Allegro non troppo

A producer thinks he has found a great idea: he will have animation drawn to pieces of classical music. Nobody dares tell him it has been done before. An animator is brought up from the basement, an orchestra is assembled and the musicians are old women. Inside this frame the film shows six sections. Each is drawn to a classical piece: a faun wakes, a cat wanders a ruined house, all living things evolve out of a bottle of cola. The frame sections are in black and white with live actors. Bruno Bozzetto directs. Maurizio Nichetti and Maurizio Micheli are in the cast. It is an Italian production. The film is a direct answer to Disney's Fantasia and satirises it openly; the frame carries that joke. The section drawn to the Bolero is its most cited piece; evolution starting from the liquid at the bottom of a cola bottle proceeds in one unbroken movement. The cat section is built on a piece by Sibelius and is the film's saddest passage. The animation is hand drawn and the style changes from section to section. The matter it works at is the direction of progress; several sections are openly bleak and this is not a children's film. Its limit is balance; the humour of the frame does not reach the strength of the animated sections. Who it is for: viewers who like the history of animation and experimental work grounded in music. Who it is not for: the sections are uneven, the frame weak, and some parts are not suitable for children.