; in fact, one of the only sources I found is a documentary called Walt & El Grupo.  This documentary, which I highly recommend viewing in conjunction with the two goodwill cartoons, is an account of the Disney team’s trip to South America and gives more details on what they did there, what inspired them, and what political events affected the creation of Saludos and Caballeros.

Gaucho Walt in South America

What was made exceptionally clear in this documentary is that the artists strike was second only to the death of his mother as one of only two events in Walt’s life that affected him in a negative and hugely impactful way. It makes sense to me that it would have felt this way to him.  Walt struggled and fought against great adversity to create his dream, Snow White.  I imagine he thought of his team as family, but that as the company grew he was relatively unaware of the unhappy grumblings of some of his employees.  Basically, when the strike broke out he was betrayed, and he never truly recovered from it.  The trip to South America, as stated in Walt & El Grupo, was a way for Walt to get away from the mess in Los Angeles and focus on growth with a team of artists, musicians, and technicians from the company whom he trusted.

It was convenient timing that the US Department of State should commission Walt and his team to do this goodwill tour just as the strike started.  This was before US participation in WWII and would serve the secondary purpose of squashing the burgeoning Nazi influence in South America.  Initially, Walt was asked to simply do a few press conferences and meet and greets in South America, but he insisted that if was going to do the trip he would also make films from it.  It was Walt’s hope, and the hope of President Roosevelt, that the films and the tour itself would serve the purposes of both the country and the needs of the studio.

There were a few highlights of the trip, in my opinion, that were explained in Walt & El Grupo.  These moments exemplify how big of a name Disney had become worldwide and how impactful his trip to South America was.  One such instance was when the group had a screening of Fantasia in Montevideo, Uruguay. Walt and his team were not aware that all the schools in Montevideo had been given the day off in Walt’s honor.  Hundreds of school children came to see Fantasia and a group of them played music from Snow White for their “honored guest.” In a newspaper report of the event it was heavily implied that a German ambassador who was scheduled to be in Montevideo was cancelled on in favor of Walt.

Walt and the Montevideo schoolchildren

Similar acts of favoritism for Walt over German political figures appeared repeatedly in the documentary. Many newspaper clippings were shown, all headlining Walt’s appearances and minimizing the ads for Nazi rallies.  Entire spreads showed Walt’s face surrounded by Disney cartoons, and in the bottom corner you would see mention that, oh yeah, Nazi’s were meeting up there, too.  From the documentary it was clear that Roosevelt’s goal of distracting the South American population from the Nazi’s allure worked.  And the amount of revenue made from Saludos and Caballeros proved that Walt’s goal of getting back on his feet was also achieved.

A "Welcome Walt" headline, followed by smaller mention of Nazi activism

Another notable shining star from the goodwill tour is artist Mary Blair.  If you have heard of Mary Blair, it is probably because you’ve heard of or seen her most famous piece of work: the “It’s a Small World” attraction at Disneyland.  Blair was one of the chief designers for the attraction, but also did extensive work on Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland. But before all of that, she was begging Walt to let her go on the goodwill trip to South America.  Mary was married to another Disney artist, Lee Blair, who was personally invited by Walt to be one of the artists on the trip.  Mary had the gusto to go to Walt and ask to be invited on the trip, and he agreed.  Before the tour it was said that Mary and Lee shared a very similar artistic style. In fact, when looking at a painting, one usually could not determine whether Mary or Lee had painted it. It was on the South American tour that Mary cultivated her distinctly unique style of artwork that would consequently be featured throughout Disney history, and still exists today.

A sample of Mary's work from the trip.

While I am fascinated by the history of these two films, I am less enthusiastic about the films themselves. To be honest, I am getting a little discouraged at this point. Seven movies in and I have only really enjoyed about three of them. After watching Saludos and Caballeros, I found myself thinking ‘Do I really like Disney?’ I knew when I started this project that I would have to trudge through a lot of weird mush to get to the films that I was actually excited to write about, but now it feels as if I just hate some of the most prominent films in Disney history. While I have been able to find something valuable in each movie, I can’t help but wonder how these (arguably) terrible films made Disney a success that was able to last and produce the movies I did like.

