![\"allegro1.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/allegro1.jpg\")
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Having watched Disney\u2019s Fantasia<\/em><\/a> (1940) recently, I had to search out this as a palliative. There\u2019s a lot I like about the Disney film but the explanatory interludes for the Great Unwashed are tiresome, I\u2019ve always loathed Mickey Mouse\u2019s voice (although the Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice<\/em> sequence is fine), and, for a film that aspired to artistic seriousness, the Pastoral Symphony<\/em> episode has all the aesthetic gravitas of a packet of fizzy sweets.<\/p>\n Bruno Bozzetto\u2019s Allegro Non Troppo<\/em><\/a> (1976) was a feature-length animated riposte to Disney\u2019s pretensions. The concept is identical\u2014well-known pieces of classical music illustrated by animation\u2014but in place of inadvertent vulgarity there\u2019s a heavy helping of deliberately crude behaviour. Bozzetto replaces the coyness of the Pastoral Symphony<\/em> with the erotic melancholy of an ageing satyr set to Debussy\u2019s Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l’apr\u00e8s-midi d’un faune<\/em>. The laboured explanations of Fantasia<\/em> become a series of live-action slapstick moments supposedly featuring the animator, conductor, and members of the orchestra, all of which explain nothing at all.<\/p>\n The one thing everyone remembers from Allegro Non Troppo<\/em> is the Bolero<\/em> sequence in which Bozzetto satirises Fantasia<\/em>‘s evolutionary Rite of Spring<\/em>. A departing spacecraft leaves a Coke bottle on the surface of a planet. The dregs left in the bottle give birth to a slime creature which crawls away and evolves along with Ravel\u2019s music into a train of animals marching (and eating each other) across a treacherous landscape. The animation may lack Disney\u2019s technical finesse but it\u2019s a lot more memorable than his cartoon dinosaurs. Watch the whole sequence here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having watched Disney\u2019s Fantasia (1940) recently, I had to search out this as a palliative. There\u2019s a lot I like about the Disney film but the explanatory interludes for the Great Unwashed are tiresome, I\u2019ve always loathed Mickey Mouse\u2019s voice (although the Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice sequence is fine), and, for a film that aspired to artistic … Continue reading “Allegro Non Troppo”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,7,3],"tags":[897,4668,646,4667,898],"class_list":["post-13607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","category-film","category-music","tag-bruno-bozzetto","tag-claude-debussy","tag-maurice-ravel","tag-mickey-mouse","tag-walt-disney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3xt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"allegro2.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/allegro2.jpg\")
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