Original 1940 version (124 minutes)[]
Deems Taylor: How do you do? Uh - my name is Deems Taylor, and it's my very pleasant duty to welcome you here, on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski, and all the other artists and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia. What you're goin' to see, are the designs and pictures and stories that music inspired in the minds and imaginations of a group of artists. In other words, these are not going to be the interpretations of trained musicians, which I think is all to the good. Now, there are three kinds of music on this Fantasia program. First, there's the kind that tells a definite story. Then there's the kind, that while it has no specific plot, does paint a series of more or less definite pictures. Then there's a third kind, music that exists... simply for its own sake. Now - the number that opens our Fantasia program, the Toccata and Fugue, is music of this third kind, what we call absolute music. Even the title has no meaning beyond a description of the form of the music. What you will see on the screen, is a picture of the various, abstract images that might pass through your mind... if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you're more or less conscious of the orchestra, so our picture opens with a series of impressions of the conductor and the players. Then the music begins to suggest other things to your imagination. They might be... oh, just masses of color. Or they may be cloud forms... or great landscapes or vague shadows or... geometrical objects floating in space. So now we present the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, interpreted in pictures by Walt Disney and his associates, and in music by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski.
♪(Toccata and Fugue in D Minor)♪
Deems Taylor: You know - it's funny how... wrong an artist can be about his own work. Now the one composition of Tchaikovsky's that he really detested was his Nutcracker Suite, which is probably the most popular thing he ever wrote. It's a series of dances taken out of a full-length ballet called The Nutcracker, that he once composed for the St. Petersburg Opera House. It wasn't much of a success and nobody performs it nowadays, but I'm pretty sure you'll recognize the music of the suite when you hear it. Incidentally, uh, you won't see any nutcracker on the screen. There's nothing left of him but the title.
♪(The Nutcracker Suite)♪
Deems Taylor: And now we're goin' to hear a piece of music that tells a very definite story. As a matter of fact, in this case the story came first, and the composer wrote the music to go with it. It's a very old story, one that goes back almost 2,000 years. A legend about a sorcerer who had an apprentice. He was a bright young lad, uh, very anxious to learn the business. As a matter of fact, he was a little bit too bright... uh, because he started practicing some of the boss's best magic tricks, before learning how to control them. Uh - one day for instance, when he'd been told by his master, to carry water to fill a cauldron, he had the brilliant idea... of bringing a broomstick to life to carry the water for him. Well - this worked very well, at first. Unfortunately however, having forgotten the magic formula that would make the broomstick stop carrying the water, he found he'd started something he couldn't finish.
♪(The Sorcerer's Apprentice)♪
(The segment starts with Yen Sid practicing his magic through a skull on the table. The camera zooms to the left where we see his apprentice Mickey Mouse carrying two buckets of water up a staircase. He stops on the first step for minute to catch his breath while wiping his head before continuing to carry the buckets before stopping at a cauldron. Mickey then turns his head towards Yen Sid performing making a bat which blinks before changing into a butterfly. Mickey dumps water into the cauldron turns towards his master again at the site of his spell.
Suddenly the butterfly turns to dust that goes into the skull with flash of light that stunned Mickey for a moment. Yen Sid yawns and takes off the Sorcerer's Hat and puts it on the table. While he walks upstairs Mickey slowly heads toward them looking up at Yen Sid before looking at towards the hat then briefly looking toward Yen Sid's way before heading to the table where he puts the Sorcerer's hat on. Mickey then turns to a broomstick sitting in a corner and casts a spell on it. The broom comes to life and heads towards Mickey approaching the buckets.
The broomstick sprouts two arms and picks the buckets up. Mickey begins to march and leads the broom up a staircase leading to a fountain outside where it filled the buckets with water before Mickey leads down and fills the cauldron. He then leads back to the stairs again to get water while he dances down them before relaxing in a chair waving his arms while the broomstick keeps carrying the buckets of water. Mickey yawns and falls asleep where his dreamself flies up lands on top a pinnacle where he points his hands to stars which twinkle before summon them.
Stars swirling around Mickey who clap his hands together which causes the stars to turn into dust that Mickey sprinkles into the water below. He then makes waves of water before summoning storm clouds that covers the skies with flashes of lightning as Mickey controlling it. The scene fades back into Mickey still asleep in the chair but this time the room is all flooded as he still waves his arms. The chair begins to float causing Mickey to fall into the water which causes him to wake up and turn towards the broomstick and gasps. He heads towards the stairs to stop the broom but fails as Mickey gets thrown into the cauldron as the broomstick continues dumping water then going to to more.
