Surviving Disney

The story of Oskar Fischinger and 'Fantasia.'

A still from Fantasia’s Toccata and Fugue sequence

Welcome! Today’s issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter is about a contentious moment in history — the year Oskar Fischinger worked on Fantasia (1940).

Fischinger was an animator from Germany, and an absolute modernist. He’d gotten known for abstract films in which shape, color and movement sync to music. At its best, this work has a visceral impact. It’s thrilling, even overpowering.

Walt Disney hired Fischinger in the late ‘30s and put him on Fantasia’s opening sequence, set to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. It’s semi-abstract animation that goes against the usual Disney style and hews closer to Fischinger’s personal work.

But Fischinger himself came out of the project disillusioned, quit the studio before Fantasia was done and had his name omitted from the credits. Later, he argued that “no true work of art can be made with that procedure used in the Disney studio.”¹

What was behind this clash of styles and personalities? How did someone like Fischinger end up on a Disney film — and how much influence did he really have on Fantasia? That’s what we’re exploring today. Here we go!