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Fantasia is incredible. I also still think it's an underutilized art form to have the music drive the picture rather than the other way around (three-minute music videos aside). For instance, I've always thought that Mahler's 3rd symphony could make an epic fantasy film - actors, battles, special effects, and no spoken dialogue.
Interstella 5555, an hour-long anime movie made to accompany Daft Punk's excellent album, 'Discovery', fits the bill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hVFTUFSdIs

Kubrick does something like this, in parts of his films. Long scenes in Barry Lyndon and 2001 strike me as driven by, or interpretations of, the music. Of course there is a kind of "plot" going on, but these films can be seen as stealth abstract art.

Also, in Tarantino the music is often one of the major characters.

The weird thing about 2001 is that Kubrick actually commissioned an original score for the movie. The classical music was just intended to be used as a placeholder until the "real" music was ready.

After seeing how well it worked, Kubrick scrapped the original score and kept it.

Better explanation: the music drives the interpretation of the editing! The great director creates the raw material which can be assembled in such a way as to fit the music.
I also really like how Terrence Malick uses sound. Especially Badlands, where the sounds (and lack of it) perfectly conveys a sense of small town ness.
There are some great contemporary directors in the music video space that are doing amazing narrative work with the format. I'd definitely check out these pieces by Tom Haines (https://vimeo.com/72176166) and Abteen Bagheri (https://vimeo.com/129684032).
Isn't that basically an opera (or even musical theater)?
Those have words/lyrics. I'm thinking more like silent films except where the music isn't incidental. Symphonies can sometimes have singing, but the singing wouldn't be done by a character on-screen.

There was a scene in Peter Weir's "Fearless" starring Jeff Bridges where a key sequence was silent except for a recording of a Gorecki symphony... beyond that I'm kind of drawing a blank.

EDIT: Ballet would be a better example. Except without so much dancing. :-)

I know you're talking about specifically word-less music but there are some pretty cool examples where the lyrics are more abstract and animation is connected without being literal.

Here's one I love (by a locally-based musician so I'm probably biased): https://vimeo.com/123219861

Also check out The Music Scene by Blockhead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhheiPTdZCw
Oh wow, thanks. Sorry for the late reply but just saw your comment when looking at replies to mine.
At face value it seems similar, but story telling via music without using words (as in opera or musical theater) tends to result in something vastly different.
Depends, when most people don't understand the language the story can feel very abstract.
I sat here for a few minutes thinking I could come up with a bunch of examples and I can't. Ballet? I thought there was a Rite of Spring thing too.

The use of music in war is close. A drummer boy beating his drum, driving the shape and movement of a marching army.

not necessarily classical, but Koyaanisqatsi is similar to what you are describing.
An excellent film.

The cinematographer on Koyaanisqatsi (I forget his name) also directed two films called Baraka and more recently Samsara, which are in the same vein if you're into that kind of thing.

Godfrey Reggio also did Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, which are similar with different themes.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Tarkus"
"Industry pundits predicted that no one would sit still for a cartoon feature. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved otherwise and blazed the trail for the industry."

Nobody knew how to make serious money on short animations, animated features, or theme parks before Walt Disney. He did it all though.

He also wanted to try out the utopia thing[1], and it's maybe the 20th century's greatest missed opportunity.

If you haven't read Walt Disney's World[2], it's my favorite biography on the great man.

[1]https://youtu.be/sLCHg9mUBag [2]http://amzn.to/1lnptm0

Not sure I want to live in Walt Disney's utopia. He was great at his business, the original Jobsian, but dialed it up a bit too far.

www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1623/was-walt-disney-a-fascist

I recently went to the Walt Disney Family Museum in SF for the special exhibit "Disney and Dali" (still there until 1/3/16). It's an interesting look at their mutual admiration and brief professional collaboration.

The regular museum is also well worth a few hours of time, even if you don't consider yourself a huge Disney fan. Walt was an incredible innovator and risk-taker and I found it very inspiring.

Disney and Dalí's unmade Destino short film was eventually recreated digitally by John Hench, the Disney artist who worked with Dalí back in the 1940s. It is on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GFkN4deuZU

Also, a link to the exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum:

http://www.waltdisney.org/dali

The movie was also responsible for a variant (HP 200B) of the very first Hewlett Packard product, the HP 200A audio frequency oscillator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP200A

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/The-Next-Bench-Blog/TFTNB-Disne...

