Was 'Night on Bald Mountain' appropriate for young children? - Fantasia (1941) Discussion

[–] DashTheGreat 13 years ago

Yes, definitely. In fact, I used to watch this movie nonstop when I was 5 years old. It made me love music today.

Why do you ask?

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[–] reeder789456-879-107283 13 years ago

It was my favorite segment!
Although i swear im not making this up. When I was 4 my grandma let me watch A Nightmare On Elm Street.
So I've grown up liking dark horrific things lol.

Seven lights vs. 13 Darkness's.
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[–] SteveM-1 12 years ago

Fantasia is not a Kids' movie. Never was.

Fantasia was created for ALL audience members, Adult and Child alike. Too many people assume that just because a film is animated that it's made for kids. Not true at all, especially during the 30's through the 50's. In fact, the Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons were made for adults. Ask those filmmakers like Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and others and they all said that they didn't make those films with kids in mind.

Disney wanted to make Family films. He wanted films that anybody of any age could see. Yes, a lot of his Animated Feature films were based on Fairy Tales, but they had adult elements in them too. Think of characters getting killed in Snow White and Bambi. Also the disturbing slave metaphors in Pinocchio. Was Dumbo aimed at the kids when his mother was violently subduded or when he and Timothy got drunk and started hallucinating? Yes, kids liked the fantasy characters, but the adults understood the rest.

Same with Fantasia. The Classical Music certainly wasn't geared especially towards children. When Deems Taylor was narrating, he was speaking to the adults, not the kids. There were whimsical parts for the kids, but the adults could appreciate the sharp contrast of Night on Bald Mountain with its excess and debauchery followed by the tranquil dawn of Ave Maria.

So was that Night on Bald Mountain segment appropriate solely for children? Probably not. Not, that is, unless their parents were there for them. So is it appropriate for a Family Film? Yes, it is.

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[–] mplo (2372) 5 years ago

"Night on Bald Mountain" was and is my favorite segment in the entire original 1940 movie "Fantasia".

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[–] Blackjack254 12 years ago

I specifically remember never being scared by the Bald Mountain sequence (even seeing it at age 8), and then finding the Ave Maria to be boring and churchy. I would think THAT would be the least kid-friendly one.

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[–] nabo7 12 years ago

I also saw it for the first time at age 8 and was not frightened by that part. My brother, age 6 at the time, watched Chernabog dropping the little evil spirits into the inferno and asked, "Aren't they his friends?" My dad replied, "Nobody is a friend of the Devil."

I would say yes, it was appropriate for a family including little kids. Mom and Dad were there to explain things and be comforting if we had been scared.

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[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Javert-6 10 years ago

This is not a kids movie, so it doesn't matter

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[–] ashleydowney-66480 10 years ago

Night on Bald Mountain used to scare me when I was little . I used to have this movie and I would rewind the movie when it got to this segment. I remember watching this segment all the way through. I ended up having nightmares for a few weeks.

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[–] friendoffilm 9 years ago

I first saw Night on Bald Mountain on the Disney TV Channel, as a kid who was just entering the fourth grade, was not at all scared of it, and, in fact, enjoyed it a great deal. My younger sister, who was entering second grade at the time, on the other hand, was rather scared of it, and didn't want to watch it.

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[–] PreachCaleb 9 years ago

Yes. It's ok if children are told and watch scary stories.

Let's be bad guys.

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[–] joe_538 8 years ago

I was in the first grade when this movie "came back," and covered my face during that scene.

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