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Fantasia is a 1940 animated film produced by Walt
Disney, and is the third film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics.
Fantasia is an experiment in animation and music, consisting of
classical music presented against the backdrop of animation and
featuring no dialogue. The music is recorded under the direction of
Leopold Stokowski; seven of the eight pieces were performed by the
Philadelphia Orchestra. Animated artwork of varying degrees of
abstraction or literalism is used to illustrate or accompany the
concert in various ways. The film also includes live-action segments
featuring Stokowski, the orchestra, and American composer and music
critic Deems Taylor, who serves as the host for the film. Besides its
avant-garde qualities, Fantasia was notable for being the first major
film released in stereophonic sound, using a process dubbed "Fantasound".
Fantasia was originally released by Walt Disney Productions itself
without then-distributor RKO Radio Pictures, and exhibited as a
two-hour and twenty minute (counting the intermission) roadshow film
with booked engagements. The film opened to mixed critical reaction
and failed to generate a large commercial audience, which left Walt
Disney in financial straits. Fantasia was eventually picked up by RKO
for release in 1941 and edited drastically to a running time of 81
minutes in 1942. Five subsequent rereleases of Fantasia between 1946
and 1977 restored various amounts of the deleted footage, with the
most common version being the 1946 rerelease edit, which ran nine
minutes shorter than the original 124 minute roadshow version. A 1982
reissue featured a newly recorded digital soundtrack conducted by
composer Irwin Kostal, but was taken out of circulation in 1990 after
a restored version of the original Stokowski-conducted soundtrack was
prepared. The original version of Fantasia was never released again
after 1941, and although some of the original audio elements no longer
exist, a 2000 DVD release version attempted to restore as much of the
original version of the film as possible. Fantasia, despite its
initial commercial failure, is today considered a classic film.
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