Editing Fantasia (1940 film) (section)

==== Early reviews ====
[[File:Cathay Circle Theater.jpg|thumb|right|The film opened at the [[Carthay Circle Theatre]] on January 30, 1941.]]
''Fantasia'' garnered significant critical acclaim at the time of release and was seen by some critics as a masterpiece.<ref name="LAT1941">{{cite news|url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2011/01/fantasia-acclaimed-as-film-masterpiece.html|title='Fantasia' Acclaimed as Film Masterpiece|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|date=January 30, 1941|access-date=February 28, 2014}}</ref> The West Coast premiere at the [[Carthay Circle Theatre]] was a grand affair, attracting some 5000 people, including [[Shirley Temple]], [[Cecil B. DeMille]], [[Forrest Tucker]], [[James Cagney]], [[Robert Montgomery (actor)|Robert Montgomery]], James Murphy, [[Edgar Bergen]], and many other notables in the film industry.<ref name="LAT1941"/> Among those at the film's premiere was film critic Edwin Schallert of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' who considered the film to be a magnificent achievement in film which would go down in cinematic history as a landmark film, noting the rapturous applause the film received by the audience during the various interludes. He stated that ''Fantasia'' was "caviar to the general, ambrosia and nectar for the intelligentsia" and considered the film to be "courageous beyond belief".<ref name="LAT1941"/> [[Isabel Morse Jones]], the newspaper's music critic, had high praise for the soundtrack to the film, describing it as a "dream of a symphony concert", and an "enormously varied concert of pictorial ideas, of abstract music by acknowledged composers, of performers Leopold Stokowski and orchestra players of Hollywood and Philadelphia, and, for the vast majority, new and wonderful sound effects".<ref name="LAT1941"/> [[Bosley Crowther]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'', also at the premiere, noted that "motion-picture history was made last night&nbsp;... ''Fantasia'' dumps conventional formulas overboard and reveals the scope of films for imaginative excursion&nbsp;... ''Fantasia''&nbsp;... is simply terrific."{{sfn|Culhane|1983|pp=30–31}} Peyton Boswell, an editor at ''Art Digest'', called it "an aesthetic experience never to be forgotten".{{sfn|Goldmark|Taylor|2002|p=87}} ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine described the premiere as "stranger and more wonderful than any of Hollywood's" and the experience of Fantasound "as if the hearer were in the midst of the music. As the music sweeps to a climax, it froths over the proscenium arch, boils into the rear of the theatre, all but prances up and down the aisles."<ref name=time1940 /> ''[[Dance Magazine]]'' devoted its lead story to the film, saying that "the most extraordinary thing about ''Fantasia'' is, to a dancer or balletomane, not the miraculous musical recording, the range of color, or the fountainous integrity of the Disney collaborators, but quite simply the perfection of its dancing".{{sfn|Culhane|1983|pp=30–31}} ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'' also hailed ''Fantasia'', calling it "a successful experiment to lift the relationship from the plane of popular, mass entertainment to the higher strata of appeal to lovers of classical music".<ref name=varity1940>{{Cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/details/variety140-1940-11/page/n71/mode/2up|title=Film Reviews: ''Fantasia''|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|page=16|date=November 13, 1940|first=John|last=C. Flinn Sr.|access-date=December 13, 2021|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> The ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' assigned three writers to cover the film's Chicago premiere: society columnist Harriet Pribble; film critic Mae Tinee; and music critic Edward Barry. Pribble left amazed at the "brilliantly-attired audience", while Tinee felt the film was "beautiful&nbsp;... but it is also bewildering. It is stupendous. It is colossal. It is an overwhelmingly ambitious orgy of color, sound, and imagination." Barry was pleased with the "program of good music well performed&nbsp;... and beautifully recorded" and felt "pleasantly distracted" from the music to what was shown on the screen.<ref name="tribune85"/> In a breakdown of reviews from both film and music critics, Disney author Paul Anderson found 33% to be "very positive", 22% both "positive" and "positive and negative", and 11% negative.{{sfn|Gabler|2006|p=342}}

Those who adopted a more negative view at the time of the film's release came mostly from the classical music community. Many found fault with Stokowski's rearrangements and abridgements of the music. [[Igor Stravinsky]], the only living composer whose music was featured in the film, expressed displeasure at how in Stokowski's arrangement of ''The Rite of Spring'', "the order of the pieces had been shuffled, and the most difficult of them eliminated", and criticized the orchestra's performance, observing that the simplification of the score "did not save the musical performance, which was execrable".<ref>{{cite web|last1=Anderson|first1=Don|title=The Rite of Spring programme notes|url=http://www.tso.ca/en-ca/Discover-the-music/Programme-Notes/The-Rite-of-Spring.aspx?ID=2673&pID=2522&YearMonth=2015,06|publisher=Toronto Symphony Orchestra|access-date=May 10, 2015}}{{Dead link|date=July 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref name=Barron /> Other composers and music critics leveled criticism at the premise of the film itself, arguing that presenting classical music with visual images would rob the musical pieces of their integrity. Composer and music critic [[Virgil Thomson]] praised Fantasound which he thought offered "good transmission of music", but disliked the "musical taste" of Stokowski, with exception to ''The Sorcerer's Apprentice'' and ''The Rite of Spring''.{{sfn|Culhane|1983|pp=30–31}} [[Olin Downes]] of ''The New York Times'' too hailed the quality of sound that Fantasound presented, but said, "much of ''Fantasia'' distracted from or directly injured the scores".{{sfn|Culhane|1983|pp=30–31}} Film critic [[Pauline Kael]] dismissed parts of ''Fantasia'' as "grotesquely [[kitsch]]y".{{sfn|Ward|2010|p=52}} Some parents resisted paying the higher roadshow prices for their children, and several complained that the ''Night on Bald Mountain'' segment had frightened them.{{sfn|Thomas|1994|p=162}} There were also a few negative reactions that were more political in nature, especially since the film's release happened at a time when [[Nazi Germany]] [[German-occupied Europe|reigned supreme in Europe]]. One review of the film in this manner, written by [[Dorothy Thompson]] for ''The New York Herald Tribune'' on November 25, 1940, was especially harsh. Thompson claimed that she "left the theater in a condition bordering on nervous breakdown", because the film was a "remarkable nightmare". Thompson went on to compare the film to rampant Nazism, which she described as "the abuse of power" and "the perverted betrayal of the best instincts". Thompson also claimed that the film depicted nature as being "titanic" while man was only "a moving lichen on the stone of time". She concluded that the film was "cruel", "brutal and brutalizing", and a negative "caricature of the Decline of the West". In fact, Thompson claimed that she was so distraught by the film that she even walked out of it before she saw the two last segments, ''Night on Bald Mountain'' and ''Ave Maria'', because she did not want to be subject to any more of the film's "brutalization".<ref>{{Cite news|title=Minority Report|first=Dorothy|last=Thompson|author-link=Dorothy Thompson|date=November 25, 1940|newspaper=[[New York Herald Tribune]]}}</ref>