Mickey follows it up the stairs where he spots an axe next to the door which he grabs and starts chopping the broom to pieces. He walks back through the door as the scattered splinters of broom moves a bit. Mickey closes sits down as the hat goes on his face putting back towards his heads. The splinters pieces then spawned more brooms creating an entire army of broomsticks with buckets of water marching towards the door. Mickey starting heading down the stair before stopping turning his head briefly at the camera and rushes back to the door.)
He opens the door and gets shocked to see the army of broomsticks. He closes the door and tries to keep it shut, but the door bursts open and brooms come marching through while walking over Mickey and filling the cauldron. Mickey makes it downstairs and grabs a bucket while spotting a window starts to dumps water out of it, but the brooms keep dumping more and more water causing the room to flood further. The current pulls Mickey before resurfacing as brooms marching in the water to fill the cauldron. Mickey climbs on to a spellbook and flips through pages to find a spell to stop the brooms as they continue to flood the tower.
Mickey drifts on the spellbook until a whirlpool forms spinning Mickey round and round. Yen Sid enters and looks around at the flood before waving his hands to stop it. Mickey hiding below the spellbook looks around until he turns towards Yen Sid who looks down at him with an angry glare. Mickey takes off the Sorcerer's hat, fixes the top then gives back to Yen Sid. Mickey then gives Yen Sid a nervous smile, but still gives him the glare. He turns to see the now lifeless broom and gives it to Yen Sid before grabbing the buckets which he raises up before tip-toeing pass Yen Sid still looking down at him with a smirk.
Mickey stops for moment giving him another nervous smile before continuing. Suddenly Yen Sid whacks Mickey with the broom causing him to run off screen as the segment ends.)
Mickey Mouse: (pulling on Stokowski's coat; panting) Mr. Stokowski. Mr. Stokowski! (whistles to get Stokowski's attention; chuckles) My congratulations, sir.
Leopold Stokowski: (shaking hands with Mickey; chuckles) Congratulations to you, Mickey.
Mickey Mouse: Gee, thanks. (laughs) Well, so long. I'll be seein' ya.
Leopold Stokowski: Goodbye.
(Deems and the musicians clapping Leopold Stowkowski and Mickey Mouse)
Deems Taylor: When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet The Rite of Spring... (a crashing chime sound is heard) I repeat, when Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet The Rite of Spring, his purpose was, in his own words, to "express primitive life." And so Walt Disney and his fellow artists have taken him at his word. Instead of presenting the ballet in its original form, as a simple series of tribal dances, they have visualized it as a pageant, as the story of the growth of life on Earth. And that story, as you're going to see it, isn't the product of anybody's imagination. It's a coldly accurate reproduction of what science thinks went on during the first few billion years of this planet's existence. Science, not art, wrote the scenario of this picture. According to science, the first living things here were single-celled organisms, tiny little white or green blobs of nothing in particular that lived under the water. And then, as the ages passed, the oceans began to swarm with all kinds of marine creatures. And finally, after about a billion years, certain fish, more ambitious than the rest, crawled up on land and became the first amphibians. And then, several hundred million years ago, nature went off on another tack and produced the dinosaurs. Now, the name "dinosaur" comes from two Greek words meaning "terrible lizard", and they certainly were all of that. They came in all shapes and sizes, from little, crawling horrors about the size of a chicken, to... hundred-ton nightmares. They were not very bright. Even the biggest of them had only the brain of a pigeon. They lived in the air and the water as well as on land. As a rule, they were vegetarians, rather amiable and easy to get along with. However, there were bullies and gangsters among them. The worst of the lot, a brute named Tyrannosaurus Rex was probably the meanest killer that ever roamed the earth. The dinosaurs were lords of creation for about 200 million years. And then... Well, we don't exactly know what happened. Some scientists think that great droughts and earthquakes turned the whole world into a gigantic dustbowl. In any case, the dinosaurs were wiped out. That is where our story ends. Where it begins is at a time infinitely far back, when there was no life at all on earth. Nothing but clouds of steam, boiling seas, and exploding volcanoes. So now, imagine yourselves, out in space, billions and billions of years ago, looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet, spinning through an empty sea of nothingness.
♪(The Rite of Spring)♪
(The segment starts black before the Milky Way galaxy comes into view as the camera zooms out towards it. The camera zooms through space passed a nebula and the Sun. Shooting stars zips through the sky as the planet Earth comes in view as the camera looms closer to it. We then see the surface Earth where some volcanoes are found. We then see many active volcanoes pouring smoke out, and one with a twister of smoke which some flames appears top. The camera through to see bubbling lava.
Deems Taylor: And now we'll have a 15-minute intermission.