Both films are not what you think of when you think of a Disney film. I was really excited to see these two because I had never seen them before, although I knew the song, “The Three Caballeros” by heart because it was featured on one of my old Disney Sing-A-Long VHS tapes. The two films seemed random and out of place to me, and that is because… they are. They don’t have a main character or even one set story; they are compilations of different shorts that were inspired by different landmarks or locations in South America. Saludos Amigos in particular is similar to a documentary. An unnamed narrator talks to the audience about what the Disney painters see and what they are drawing. He describes what gives the artists inspiration and then the focus will turn to a short film that was later developed.

There are three shorts featured in Saludos Amigos. The first is about Donald’s vacation to Lake Titicaca, the second features a small airplane name Pedro, and the third is a Goofy-How-To clip where Goofy learns to be a gaucho. Personally, I really enjoyed the story of Pedro the airplane, and was mostly bored by the Donald and Goofy segments.  Goofy How-To shorts were very popular by the time Saludos Amigos was made (most notably “How to Play Baseball”), so naturally they decided to incorporate a multicultural version of the format for the film.  I have never been a huge fan of Goofy (The Goofy Movie being the only exception) or How-To shorts, so it was not a surprise to me that I didn’t enjoy “El Gaucho Goofy” very much.

The real gem of Saludos Amigos (in my opinion) is the story of Pedro the airplane.  Inspired by the geography of Chile, the Disney artists came up with the tale of a family of airplanes who deliver mail across the Chilean mountains.  When his father is too sick and his mother proves too weak from “high oil pressure” to deliver the mail, Pedro has to step up to the plate and deliver the mail for his first time ever. Pedro is an endearing, childlike character and while the story has no real depth to it, you root for him to succeed. Pedro gets caught in a windstorm and runs out of gas on his way home. Everyone believes he must be dead (a pretty depressing outcome for a five minute short) until Pedro comes plummeting out of the sky. It isn’t really explained how Pedro survives and makes it home after he runs out of gas. The narrator literally says, “Well, don’t ask me how he did it!” Actually, the narrator is one of the most interesting and stylistic parts of all three shorts in this film.  For example, in Pedro’s story, there is no dialogue aside from the narration and the narrator gets increasingly more intense throughout the clip. When Pedro starts to fall to his death, the narrator is almost screaming, saying things like “You’re in the clear Pedro!” and “No! Pedro, no!!!!!!!!!!!!” It is a weird device, although pretty common for short animated films in that time.

Adorable little Pedro

The Three Caballeros concentrates less on the Disney artist’s day-to-day activities in South America and instead uses Donald Duck as the focus of the film.  It is Donald’s birthday and his good Brazilian friend Joe Carioca brings him a variety of gifts that teach him things about exotic South American birds.  For example, Donald hears a story about Pablo the Penguin who dislikes the cold climate of the South Pole and uses a bathtub to sail to the tropics. Next comes “The Flying Gauchito”, a story about a boy who finds a flying donkey and uses him to cheat at the racing tracks. Another one of Joe’s gifts to Donald contains Panchito, the gun slinging Rooster, who enters the scene with the famous song “The Three Caballeros”.

After Panchito arrives, the whole movie falls apart. The three birds go on a complete mind trip featuring explosives, a tour of Mexico on a flying carpet, and beautiful women’s heads singing out of large flowers. It is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen and by the end of the movie I had no idea what I had just watched or why it even existed.

Overall, even though I hated the movies I am really glad I know about them. I’m glad this project forced me to watch them because without watching them I would have never been so confused, and without that confusion I never would have discovered the amazing history behind the movies. The story of the goodwill tour makes these movies a little bit more bearable because it is so freaking fascinating. If I can give you one recommendation it would be to watch Saludos and Caballeros for the sole purpose of being able to appreciate Walt & El Grupo, because it is an incredible documentary and it is worth watching. All else I can say is that the movies can only get better after this point.

