“I remember specific impressions,” he says. “I think as a five-year-old, Pastoral Symphony, Dance of the Hours, the Night on Bald Mountain — the things that had kind of a narrative to the animation really struck me. Rite of Spring, of course, dinosaurs. I remember those things very clearly.”
Flush with cash from 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Walt Disney wanted to make a feature-length version of his popular Silly Symphonies shorts, this one centered around Paul Dukas’ 1897 symphonic poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and starring Disney’s marquee character at the time, the one and only Mickey Mouse.
“I think at the heart of it, music has the ability to tell stories and I think that’s why the movies have held up so well, because those stories can relate to so many people,” says Parker. “Not only hearing the music but seeing a story played out that fits along with that music in such a profound way is a pretty unique experience no matter what age you are. I think that’s why they’ve held up so well over time.
“We were happy to do that, because we want everybody to be aware that we see that those things are in the film, and we feel like there’s always that kind of tension between the artistic merit of something and [its] historical context,” Mangum says. “We do really hope that it will spark those conversations about ‘Well, what was that?’ or ‘Why was that in that movie?’”