I tried to watch Fantasia as a child a few times, but was never able to make it all the way through. It remains sort of a misunderstood anomaly on the shelf of early Disney movies.

Haven't given it an honest try in a few years. Perhaps some 'adult substances' would help. I still enjoy most of the others.

I usually skip the Rite of Spring, but love every other piece. Probably because I was trying to watch the visuals too hard instead of listening.

But the important thing to remember about Fantasia is that it's not a coherent story, it's a set of shorts.

You can watch subsets, skip some, or really do what you want. Just watch Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, or the Dance of the Hours, or whatever you want. And give Fantasia 2000 a shot. Not as good, but still fun. Firebird was great.

adult substances make most disney movies better. especially the live-action movies.
I've just realised that the dinosaur scene from Terrance Malick's Tree of Life is a hat tip/rip-off of the weird dinosaur battle set to Stravinsky's Rites of Spring in Fantasia.
"People who insist on pigeonholing him as a purveyor of bland family entertainment ..."

Seriously, who has ever said that?

Go back and look at what Disney was putting out when the Baby Boomers were coming of age. The '60s and '70s -- the Dean Jones (http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Dean_Jones) era. It's all stuff like That Darn Cat! and Son of Flubber and The Shaggy D.A., which is to say it's about as square as square can be. In an era when the boundaries of popular culture were being very aggressively stretched, Disney deliberately positioned itself as a producer of safe, conservative entertainment.
Even if you're a staunch ally of safe, conservative family entertainment for its own sake, Disney was pretty damn crappy for a while. Look at their animated stuff in particular for plenty of mediocre storylines and bland animation (e.g. The Aristocats, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood). Children deserved better!

Eventually some meaningful competition from the likes of Don Bluth started to push them in the right direction (Secret of NIMH, Land before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, etc.) and not too long afterward they were doing things like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. Quite an improvement, though I dare say the storylines have never quite caught up. (Of course, all of Bluth's stuff would later be undermined as it was sequel-ized to Hell and back, like The Land Before Time XXIV: Teach Your Kids Roman Numerals Edition...)

Right now, though, after seeing Pixar's homages to Ghibli, I'm anticipating the impact of recent works like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which really pushed some boundaries in Japan. (If you're not familiar with it, I'll just say... imagine if Pan's Labyrinth had been actively marketed to little children as a happy family film and an homage to Alice in Wonderland... and then translate that willful deception and the profound darkness onto Sailor Moon.) If it does make a splash in the youth entertainment industry at large, that will be quite interesting indeed.

I think it depends more on the intended target audience. The films you have issue with feel like they fit in well with the attention span, vibrant colors and little funny scenes for children in the 6 to 9 year old range to enjoy. I consider anything beyond that something added in to keep the parents awake and the animators sane (or functionally insane as the case might be).

The second list of films you mention have emotionally moving plots and I'd consider them a good fit for the next demographic bump, roughly 9-13. I think I might have cried to a film for the first time watching ADgtH as a kid.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is definitely mature. It has intense situations, highly emotional plot, and story elements that younger humans would be less equipped to relate to. I still highly recommend watching at least the first 3 episodes. If you're still on the fence watch another 3 episodes. The third movie is new content... I couldn't resist it, but the series/first two movies are a complete story without it.

Hey, don't knock Robin Hood. Watch the archery contest in reverse to see King John stuff the snake into his nether-parts.
I'll say it. It characterizes the Michael Eisner regime pretty well in my recollection.
I was born in the 80s, and pretty much that's all Disney has ever represented to me, outside of the black and white Walt Disney surrealist work.
The most striking for me is how they are going back and editing out "controversial" scenes from older stuff.

For example there is one where Donald is up against the aracuan bird, where he eventually is fed up and pulls a Maxim gun out of nowhere.

The bird survives unharmed, classic cartoon style, and Donald snaps, starts behaving like said bird, and wanders off as things fade to black.

Good luck finding that scene today. Now it just jumps from the bird sitting in a lawn chair to Donald wandering off.

Interesting. I knew that some of the older, more racist, stuff was being quietly not shown anymore. Wasn't aware they'd be chopping at the strips themselves. Of course, I haven't watched the pablum in years myself. :-}
I think the reason why it is being chopped is that is usually a part of the Christmas special.