Next up: Make Mine Music

Money spent so far: $75.66

I feel as if my childhood is littered with comments about the movie Bambi and how utterly depressing and traumatizing it was when hunters shot his mother.  It wasn’t only my friends or family members who made statements about Bambi, but similar things were consistently said on television and in movies throughout my entire life. I watched Bambi semi-frequently when I was a kid, but there was at least a 10-year gap between my most frequent viewing and the last time I saw it as a child. I didn’t remember much about the story or the characters, but of course I remembered that Bambi’s mom dies. So, let’s get this straight before we discuss the movie any further:

Bambi’s mother’s death is not traumatizing or poignant in any way. At least for me.

Here is my reasoning- Bambi is around 70 minutes long, and for 50 minutes of it Bambi’s mother is alive. You would think that having her around for this much of the film allows you to grow fond of her and therefore be more sad when she dies, but this isn’t true. The dialogue and character development in this movie is so flat that there’s hardly enough substance to make you fall in love with Bambi himself, let alone his humdrum mother.

When Bambi’s mom is finally shot, it happens off screen and so quickly that you hardly realize it has happened. Bambi and his mother are running from hunters and Bambi sprints ahead. A loud gunshot is heard, but Bambi keeps running. Finally he stops and turns around to find that he is alone. He calls for his mother for a few seconds before his father shows up to explain so eloquently that, “your mother can’t be with you anymore.” Cut immediately to a scene in the spring with birds chirping and animals singing. We are not given enough substance to fall in love with Bambi’s mother and we are not given time to mourn her death.

Now that I’ve finished my rant on how ridiculously overrated Bambi’s mother’s death is, I can summarize my opinion of the movie as a whole. On a scale of 1-10, I liked Bambi about a 5. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Its artistry made up for its lack of plot, but its monotony distracted me from even the most beautifully drawn scenes.

My main question about the film is: why doesn’t it have a plot? With the exception of Fantasia, all of the Disney movies so far have had clear and distinct storylines (and you all know how much and why I hated Fantasia). Bambi also has no story! If I had to sum up Bambi in two sentences, I would have to say, “The story of a young deer who learns about plants and animals in the forest and how to speak. Then he grows up and finds a girlfriend.” Up until his mother’s death (which again, takes place 50 minutes into a 70 minutes film), nothing happens except Bambi learning to ski, Bambi learning to say “bird,” and Bambi learning that the prairie is dangerous. The lack of action or even any type of discernible narrative was boring for me and I was disappointed with the film as a whole.

The one clever part of Bambi that I hope somehow makes its way into common vernacular is the word “twitterpated.”  When Bambi and his friends grow up they are given a lesson on love by the film’s token owl.  The owl explains to them that, “You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head’s in a whirl! And then you feel light as a feather and before you know it you’re walkin’ on air. And you know what? It can happen to anybody, so you’d better be careful”.  I found this to be the cutest term for “having a crush on someone” or “having butterflies in your stomach”.  I know it was made up over 50 years ago, but let’s make “twitterpated” a thing!

I have started watching these movies with my roommates because, much like myself, they have not seen some of them in over 10 years.  When my roommate Briana and I finished watching Bambi, she commented that it seemed like The Lion King was Bambi redone way better. It featured a male protagonist who learns about life, deals with the death of a parent, and then has to step up as leader of his clan. At the time that she first said this I was adamant that a great movie like The Lion King could have nothing in common with a mess of a movie like Bambi. Much to my dismay, the first thing said in the special features for Bambi was a comment by the director of The Lion King, explaining that they set out to make their film like “Bambi in Africa . . . with Elton John.” There is no denying the similarities between the two movies, but it is unbelievable how differently I feel about each considering they are essentially the same trope. It just goes to show you how important character development and a dramatic stakes filled storyline (and let’s face it, a killer musical score) go towards making a movie magical.

Bambi and Simba on their respective rocks.

The one thing that no one can ignore about Bambi is its magnificent artistry. Bambi was in some stage of production from the time after Snow White was released until its release in 1942.  The years of extensive work spent on this film are apparent in how beautifully drawn it is.  Most of the detail is focused on the characters.  Bambi and his friends were modeled off real animals that were brought into the studio; the artists attempted to get as close as possible to reality while still being able to animate expression and speech.  If you look at certain distance shots, Bambi and his mother look like still life paintings of real deer. The next shot will be close to their faces and they look more like cartoons.  It is amazing that the two can be juxtaposed together and appear seamless. It is the use of realism that makes the cartoons in Bambi so remarkable.

