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By DANIEL J.
HAMLOW
The title is Italian for a
musical instruction in classical music. Literally
translated, it means "cheerful, not too much."
The black-and-white live action segments, which
take place in the beginning and in between
animation, feature a young presenter, who tells us
proudly, "This show is destined for immortality.
Music interpreted in cartoons." He then says the
movie is called "Fantasia," only to get a phone
call, at which he's clearly embarrassed. "They say
some guy already made this picture, a certain
Crisney, Prisney, an American." Which he doesn't
believe.
The rough and brutal conductor has more the manner
of the local butcher, and the orchestra,
consisting of old women in their 60's through
80's, are fearful of him, as is the animator, a
mild-mannered man with a balding but flowing
haircut that makes him look more like an 18th
century composer. His creations make the old
ladies applaud, laugh, and cry. There's a funny
segment involving a gorilla (don't ask) doing the
Russian kalinka dance.
The first segment is Claude Debussy's "Prelude a
l'Apres-midi d'un faune," which traces the
repeated attempts of an aging, pudgy satyr to have
one of the beautiful, nude and nubile women for
himself. Debussy did write this dreamy work
harkening back to the idyllic paganism of Greece.
I was surprised my parents let me see this
originally when I was nine.
Antonin Dvorak's "Slavic Dance No. 7" tells the
story of a man who moves from his cave-dwelling
neighbors to live alone, only to have his actions
imitated by the neighbors. Frustrated, he
constructs a different house, only to be imitated
by the mindless crowd again. Their imitative
actions give him an idea.
The next two segments are head and shoulders above
the others: Life evolved from a Coke bottle, one
of the glass ones, not the plastic ones we have
today. That is set to Ravel's "Bolero." To which
the presenter asks, "Who composed it?" From some
bubbling liquid Coke, to an amoeboid creature to a
reptile, and beyond, the animation also presents
the march of life over the ages. The tempo of the
animation accelerates in tune with the music,
where each instrument takes its turn playing the
repeated 8-measure tune based on a Spanish dance.
Dinosaurs, prehistoric birds, sea creatures, and
even the ape, all walk across the volcanic
landscape, and things really heat up when the
strings kick in for the first time.
The animation to Jean Sibelius's "Valse Triste"
put a real tear in my eye, as it portrays a cat
who climbs from a crawlspace under a large house,
only to discover it is a bombed ruin. The cat's
eyes glow when it remembers happier times, such as
an old lady knitting sitting on a sofa and a caged
canary, when the house was full of life. The
colorful scenes where the house is reconstructed
in its glory days are a highlight. However, the
cat is clearly distressed upon seeing the stark
wreckage.
A perky and funny bee's nice lunch in the meadow
is constantly disrupted by an amorous human
couple. The music is set to Antonio Vivaldi's
"Concerto in C," which resembles the Spring
segment of the "Four Seasons."
Set to Igor Stravinsky's "Fire Bird" is a
revisionist retelling of the Creation, with Adam
and Eve, and the Serpent. Both Adam and Eve refuse
the Apple, which the Serpent himself eats it, and
gets a nightmare flurry of images, a
post-industrial hell, complete with horned demons
and live footage of the nightlife. The image of
the heart filled with money is a telling one.
Bruno Bozetto's animation is in various styles,
from the lovely hues of idyllic Greece to the
collage of twisted images in the finale. The
overall theme here is how the post-industrial
society comes into conflict with the old ways, be
it pre-war days, romance, and nature. I first saw
part of it back in 1977, and now I have finally
seen this parody of "Fantasia" in its entirety.
It's a real one-of-a-kind film.
Special features consist of the hour-long
compilation "The Best of Bruno Bozzetto: 10 short
films" ("Baby Story," "Sigmund, Grasshoppers,"
"Striptease," "Self Service," "A Life in a Tin,"
"Big Bang," "Dancing," "Baeus" and "Mister Tao")
and the 2002 Italian TV documentary, "The World of
Bozzetto," that profiles the director. |
