‘Allegro Non Troppo’ or — Walt Who?

Bruno Bozzetto’s ‘Allegro Non Troppo’ (1976) wastes no time in declaring its true nature — it’s an unashamed knock-off/homage of ‘Fantasia’ (1940), something rammed home from the start when someone from California representing ‘Prisney’ or ‘Grisney’ calls up to complain that the upcoming movie — a combination of classical music and animation — has already been made. Still, this is Italy and if there’s one thing Italians know how to do better than anybody else it’s ripping everybody else off.

Being Italian also means working on a budget which is why, because they can’t afford a philharmonic orchestra, the master of ceremonies captures a load of little old ladies, gives them makeshift instruments and forces them to perform the music instead. They can also only afford one animator (played by the almost living human cartoon Maurizio Nichetti) who frantically draws his cartoons on stage next to the pensioners as they perform various classical pieces.

And it all starts off kinda fun with the first two animated sequences — one a tale about an ageing, sexually frustrated satyr obsessed with boobs set to Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the other a satirical sketch about conformity and leadership accompanied by a Dvořák Slavonic Dance — being cheeky little numbers but nothing terribly special, unique or distinct. Indeed, the live action sequences interspersed between carry more interest and energy.

Yet when we arrive at Ravel’s Bolero the film fully explodes into life, both figuratively and literally, with this episode depicting how the dregs of a soda bottle left by astronauts on an alien planet grows, multiplies and evolves with the music. It’s a pastiche of the Rite of Spring section from ‘Fantasia’ except here the “dinosaurs” travel through a parody of human history which allows Bozzetto’s imagination to really run wild as bizarre creatures morph, toppling and merge into one another whilst giant structures erupt from the landscape. It’s an astonishing piece of work and you can feel the entire movie dramatically jumping up a gear.

This invention keeps flowing with Sibelius’ Valse Triste used as the inspiration for the poignant story of an abandoned cat in a ruined house imagining how full of life and colour its home use to be. Indeed, it’s so heartbreakingly poignant that the conductor instructs the animator to lay off the sadness and provide us with something funny, which duly comes in the form of a prissy little bumblebee who has trouble dining at her favourite flowers because of an amorous couple constantly making love in the grass as Vivaldi’s Concerto in C Major blares out.

Stravinsky’s Firebird then depicts the story of the snake in the garden of Eden giving the apple to Adam and Eve only for the snake to eat the apple himself with the resulting “knowledge” plunging him into a nightmare premonition of 20th Century modernity to the point of insanity.

Meanwhile, the “real life” action has also been spiralling out of control to such a degree that one of the little old ladies… drags a gorilla off stage for passionate sex?!

When everything, inevitably, falls apart the film finds itself without a finale and in desperate need of one. The solution? Collect a shit load of finales from the finale storeroom and show them all at once. The result is overwhelming, ingenious and hysterical.

Yet ‘Allegro Non Troppo’s biggest strength is in how loose and, seemingly, chaotic it all appears, and I don’t mean that as a criticism because this is not a loose or chaotic piece of work in the slightest. Bozzetto’s brush style might not possess the tidy, clean lines (or the technical resources) of Disney but this compliments the anarchic comedy and provides a strong sense of off-kilter dynamism to everything, something complimented by the live action scenes that take their inspiration from slapstick comedy.

Apparently Disney Studios were so taken by Bozzetto’s film that they would show the Bolero sequence to their own animators and that’s understandable because whilst ‘Allegro Non Troppo’ is explicitly an irreverent, subversive piss-take of Disney’s film it’s also primarily something else, and that’s a love letter of adoration. It’s a crazy delight.