Characters at a distance look more like real animals.

Animator Tyrus Wong is credited as the man who gave Bambi its distinct look.  When he was nine years old, Wong and his father immigrated to the US from China and eventually settled in Los Angeles.  Wong was quickly noticed for his artistic talent and went to study at the Otis Art Institute.  His first job for the Walt Disney Studios was as an “inbetweener,” someone who painstakingly draws the intermediate frames between two images. It didn’t take long for Wong’s personal work to get noticed by others at the company. He was quickly promoted to work on Bambi and ended up drawing nearly all of the background images for the film.  It is apparent in the film that the backgrounds and landscapes have a traditional Chinese element to them. Wong’s work is not drawn in great detail.  Instead, Wong drew general impressions of trees, grass, and plants in order to direct the attention towards the characters.

Even though Bambi was the only Disney film that Wong ever worked on, he was named a Disney Legend in 2001.  This honor is only given to those who made significant and integral contributions to the Disney Company.  Although Wong’s stay at the studio was short, it was impactful and his work is still recognized to this day.

I did not really enjoy Bambi.  This brand new DVD will probably sit unused on my shelf for years, or until I forget how I feel about the film and want to watch it again. But what is important about this film (and all of the Disney films) and most films in the history of the world is to acknowledge its contribution to its field.  Each movie so far, whether I have loved it or not, had an effect on the Disney films that came after it.  I can’t ignore Bambi’s stunning imagery nor can I argue that it wasn’t important in the history of animation.  There is no doubt that animators take inspiration from the work done on Bambi. Hopefully they also take note that a film with no driving story will end up to be boring.  In the end everything is a game of trial and error.  Sometimes a movie like Snow White happens where the stars line up and nearly everything about the film is exceptional. Sometimes a movie ends up being a complete catastrophe.  But more often than not a film has its pros and cons.  There is bad and good in every film, as there is in life, and just as we should always look at the bright side of every situation we should also commemorate what was special about a movie that had and still has a lasting effect on film.

Next up: Saludos Amigos

Money spent so far: $61.20

When I was younger I would spend all of my time researching Disney history.  I would spend hours after school and full weekends obsessing over trivia and somehow I never heard that the Disney Studio experienced an animators’ strike in 1941. In the 1930’s labor unions began to form amongst animation studios.  The Screen Actors Guild started in 1933 and The Screen Cartoonists’ Guild follow soon after in 1938.  The Disney Studio was one of the last groups to sign with the SCG, which put a lot of pressure on Walt and the animators that had been with him since Snow White.  Although Disney animators were amongst the highest paid and best treated in the business, they started to fear that Walt would start firing people due to lack of funds at the company.  Many of the animators had worked free hours on Snow White.  In addition, Pinocchio and Fantasia both did poorly at the box office due to WWII cutting off their chance for foreign releases.  In reality, Walt laid off only a few people, but each termination seemed to be an animator who supported the SCG.  The head of the Guild confronted Walt and when asked to sign with the union, he decided he’d rather leave it up to his top (most loyal) employees’ vote.  His refusal to immediately sign caused a strike that lasted for five weeks.  Walt left for Latin America to act as a “goodwill ambassador” (a trip which heavily influenced many of the next Disney films) and his absence allowed everyone to settle down.  While he was gone, a federal mediator stepped in to end the strike and the Disney Company signed with the union.

That, in a nutshell, is a bit of Disney history that I had never learned. But what is important about the strike is that in the middle of this mess came a baby elephant with big ears who arguably saved the company and was the last Disney animated film worked on by some of the company’s more legendary animators.  Dumbo was produced partially during the strike, but was finished and became a tremendous success when it was released after the company drama.  Some believe that if Dumbo had not made a profit, the Disney Studios would not have continued.  Many of Disney’s most famous animators, who worked on Snow White and Pinocchio, left after completing Dumbo, making it the last film of that “era.”  My first thought about Dumbo was that it was nothing spectacular, just a cute little film about an elephant who learns to fly.  I mostly remembered it for its trippy drug- and alcohol-induced sequences.  But upon re-watching I found that there are a few things that make Dumbo unique.

