An Optical Poem

The tagline for Disney's 'Fantasia (1940)' read: "Hear the pictures! See the music!" This is, in effect, what Oskar Fischinger was doing with his animation – communicating music to the deaf, giving visual life to music using colours and geometric patterns. His approach, though later imitated by Walt Disney, was largely appreciated outside the mainstream. However, 'Allegretto (1936)' and 'An Optical Poem (1937)' were both commissioned by big studios – Paramount and MGM, respectively {however, the former film was inconceivably stifled into a black-and-white release}. It was a little novel, I'll admit, to see such an abstract cartoon presented under the MGM banner, and, indeed, it seems that the studio was understandably cautious; they bizarrely introduce 'An Optical Poem' as a "scientific" experiment.

Fischinger's film uses patterns of oscillating circles, paper cutouts dangling from invisible wires, synchronised to Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2." The animation itself resembles a journey through outer space. The orbiting circles are akin to moons orbiting planets, planets orbiting the sun, and there's an unmistakable image of a comet hurtling across the night sky. The overall effect of the space-themed visuals and accompanying classical musical is not all that dissimilar to Kubrick's use of the "Blue Danube" waltz during '2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).' Fischinger seems to be suggesting that to fully articulate such magnificent music is beyond the grasp of our earthly minds – to do so, we must utilise objects far beyond our mortal scope. Most incredibly of all, Fischinger reconstructed these great objects using little more than coloured paper and wire.

Just about anyone who's ever made a music video — especially an abstract one — owes a debt of gratitude to Oskar Fischinger. This short film is a charming rendition of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody set to a dazzling series of colored dots, lines, flashes and vivid visual effects that often look like a Piet Mondrian painting come to life. Paul Marquardt's often cheeky orchestration — far different from the one usually heard — adds a quite inventive series of tonal effects to the film that only underscores the rambunctious appeal of Fischinger's animation. I remember seeing films like this from the 1960's and not realizing anyone had done anything this imaginative with the same format thirty years earlier — and I can't for the life of me imagine what unsuspecting moviegoers who caught this in 1937 on a program headlined by an MGM feature of the period made of it!

Abstract images float across the field in time to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

Oskar Fischinger had been producing this sort of abstract animation since 1924 in Germany as an outgrowth of the Dadaist movement. He was not the only film maker to at least dabble in this sort of work. Over in England, Len Lye started doing the same thing with the introduction of sound to films, and later, Norman McLaren would make several of his early shorts doing much the same. In fact, a couple of years after this came out, part of FANTASIA would do the same. It was a natural outgrowth of abstract art and program music, in which the music was meant to evoke emotions or scenes or even stories. They didn't call them etudes for no reason, but because they evoked enquiring thoughts. Only with abstract animation like this, the audience was called upon to go its own way, and perhaps afterwards discuss what it was all about.

Pretty colors, though. It reminds me of the days I was part of the light show crew at the Fillmore East.

It's an MGM animated short with Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt playing. It's Technicolor. It's all bright colors and geometric shapes. It's a little experimental. It's interesting. Sometimes, the movement is pretty good, but other times, I want it to switch with the music tempo a lot more. One of the most compelling aspect of this piece of music is its many changes of tempo. The visuals need to match that better. This type of animated experiments have a long Hollywood history. Producer Oskar Fischinger would go on to do a sequence in Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940) which obviously drew inspiration from this.

This is from a collection of art films entitled "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941". Unlike most of the other films in this set, this one is from a major studio--MGM. Somehow Oskar Fischinger was able to convince the MGM folks to sponsor this art film that consists of hundreds of paper cut-outs that are hung from invisible wires and which are shot, one frame at a time---all in synchronization with music from Franz Liszt. It's all in color and it's amazing that such a non-commercial sort of project was funded by this or any studio.

While it's not at all fun, it is an amazing film to watch. Not only is it wonderfully synchronized, but works so very well. It's all very hypnotic and amazing--even when you see it today. It must have taken forever practically to make this--and perhaps this is why this is Fischinger's only film. Strange but well worth seeing.