September 7, 2003
The Lost Cartoon by Disney and Dalí, Fellow Surrealists
By JOHN CANEMAKER
IN 1937, Salvador Dalí wrote to his fellow Surrealist André Breton about
his trip to California: "I have come to Hollywood and am in contact with
the three great American surrealists — the Marx Brothers, Cecil B.
DeMille and Walt Disney."
That might have been the end of it, if not for a party at the home of
the producer Jack Warner, in 1945. There, Disney and Dalí ran into each
other again, and, the next year, embarked on one of the 20th century's
least likely artistic collaborations: the creator of Mickey Mouse and
the painter of melting clocks joined forces to create an animated short
titled "Destino" ("Destiny").
Dalí told the press it would be "a magical exposition of the problem of
life in the labyrinth of time." Nervously, Disney translated, calling it
"just a simple story of a girl in search of her real love." For eight
months, they worked on it, until Disney, citing postwar financial
problems, abandoned the project.
In the 57 years since, the unfinished short has acquired the reputation
of a lost masterpiece. "Destino" is as legendary in animation circles as
the phantom footage from "The Magnificent Ambersons" is among movie
buffs. But "Destino" is lost no longer. Next month at the New York Film
Festival, this six-and-a-half-minute legend will finally have its
American premiere.
It has been reconstructed from Dalí's paintings and drawings by a new
generation of filmmakers who were guided by Disney's nephew, Roy E.
Disney, the vice chairman of the Walt Disney Company, and by Dalí's
assistant on the original project, John Hench, who is now 95. It's a far
cry from "Snow White." Dalí's signature incongruities dominate the film;
there are crawling ants, colossal statues, shadowy vistas, a baseball
ballet and, of course, melting clocks. Still, Mr. Hench recalled in an
interview, "Walt approved the general terms, thinking rightly that
whatever Dalí would produce would be an interesting set of images."
In 1945, Dalí was in Hollywood designing sets for the dream sequence in
Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound," painting portraits for the likes of Mr.
and Mrs. Jack Warner and searching for ways to inject the "infekzious
poizun" of Surrealism into mass-market America. Like his Surrealist
colleagues, he recognized that America's animated cartoonists were
unwittingly applying Surrealist principles in their films. Spontaneous
subconscious association, anti-logical juxtaposition of imagery,
unconnected gags and dream logic abound in the work of Max and Dave
Fleischer, Tex Avery and also Disney: his "Pink Elephants on Parade"
sequence in "Dumbo" (1941) is one of American Surrealism's most sublime
moments.
At the same time, Disney was struggling. Because of the war, his
ambitious and hugely expensive features — "Fantasia" and "Pinocchio" in
1940 and "Bambi" in 1942 — had not earned any European revenue. His
studio had survived the war years primarily by making training and
propaganda films, which by 1946 were no longer needed. Deeply in debt,
the company was cobbling together "package" films: compilations of
shorts in feature-length format, like "Make Mine Music" (1946).
If Dalí and Disney saw great artistic possibilities in a joint project,
they were also well aware of the publicity potential. "They were both
relentless self-promoters," Roy Disney said in a recent interview.
"Certainly, that was not all there was, but there must have been a
chord."
They were also single-minded workaholics, attracted to animation
because, as Mr. Hench told me in 1994, the medium offered "consistency"
and "control" and the ability to "make your statement pure, not full of
ambiguities."
At first, Disney embraced the project. He was willing to take a
significant artistic and financial risk in order to expand the
possibilities of the animated film, something today's producers of safe,
formulaic, child-friendly animated features would never consider.
"We have to keep breaking new trails," he said. "Ordinarily, good story
ideas don't come easily and have to be fought for. Dalí is
communicative. He bubbles with new ideas."
>From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, for weeks, Dalí feverishly turned out
picture ideas and Mr. Hench drew continuity sketches. "His mind was
going furiously," Mr. Hench said. "So many things came up, and so many
things evolved."
Stories about the relationship between Dalí and Disney sprinkle film
history books. There has even been a play about it, "Lobster Alice" by
Kira Obolensky. For eventually the differences between this odd couple
began to overwhelm their similarities. "The picture was not becoming
quite what either of them hoped when they started," wrote the animators
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in "Disney Animation: The Illusion of
Life." A studio cynic suggested that Disney and Dalí had gotten along
well "because they couldn't understand each other." Another artist
recalled that the baseball section, which to Dalí represented "the
regard of the universe," literally threw Disney a curve. "Jesus Christ,"
he exclaimed after watching it, "$70,000 down the drain!"
When the production was halted, the official reason was that Disney's
distributor, RKO, felt the market for package films had been exhausted.
But two years later RKO released "Melody Time" (1948), another Disney
package film.
Still, economic worries undoubtedly contributed to Disney's caution, Roy
Disney said: "In those postwar years, `Destino' was not what you
expected from Disney." (Of course, it isn't what we expect from Disney
now, either.) "Walt wanted to be an artist," Mr. Disney continued. "But
he got knocked down by `Fantasia,' and the war was brutal. He had to go
and make money."
There were surely ego worries, too. After all, Disney was the man who,
when Orson Welles came to pitch "The Little Prince" to his animators,
told Welles's representative, "There is not room on this lot for two
geniuses." Disney always wanted to maintain total control over his films
and to reshape original material to his liking.
The elegant 2003 version of "Destino," which had its premiere at the
Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, shows that
Dalí's vision could not be compromised or easily changed. Directed by
Dominique Monfery, this remake closely follows Dalí's original
storyboards, a symbolic exploration of the joy and pain of adult amorous
relationships with constantly metamorphosing images that have the
elusive quality of a sensual dream.
Using traditional hand-drawn animation with limited integration of
computer-generated imagery, "Destino" feels like an experimental film
with big-studio production values. The least Disneyesque film in the
Disney canon, it demonstrates the unlimited and (unfortunately) still
untapped potential of the art of animation.
"Destino" is also a tribute to Walt Disney's daring, a film that
contradicts assumptions about his aesthetic sensibilities. In fact,
Disney, who favored the realistic paintings of Norman Rockwell and
Thomas Hart Benton, also bought Dalí's work and displayed it prominently
at his house in Palm Springs, Calif.
"I believe Walt always regretted not making `Destino,' because it was a
valuable document," Mr. Hench said. "We should have done it."
After Disney dropped the project, Mr. Hench, who is now a Disney
executive, tried to save it by animating a 15-second sample to show him.
This tantalizing bit of film — two grotesque heads atop tortoise shells
converging to form a ballerina with a baseball head — was salvaged by
Roy Disney for "Fantasia/2000." But in discussions with the company's
lawyers, Mr. Disney made an interesting discovery: Dalí's contract
stipulated that his original artwork — 22 oil paintings and scores of
drawings — would not become Disney property until after the movie was
made.
"They told me that we possess it, but don't own it," Mr. Disney said. So
while the completion of "Destino" was partly motivated by Mr. Disney's
wish to honor the history of the studio — "Our roots are in art," he
said — there's also the fact that vintage Dalí art is potentially worth
millions.
So if money was indeed the reason Walt Disney abandoned "Destino" in
1946, money could be the reason Roy Disney has finished it. And nearly
60 years after that fateful party at Jack Warner's house, and 37 years
after his death, Walt Disney continues to prove himself an innovator.
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