Compare his achievement in this film, awash in personality, to the comparatively monochromatic conducting of James Levine in Fantasia 2000. This former organist had one of the most prodigious gifts in drawing color out of every orchestra he worked with, which made him the quintessential choice for Fantasia. Seeing only Stokowski's brazen self-promotion amounts to blindness. For those of us who have no qualms admitting that we like plenty of syrup on our musical flapjacks, embracing this wizard's transcriptions presents no problems. Avoid such persons like the plague (they probably started life by pulling the wings off butterflies). One wit described such tampering as "High Cholesterol Bach." It's a dishonest reaction, molded by unimaginative attachments to "historical correctness" and hyper-realism. Essentially,he romanticized Bach, making him sound more like Tchaikovsky. Stokowski was known for his Bach transcriptions, one of which-"Toccata and Fugue in D minor"-opens the film. Mention him to any "serious" classical music lover and he'll make a face like he's heard fingernails scraping down a chalkboard. Barnum of transplanted Euro conductors residing in America. Simultaneously, it also annoys insufferable academic elitists who cannot find it in themselves to embrace the film's tawdrier moments.Īnother supposed "strike" the film has against it is its choice of conductor: Leopold Stokowski. It may be one of the most stand apart films ever crafted, which is why, seventy plus years later, it still has the power to provoke dumbed-down audiences who still look at artmusic with suspicion. It's a flawed masterpiece, which begs the questions: does an infallible masterpiece actually exist? Fantasia represents it's creator, Walt Disney, as utterly possessed by obsessive, artistic, and innovative ambition. There is little doubt that this experimental film (yes, Disney once was innovative) has unmitigated moments of lurid kitsch, with equal parts cinematic magic. During each showing I witnessed several members of the audience walk out. Over a thirty year period I have seen Fantasia (1940) in theaters on a few occasions.
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