Left Field Cinema

Is Allegro non Troppo better than Fantasia? In my ninetieth year of youth yes, at a younger age maybe not, as a landmark in animation it’s lesser, as a sustained piece of humour and surrealism its even more a film for its disco year of 1976, standing now 30 years later as the first true, all ages animation feature, the most theatrical of all. The title means to play “not so fast”, the minor play of Fantasia’s relentless pace, also the out of animation scenes look at writer/director Bruno Bozzetto’s overriding love for Disney, this is his more self-contained work, is self-reflexive, with looks at his more political work and his famous character whom makes a cameo here in his second feature, Mr Rossi.

With inspiration and music cues from greats Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky has the epic, meta feel of comparative Federico Fellini’s top work 8 ½, on a second viewing it grows as much, one difference is Bozzetto’s part ‘anime-block’ meta-masterpiece is half 8 ½ length, more like Truffaut’s Day for Night we get a charismatic Bruno naturally playing himself out. Using iconic music the film must deliver mostly with imagery to see, to be iconic with that music, greater than other film, one he definitely achieves this with is Stravinsky’s The Firebird and maybe with Ravel’s Bolero.

The standard storylines the music runs with and then brings in to reality (through live-action, destruction, nudity) with many plays on Fantasia sequences like Adam & Eve, primitive life, dinosaurs, globalization, innocence in war and as I’ll get to, Frankenstein. The primitive/savage presentation is like a rainbow version of 1973’s Fantastic Planet, with the lemmings morale and over modernisation, mirroring possibly that the film is getting at with the whole live-action orchestral production that segments the animation, how Walt wants to get a whole of Bruno and his new animation, bring him to Hollywood similarity for this feature he is yet to have done (presuming the producer on the phone wants this Italian director for features or this feature being his first) this strikes me as possibly the first and only satire of Hollywood quick-draw of remakes whilst the original still staggers to general availability.

Like comic auteurs Woody Allen and Preston Sturges, Bruno has a great love for film and genre he likes to play with, a love greater than that of any self-righteous film critic that brings foreseeable pretension and incredulous re-appreciation to simple, Disney inspired animation feature. Many say Allegro Mon Troppo is not for kids, actually the humour and presentation is best suited to a twelve year old who likes classical music, and a PG-rating should be much applauded.

The title is more implying how fast to Disney pictures prior were so fast to optimistic conclusions and the use of the fast music to emphasise there hopeful outlook, if you look at Bozzetto’s prior work there also crash and grabs of western and superhero film, slight parodies, pity he never did a cold-war-conflict-animation to compliment Dr. Strangelove, who in 1958 he did offer his first short Topum! A History of Weapons. You don’t usually see great epilogues, Allgero non Troppo has one that brings in the mythological Frankenstein Monster to help finish his film by heading to the dingy basement to choose a final cartoon going for one to wrap up any of the stories Bozzetto adopts and ups them like so may do, in a global war of bloodshed of course in 1976 this escalates to nuclear warfare blowing up in ‘The End’.

Curtis U. Lemmon