As a lifelong fan of Fantasia (1940), I was intrigued to learn today that the climactic ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ sequence in that film did not mark the first time that Modest Mussorgsky‘s rousing bit of music had been adapted by animators. There is at least one earlier version, produced in 1933 by Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker and released under the title Une nuit sur le mont chauve:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7fGbZgth2s
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. (Hat tip to Paul Clark at The Screengrab, who also has some interesting information on how this cartoon and others like it were made.)
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