The story of Dumbo is simple, yet powerful.  No one in the world, no matter how popular, beautiful, or wealthy, is immune to feeling like an outsider.  From the moment he is born, Dumbo is teased for having overly large ears.  The elephants in his train car make fun of him, the clowns in the circus turn him into a joke, children visiting the zoo jeer at him, and even the crows who eventually teach him to fly laugh at his expense at first.  It is an incredibly emotional film.  Not only do viewers immediately sympathize with Dumbo, but his relationship with his mother literally tears hearts from chests and smashes them on the floor.  If you don’t remember, Dumbo’s mother attacks the children at the zoo who are making fun of her son and is put in solitary confinement and labeled as a “mad elephant.”  The two are separated for most of the movie.  What’s incredible about the emotions in the film is that they are so piercing and real, despite the fact that the protagonist is mute.  This is the 4^th film I have watched and it is the first that has made me feel in this way.

Dumbo and his overly large ears

It is pointed out in the special features that the music in Dumbo is not used to drive the story, but rather to make commentary on the storyline.  In a film like Snow White, the music is used to further explain the characters’ desires.  “Someday My Prince Will Come” tells the viewer what Snow White’s greatest wish is, and “Heigh Ho” is a substitute for a formal introduction to the dwarves; it explains who they are and what they do.  But in Dumbo, the music does nothing for the story.  If we take the three most famous songs from Dumbo (never mind the more random, yet wonderful, lesser-known tunes) you will see my point.  “When I See an Elephant Fly” is an upbeat, catchy song, but what it really does is set the already occurring dialogue between the crows to music.  Actually, their jokes at Dumbo seem to transform seamlessly into song without the viewer really noticing it has happened.  “Pink Elephants on Parade” is a random sequence that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story.  After Dumbo and Timothy accidentally drink champagne, wacky pink elephants torment their dreams.  Nothing before the song is reflected within it and nothing is affected by it afterward.  And “Baby Mine,” while at first glance appears to drive the movie forward emotionally, actually doesn’t.  “Baby Mine” is an incredibly sad song and it does make the viewers more inclined to feel bad for Dumbo, but not so much worse for him than they already feel.  Again, the song is much more of a comment on the sad situation that Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo have found themselves in than a plot device. Personally, I find these songs interesting despite the fact that they don’t advance the story.  Like the movie as a whole, they are simple, fun, and they add to the film as a whole without distracting from it.

Pink Elephants on Parade - A song that doesn't have anything to do with anything.

And finally, this movie is great because Dumbo is freaking adorable.  I can’t even contain my joy at how cute he is.  I found myself frequently screaming out loud and gushing about his adorableness.  What I really mean to say is that the characters in this movie are great.  Yes Dumbo is unbelievably lovable, but all of the supporting characters in this movie have their stand out quirks too.  Timothy Mouse, for example, is Dumbo’s best friend and “mentor” and accurately portrays the attitude of a 1940’s zoot suiter in the body of a mouse.  Dumbo’s mother is caring and passionate, and her fellow elephants each have their own distinct (bitchy) personalities. The crows, which have in more recent years received quite a bit of flack for being “Jim Crow” stereotypes, still exude personality.  In the special features I was introduced to Joe Grant, who was one of the head character designers for Dumbo.  It was said that there was almost no one that Walt trusted more than Joe with story.  Joe created characters for Walt from Snow White through Cinderella. After years of work Joe left the company for a while, but he returned in the 90’s to work on some of the most memorable characters from our childhood.  It amazed me that someone who was so famous for thinking up dynamic characters in the 40’s was able to do equally amazing work in the 90’s.

Joe Grant contributed to the development of characters in Disney's Pocahontas.