(He and all the musicians leave the concert, then the door closes, then the title card appears, then Deems and all of the musicians come back to the concert)
Deems Taylor: Oh, yeah. (clears throat; chuckles) Before we get into the second half of the program, I'd like to introduce somebody to you, somebody who's very important to Fantasia. He's very shy and very retiring. I just happened to run across him one day at the Disney Studios. But when I did, I suddenly realized that here was not only an indispensable member of the organization, but a screen personality whose possibilities nobody around the place that had ever noticed. And so I'm very happy to have this opportunity to introduce to you the soundtrack.
(The soundtrack comes out a little) All right. Come on. That's all right. Don't be timid. (The soundtrack goes to the center) Atta soundtrack. Now, watching him, I discovered that every beautiful sound also creates an equally beautiful picture. Now, look! Will the soundtrack kindly produce a sound? (it is silent) Go on, don't be nervous. Go ahead. Any sound.
(The soundtracks blows a "raspberry", vibrating as it does so; Deems chuckles)
Deems Taylor: Well, that isn't quite what I had in mind. Suppose we hear and see the harp.
(The soundtrack plays a scale on harp)
Deems Taylor: And now... now one of the strings. Say, oh, the violin.
(The soundtrack plays a scale on violin)
Deems Taylor: Now one of the woodwinds. A flute.
(The soundtrack plays a scale on flute)
Deems Taylor: Very pretty. Now, let's have a brass instrument, the trumpet.
(The soundtrack plays a scale of trumpet)
Deems Taylor: All right. Now, how about a low instrument, the bassoon?
(the soundtrack plays a minor scale on bassoon, ending on a very low note)
Deems Taylor: Go on. Go on. Drop the other shoe, will you?
(The soundtrack sounds an even deeper note, obviously the lowest)
Deems Taylor: To finish, suppose we see some of the percussion instruments, beginning with the bass drum.
(The soundtrack plays the bass drum and percussion instruments, ending on a tiny ding)
Deems Taylor: (chuckling) Thanks a lot, old man.
(The soundtrack leaves the scene)
Deems Taylor: (chuckling) The symphony that Beethoven called the Pastoral, his sixth, is one of the few pieces of music he ever wrote that tells something like a definite story. He was a great nature lover, and in this symphony, he paints a musical picture of a day in the country. Now of course, the country that Beethoven described was the countryside with which he was familiar. But his music covers a much wider field than that, and so Walt Disney has given the Pastoral Symphony a mythological setting, and that setting is of Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods. And here, first of all, we meet a group of fabulous creatures of the field and forest, unicorns, fauns, Pegasus, the flying horse, and his entire family, the centaurs, those strange creatures that are half-man and half-horse. And their girlfriends, the centaurettes. Later on, we meet our old friend, Bacchus, the god of wine, presiding over a bacchanal. The party is interrupted by a storm, and now, we see Vulcan forging thunderbolts and handing them over to the king of all the gods, Zeus, who plays darts with them. As the storm clears, we see Iris, the goddess of the rainbow. And Apollo, driving his sun chariot across the sky. And then Morpheus, the god of sleep, covers everything with his cloak of night, as Diana, using the new moon as a bow, shoots an arrow of fire that spangles the sky with stars.
♪(The Pastoral Symphony)♪
Deems Taylor: Now we're goin' to do one of the most famous and popular ballets ever written, The Dance of the Hours from Ponchielli's opera La Gioconda. It's a pageant of the hours of the day. We see first a group of dancers in costumes to suggest the delicate light of dawn. Then a second group enters dressed to represent the brilliant light of noon day. As these withdraw, a third group enters in costumes that suggest the delicate tones of early evening. Then a last group, all in black, the somber hours of the night. Suddenly, the orchestra bursts into a brilliant finale in which the hours of darkness are overcome by the hours of light. All this takes place in the great hall, with its garden beyond, of the palace of Duke Alvise, a Venetian nobleman.
♪(Dance of the Hours)♪
Deems Taylor: The last number on our Fantasia program, is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood, that they set each other off perfectly. The first is A Night on Bald Mountain, by one of Russia's greatest composers, Modest Mussorgsky. The second is Franz Schubert's world-famous Ave Maria. Musically and dramatically, we have here a picture of the struggle between the profane and the sacred. Bald Mountain, according to tradition, is the gathering place of Satan and his followers. Here on Walpurgisnacht, which is the equivalent of our own Halloween, the creatures of evil gather to worship their master. Under his spell, they dance furiously, until the coming of dawn and the sounds of church bells send the infernal army slinking back into their abodes of darkness. And then we hear the Ave Maria, with its message of the triumph of hope and life over the powers of despair and death.
