Fantasia was doomed to financial failure, a victim of both its own ambitions and the circumstances of its release. In an effort to make the concert hall simulation more immersive, Walt tasked his engineers with inventing a multi-channel audio recording and playback system, decades before surround or even stereo would become the norm. This “Fantasound” system had to be custom installed in any theater that was to exhibit the initial roadshow tour of Fantasia. These showings were lavish black-tie affairs, with reserved seats, ushers, and lush programs. But it was an unwieldy way to roll out a film, and Disney’s then-distributor RKO soon prepared the film for wide release by reverting the soundtrack to mono, cutting Taylor’s interstitials, and even lopping off the entirety of Toccata and Fugue (after all, Fantasia clocks in at a daunting 125 minutes, Snow White having set the standard at 80). Though its New York and Hollywood premieres were lauded by critics, the rest of America was largely bemused. Many found it pretentious, while others felt it denigrated the classical masterworks. Most damaging of all, the vital European markets, which would have been the most prepared to embrace Disney’s heady masterwork, were closed by the escalation of World War II, making Fantasia a massive money pit and scuttling Walt’s plans for further exploration of the project as a new form.

A whole history could be written on the various iterations of Fantasia that existed through the decades, as RKO cut and re-cut it to appeal to a general audience, through its resurgence as an underground experience in the ‘60s, to its reappraisal as a true masterpiece after Walt Disney’s death. One change has thankfully stuck, as a couple of embarrassing racist caricatures disappeared from The Pastoral Symphony segment for good after 1969. For its 60th anniversary in 2000, Roy E. Disney paid homage to his uncle’s vision with Fantasia 2000 (a lovely experience on its own merits that could never match the towering achievement of its predecessor), and Fantasia was at last restored to something resembling the original roadshow presentation for DVD.

This DVD set was a turning point for me, personally, in my lifetime enthusiasm for film and animation. I had been enchanted by Fantasia as a child, but the restored DVD landed in my hands in high school, and its bottomless vault of behind-the-scenes material ignited my passion for learning what makes movies tick. I marveled at the layers of airbrushing that went into each one-twenty-fourth-of-a-second frame of the nature fairies, wondered at the inventiveness of its handmade special effects, delved into the hours of animator discourse. Later, Fantasia would be the release that single-handedly convinced me to buy a Blu-Ray player. The 75th Anniversary theatrical reissue blew me away anew. If you want an idea of how much I’ve studied this film, let me just tell you I didn’t have to do any new research to write this appreciation.

Masters of film, animation, music, and illustration all around the world have been citing Fantasia as an influence for generations. You can write a verbose essay on how it was made (I note nervously as I check my word count), but its power can never be expressed by talking about it. Fantasia is a towering monolith of technical achievement, bold ambition, and stunning innovation. It stands as a tribute to the emotional connections art can make through sound, color, and texture. Words, frankly, don’t enter into it, because Fantasia isn’t really something you talk about. Fantasia is something you experience. Fantasia is Fantasia.