Dumbo is often overlooked.  It isn’t flashy and it doesn’t have memorable songs or special effects.  But what makes it spectacular is that despite all that, despite being incredibly simple, it was able to save the company and be the first film since Snow White to turn a profit.  It had the essentials: believable characters, a sound story and emotional relatability. It is a perfect little gem in the middle of Disney history that stands out as “the little engine that could.”  It has been the reoccurring theme for me that I will most usually fall deeply in love with the Disney films I watch during this project, but I feel a special kind of love for Dumbo.  It is an amazingly vibrant, joyous, touching and effortless movie. It is quite different than any of the films made by Disney around that time and it is perfect in its own way.

Next up: Bambi

Money spent so far: still $50.20 because a lovely reader paid for this film

I know you are all probably used to glowing reviews where I praise Disney’s work as if it were heaven sent, even after only two posts, but be warned that this will be a very different blog entry.  To put it simply, I really disliked Fantasia.  Maybe I am missing some “appreciation for sound and cinema” gene or maybe I like classical music a lot less than I thought I did, but this movie bored me to death.

I’m going to try my best to explain why I was so turned off by Fantasia, because I feel like I might be the only person in the world who is not completely in love with it. But honestly, I think that the likely scenario is that everyone decided to like Fantasia post-viewing, because I literally cannot imagine anyone sitting in rapture as they watch it. It isn’t anyone’s favorite Disney movie and it isn’t the type of movie you watch with your friends on a Friday night.  Can we agree on that?

Before I give my honest opinion of Fantasia, we should go over what this movie is about and what makes it different from other Disney films. Fantasia is a series of short animations set to different pieces of classical music.  The movie is hosted by radio personality Deems Taylor and the music is conducted by Leopold Stokowski and played by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Fantasia does not run like a regular film, but instead is more like a live concert.  Taylor introduces each piece and gives a short history lesson about the music while also explaining why Disney chose to animate each one the way they did. There are eight sequences, none of which connect with reoccurring characters or a continuous plotline.

Let’s start with the first of many issues I had with the film.  Unlike most of the sequences in Fantasia, which mostly feature a distinct story, the first segment (set to “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”) shows a few shots of the orchestra silhouetted against colorful backgrounds, but mostly just blobs of color on the screen.  In my opinion, this was the worst way to start an already offbeat movie.  If the point of Fantasia was to make audiences more interested in classical music by pairing it with beautiful animation, then they should not have begun with such a lackluster sequence.  I have never in my life seen something so completely “hipster” come out of the 1940’s.  I’d like to think that maybe my opinion of the film as a whole was influenced by my initial impression of “Toccata and Fugue,” but alas, there are even more reasons why this movie failed to impress me.

The middle chunk of Fantasia is just a mess of cartoons that I half remembered from childhood, but none of which were as remarkable as they needed to be to make this movie entertaining. “The Rite of Spring” depicts the formation of life, from a tiny amoeba to the rise and fall of the dinosaurs.  Basically, it is dinosaurs dying a fiery, dusty death. The most interesting part is that it must have been a direct influence for the dinosaur dioramas featured on the Disneyland Railroad here at Disneyland Park.

“The Pastoral Symphony” was, I admit, fun to watch, but also way too long. This piece revolves around centaur ladies who meet up with centaur men to set up a festival for Bacchus, the god of wine.  Their party is quickly interrupted by Zeus, who throws lightning bolts at them from the sky.  I think I enjoyed this segment more than others because it had more of a story, and more intriguing characters than the other shorts.  Not being able to enjoy art unless it contains a discernable story probably isn’t a great quality of mine, but I’d rather be honest with you guys about my opinions than blindly give good reviews of every Disney movie I see. I need a plot!

But now that we are through most of the nonsense that is Fantasia, we can talk about the two sequences that do make this movie memorable. The “climax” of this film (in quotes because there can be no real climax if there is no real story, right?) is accompanied by the piece “Night on Bald Mountain.”  In this short, the devil Chernabog summons the dead from their graves to praise him. Ghosts and demons ride to him only to be thrown into fire. This cartoon, made in 1940, is to this day one of the scariest cartoons ever made.  It is so iconic that it was chosen to be included in Disneyland’s “Fantasmic” show and even more recently in California Adventure’s “World of Color.”  People are still scared of Chernabog, or maybe just obsessed with him because we have somehow figured out his name even though it is clearly never mentioned in this dialogue-free film. If you watch “Night on Bald Mountain” you will see how un-Disney is it; its haunting atmosphere is something I’d expect to see from foreign animators and not from the creators of the loveable Mickey Mouse.

