rawlinson
Posts: 40151
Joined: 13/6/2008
From: Timbuktu. Chinese or Fictional.
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6.
Allegro non troppo
(1976; Bruno Bozzetto)
Cast: Néstor Garay, Maurizio Micheli, Maurizio Nichetti
Country: Italy
Created as both parody of and response to Disney's Fantasia, this Italian animated feature also uses classical music as inspiration for animated segments. Bookending the film, and introducing each new segment, are live-action sequences showing the animator, conductor, orchestra and film-maker working on the production of the film. Truth be told, these don't really work. They're overlong, interrupt the flow of the piece and are far too slapsticky when most viewers will just be waiting for the next short film. Thankfully the animated segments are astonishing, and enough to make Allegro non troppo into a masterpiece of animated cinema.
We start with Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune. In the accompanying animation, we find ourselves in a forest filled with satyrs and nymphs. An aging and lonely satyr, no longer desired by the nymphs, finds himself surrounded by female bodies. Not just in the naked forms around him, but in candlesticks, bushes and the branches of trees. He decides to try and look younger to find a mate, but every effort is doomed to failure. The segment is bawdy, but it has much to say about loneliness and aging.
For Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46, we follow a cave man who just wants to break away from the pack. He builds a little house of his own, away from the caves, and he's soon followed and imitated by every other caveman. Every new innovation by this resourceful little caveman is matched by his peers, until he finds himself pushed to desperate measures.
In the film's most ambitious piece, Ravel's Bolero, is used to trace the evolution of man. Starting with the sludge in the bottom of a discarded bottle of Coca-Cola, we follow the various stages of evolution, until we reach a terrifying vision of man's influence on the planet. The image of the bottle has probably become the most famous from the film, thanks to its use on the film's poster.
For Sibelius's Valse triste, we follow a stray cat wandering a ruined house. The cat dreams or remembers the building in its glory days, where people and furniture once stood. The image of the scrawny cat swiping at an imagined birdcage, frightened by the memory of a dog or trying to nuzzle into chairs long destroyed is just heartbreaking. If you're not in tears by the end of it you have neither heart nor soul.
In Vivaldi's Concerto in C major, a bee finds her lunch interrupted by a frisky couple. It's a slight, but light-hearted, piece, and the film needs it after the Valse triste segment.
For Stravinsky's Firebird, a lump of clay is moulded and then goes on to mould the Adam and Eve of the Bible. When Satan is unable to convince them to eat the apple, he takes a bite himself, and suffers an anti-consumerist's nightmare. The snake eventually scares away everyone in the live-action sequence, but there's still time for a finale involving a hunchback and a miniature playhouse.
It's not as savage an attack on Disney as you might expect, the most blatant jab is a phone call during one of the live action sequences where someone called Prisney claims the idea is stolen. Bozzetto doesn't need to attack Fantasia to make his point though. As visually stunning as Fantasia is, it doesn't have the heart or the depth of this film, and there's nothing in the entire Disney canon quite as beautiful as Valse triste. It's easy to dismiss it as headtrip cinema, but it's far more than that, it's one of the great animated films, now more people just need to see it.
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
I would plough my way through MonsterCat 
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
I desire MonsterCat to go down on me.
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