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Fantasia is Disney’s third animated feature film, and their third “Animated Classic”. Released at the end of 1940, the film is a series of seven animated sequences illustrating eight famous works of classical music, most of them performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
A resolutely experimental work, Fantasia places music and animation at the heart of its concept. The film contains no dialogue apart from the narrator - played by the composer and music critic Deems Taylor - and a few lines from Mickey Mouse, whose character makes a remarkable comeback here after the series of Silly Symphonies series of the 1930s.
It’s also a real technical feat: its soundtrack uses an innovative process, Fantasound, enabling a film to be shown in stereophonic sound for the first time.