Chernabog featured in Fantasmic

Demons falling into a pit of fire

Speaking of Mickey, I know you all know the most memorable part of Fantasia. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is one of the most popular Mickey cartoons of all time. As someone who did not enjoy Fantasia, I can at least appreciate it for giving us all Sorcerer Mickey and the walking broomsticks.  It’s a classic, and Fantasia would not have been made without Walt’s dedication to making this short.  That is something I found out in my desperate attempt to find something that would make me feel differently about Fantasia.  After watching the film, I was eager to watch the DVD special features so I could hear why Walt wanted to make this movie and (hopefully) be inspired by the history of the film.  Unfortunately for me there were no such special features on my DVD.  So I hit the Internet for information and found out the real reason Fantasia was created.

In the 30’s The Walt Disney Company experienced a decline in the popularity of their Mickey Mouse cartoons.  The original plan was to make an incredible Mickey Mouse short, one that combined the 1797 poem “Der Zauberlehrling,” the famous concert piece “L’apprenti sorcier” by Paul Dukas, and Mickey Mouse as the title role.  So much money was spent on the production of this short that Walt realized he would not be able to make back what was spent unless the piece was incorporated into a full-length feature.  And so Walt went about selecting other pieces of music for his animators to work with and Fantasia was born. What is hilarious to me is that Dopey was considered to be the Sorcerer’s Apprentice as well, but Walt demanded it be Mickey. Can you imagine?

Aside from the long-lasting popularity of Chernabog and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, Fantasia made one other important contribution to the art of filmmaking.  When the concept of a “live concert” type movie was decided upon, Walt decided he wanted to attempt to change the way sound was played during a movie.  If this was going to be a concert film, he wanted the audience to feel like they were standing on the conductor’s podium, surrounded by music.  The company succeeded in creating “Fantasound”, which was one of the first ever stereophonic sound systems and which led to the commonality of surround sound.  Fantasia was the first film to make use of surround sound and while other Disney films made advances in art, color and character, Fantasia changed sound and music forever.

I think I have already fully explored my frustration and disappointment with Fantasia, but really what confuses me the most is why this is Disney’s 3^rd feature film.  It seems like such an experimental project would have come later.  Bambi was already in production and was actually supposed to be the company’s second film, so why did they do Fantasia so early? Mickey’s declining popularity partially explains it, but I still will never really understand taking the risk of this project so early in the company’s history, though in retrospect, it didn’t do any lasting damage and Disney went on to be a great success. If I try really hard I can appreciate the dedication to pairing animation with classical music.  There is actually a quote from Walt that says “This film is going to open this kind of music to a lot of people like myself who’ve walked out on this kind of stuff” which makes me want to love this film so much, but I just can’t.While I am glad that I trudged through my Fantasia viewing and have reacquainted myself with it, I just don’t like it.  And I don’t have to like it.  After my past two blog posts I have become unexpectedly enamored with both Pinocchio and Snow White, but after watching Fantasia I had a different reaction and that is really what this blog is about.  I didn’t start this project as a tribute to Disney.  I am supposed to come out of each film with a different feeling about each and about animation as a whole. I am excited, not discouraged, to have disliked Fantasia because it is the start of me creating well-thought out opinions on these classic films. I know a lot of you are Fantasia fans and I’m sorry if you are dissatisfied with my review. To those of you who have either never watched this film, or haven’t in years, I encourage you to watch it again, even if you might hate it, because what I truly believe is that Disney films affected all of entertainment.  It’s not always going to be sunshine and roses here on Treasures Untold, but at the very least we can all appreciate each Disney movie for what small (or large) contribution it has made in film.

Next up: Dumbo

Money spent so far: $50.20