1001 Movies Club - Fantasia (1940)

#134. Fantasia (1940)

Why It's In The Book: "Although now commonplace, creating images to interpret music was revolutionary when this audacious milestone in animation and stereophonic audio recording was conceived and executed by the Walt Disney studio to universal acclaim and astonishment. Graced by the eminent symphonic star Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, Fantasia's eight wide-ranging sequences comprise a concert with ambitious, amusing, portentous, and experimental cartoons accompanying pieces by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Schubert, and others... there are some magical sequences that endure, as befits a film made by sixty animators working under no less than eleven directors (under the supervision of Ben Sharpsteen)." -1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Member Ratings

Alyson - 10/10
"The mix of stunning animation and beautiful music is still astounding over seventy years later."
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Jeff Coté - 10/10
"Fantasia is undoubtedly the Disney studios' greatest picture. The imagery is stunning, the themes are strong and the concept is revolutionary."
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Michaël Parent - 10/10
"Considered by many as the greatest animated film of all time Walt Disney's Fantasia is more than a regular cartoon picture. "
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Adolytsi - 9/10
"There has never been a film like Fantasia, and there probably never will be again."
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Siochembio - 8.5/10
"Fantasia remains the single best classical music movie ever made because it is wholly about the classical music.  The classical music does not take a back seat to any sort of contrived plot line about struggling musicians or some other nonsense.  The classical music came first, and the images followed."
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Klaus Ming - 8/10
"the dancing fairies, fish, flowers, mushrooms and leaves which accompany the Nutcracker Suite, would not look out-of-place in a current Hayao Miyazaki film"
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TSorensen - 8/10
"Just try and imagine vain ostriches, shy hippos in small skirts, feather light blue elephants and a bunch of crocodiles in capes all performing a ballet. It is exactly as silly and charming and totally sweet as it sounds like."
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Kim Wilson - 7.5/10
"Mushrooms, fairy dust, nudity, intoxication, murder, witchcraft, and satanism are not words that pop to mind when someone mentions Walt Disney. Yet, all of these elements appear in Disney’s Fantasia (1940)."
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Movie Guy Steve - 7/10
"It’s worth seeing, but there are large sequences that can be missed without too much worry."
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Nicholas Krizan - 7/10
"Probably one of the most magnificent failures in movie history."
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Squish - 6/10
"Dancing flowers and mushrooms that barely hold one's interest are set to a classical tune that's been over-played into the dirt...A day in the life of the end of days of T-Rex and his pals was moving, impressive and just plain fun."
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bpdreview - 5/10
"I felt stuck in neutral, trapped in a locked car with the radio stuck on the classical station while my eyes were forced open Clockwork Orange-style in order to watch bright colorful things do stuff of really no significance."
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Overall Rating: 8.1/10