Fantasia is a 1940 American animated musical anthology film produced and released by Walt Disney Productions. It is the third Disney animated feature film and consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The film opens with live action scenes of members of an orchestra gathering against a blue background and tuning their instruments in half-light, half-shadow. Master of ceremonies Deems Taylor enters the stage (also in half-light, half-shadow) and introduces the program.
The imaginative nature of the project reminded Stokowski of a fantasia, so he suggested the term as a working title for the film. In the classical tradition, a fantasia is a free-form piece of music that resembles improvisation. The film was an experimental project by Disney and Leopold Stokowski that combined classical music with animation. The film has been reissued multiple times by RKO Radio Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution with its original footage and audio being deleted, modified, or restored in each version.
Fantasia features music by some of historys most influential classical composers, including Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven. The film is a remarkable spectacle of music and imagery, where the music comes to life, and the pictures burst into song. The film has been revived in various forms, including Disney FANTASIA Live in Concert, in which selections from both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 are performed by an orchestra live-to-picture.