♪(Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria)♪
(The segment starts by showing a mountain during the night called Bald Mountain overlooking a small village below. The camera moves up towards the top of Bald Mountain as the moon comes into view. Then awakening at the peak of the mountain was a demon named Chernabog who opens his wings before looking down towards the village where he raised his arms and faces them forward. Chernabog's shadow stretches down the mountain and reaches the village. His shadow continues to stretch across the village which a swarm of bats flies out of a bell tower.
A vulture sits on top of a gallow, but flies off as Chernabog's shadow spreads across the village. Ghosts flies through the noose and towards Bald Mountain as Chernabog keeps looking down at the village. He raises his arm and faces it forward as his shadow stretches on to a deserted castle around a moat. Ghosts rises up from the moat surrounding the castle. The camera move through a scene showing ghost rising up all around the village before reaching a local cemetary.
Chernabog's shadow covers several graves as ghosts rises up from them. Numerous ghosts flies in the night sky up Bald Mountain. Chernabog summons spirits as they swarm around him. He streches his arms out and flames burst out as we see small demons below Chernabog. The demons dance furiously as Chernabog some of them with his arms and looks at them before throwing them into the firey pit below. Other demons dance around the flames until a puff of smoke covers the screen.
Chernabog reaches into a stream of smoke which then shows some flames in his hand as he uses it to create beautiful dancers who dance. He then transforms them into vile barnyard animals. Chernabog looks down on them with an evil grin as they turn into blue demons who crawl around on his hand until he crashes them while flames appear around it. Chernabog opens his hand and we see blue flames which turn into demons who dance as the camera zooms up where we Chernabog's face fading in and gives a creepy smile.
Flames comes out of the mountain and all around Chernabog as they change color while demons furiously dance. We see purple flames resembling women as a demonic woman head zoom into the camera's eye. Several demons falls into the flames while harpies flies overhead as a skull flies into the camera's eye. Several more demons jumps in the fiery pit while several harpies fly around as a ghost flies into view. A harpy grabs one of the demons as a group of ghosts flies by as the harpy flies away with the demon before it drops it.
Several harpies swarm around each other as two go into the screen's eye along with a skull, demonic woman head, a ghost, and another demon as Chernabog looks down. He sends a stream of flames into the air and then back into Bald Mountain and a light from within the mountain appears. Chernabog prepares to do more of his evil until a lighting shins on him as church bells are heard. He looks around wondering what it was before continuing but the light shins and the bells are heard. Chernabog tries to resist it but shields himself from the light as the bells keep ringing which also blinds the demons below.
Chernabog looks again and gets blinded by the light while hearing ringing bells. All the demons goes back into the pit, while all the ghosts flies back down towards the village and back to resting spots. Meanwhile Chernabog raises his arms one of last time before using his wings to cover him back up. The camera zooms away from Bald Mountain as the music for Ave Maria begins. We then see a long line of monks holding a torch further ahead of the village who walks over a bridge and then into the forest.
The camera zooms forward through the forest as we see the pre dawn sky where we eventually the sun rising as the screen fades black.)
THE END
1990 version (120 minutes)[]
Deems Taylor: How do you do? Uh - my name is Deems Taylor, and it's my very pleasant duty to welcome you here, on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski, and all the other artists and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia. What you're goin' to see, are the designs and pictures and stories that music inspired in the minds and imaginations of a group of artists. In other words, these are not going to be the interpretations of trained musicians, which I think is all to the good. Now, there are three kinds of music on this Fantasia program. First, there's the kind that tells a definite story. Then there's the kind, that while it has no specific plot, does paint a series of more or less definite pictures. Then there's a third kind, music that exists... simply for its own sake. Now - the number that opens our Fantasia program, the Toccata and Fugue, is music of this third kind, what we call absolute music. Even the title has no meaning beyond a description of the form of the music. What you will see on the screen, is a picture of the various, abstract images that might pass through your mind... if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you're more or less conscious of the orchestra, so our picture opens with a series of impressions of the conductor and the players. Then the music begins to suggest other things to your imagination. They might be... oh, just masses of color. Or they may be cloud forms... or great landscapes or vague shadows or... geometrical objects floating in space. So now we present the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, interpreted in pictures by Walt Disney and his associates, and in music by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski.
♪(Toccata and Fugue in D Minor)♪
Deems Taylor: You know - it's funny how... wrong an artist can be about his own work. Now the one composition of Tchaikovsky's that he really detested was his Nutcracker Suite, which is probably the most popular thing he ever wrote. Incidentally, uh, you won't see any nutcracker on the screen. There's nothing left of him but the title.
♪(The Nutcracker Suite)♪
Deems Taylor: And now we're goin' to hear a piece of music that tells a very definite story. It's a very old story, one that goes back almost 2,000 years. A legend about a sorcerer who had an apprentice. He was a bright young lad, uh, very anxious to learn the business. As a matter of fact, he was a little bit too bright... uh, because he started practicing some of the boss's best magic tricks, before learning how to control them.
♪(The Sorcerer's Apprentice)♪
Mickey Mouse: (pulling on Stokowski's coat; panting) Mr. Stokowski. Mr. Stokowski! (whistles to get Stokowski's attention; chuckles) My congratulations, sir.
Leopold Stokowski: (shaking hands with Mickey; chuckles) Congratulations to you, Mickey.
Mickey Mouse: Gee, thanks. (laughs) Well, so long. I'll be seein' ya.
Leopold Stokowski: Goodbye.
Deems Taylor: When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet The Rite of Spring, his purpose was, in his own words, to "express primitive life." And so Walt Disney and his fellow artists have taken him at his word. Instead of presenting the ballet in its original form, as a simple series of tribal dances, they have visualized it as a pageant, as the story of the growth of life on Earth. It's a coldly accurate reproduction of what science thinks went on during the first few billion years of this planet's existence. So now, imagine yourselves, out in space, billions and billions of years ago, looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet, spinning through an empty sea of nothingness.
♪(The Rite of Spring)♪
Deems Taylor: (chuckles) Before we get into the second half of the program, I'd like to introduce somebody to you, somebody who's very important to Fantasia. He's very shy and very retiring. I just happened to run across him one day at the Disney Studios. But when I did, I realized that here was not only an indispensable member of the organization, but a screen personality. And so I'm very happy to have this opportunity to introduce to you the soundtrack.
(The soundtrack comes out a little) All right. Come on. That's all right. Don't be timid. (The soundtrack goes to the center) Atta soundtrack. Now, watching him, I discovered that every beautiful sound also creates an equally beautiful picture. Now, look! Will the soundtrack kindly produce a sound? (it is silent) Go on, don't be nervous. Go ahead. Any sound.
(The soundtracks blows a "raspberry", vibrating as it does so; Deems chuckles)
Deems Taylor: Well, that isn't quite what I had in mind. Suppose we hear and see the harp.
(The soundtrack plays a scale on harp)
Deems Taylor: And now... now one of the strings. Say, oh, the violin.
(The soundtrack plays a scale on violin)
Deems Taylor: Now one of the woodwinds. A flute.
(The soundtrack plays a scale on flute)
Deems Taylor: Very pretty. Now, let's have a brass instrument, the trumpet.
(The soundtrack plays a scale of trumpet)
Deems Taylor: All right. Now, how about a low instrument, the bassoon?
(the soundtrack plays a minor scale on bassoon, ending on a very low note)
Deems Taylor: Go on. Go on. Drop the other shoe, will you?
(The soundtrack sounds an even deeper note, obviously the lowest)
Deems Taylor: To finish, suppose we see some of the percussion instruments, beginning with the bass drum.
(The soundtrack plays the bass drum and percussion instruments, ending on a tiny ding)
Deems Taylor: (chuckling) Thanks a lot, old man.
(The soundtrack leaves the scene)
Deems Taylor: The symphony that Beethoven called the Pastoral, his sixth, is one of the few pieces of music he ever wrote that tells something like a definite story. He was a great nature lover, and in this symphony, he paints a musical picture of a day in the country. Now of course, the country that Beethoven described was the countryside with which he was familiar. But his music covers a much wider field than that, and so Walt Disney has given the Pastoral Symphony a mythological setting.
♪(The Pastoral Symphony)♪
Deems Taylor: Now we're goin' to do one of the most famous and popular ballets ever written, The Dance of the Hours from Ponchielli's opera La Gioconda. It's a pageant of the hours of the day. All this takes place in the great hall, with its garden beyond, of the palace of Duke Alvise, a Venetian nobleman.
♪(Dance of the Hours)♪
Deems Taylor: The last number on our Fantasia program, is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood, that they set each other off perfectly. The first is A Night on Bald Mountain, by one of Russia's greatest composers, Modest Mussorgsky. The second is Franz Schubert's immortal Ave Maria. Musically and dramatically, we have here a picture of the struggle between the profane and the sacred.
♪(Night on Bald Mountain)♪
(Church bells dinging)
♪(Ave Maria)♪
(He and all the musicians leave the concert and the door closes during the first 32 seconds of the ending credits roll)
THE END