fast but not rocking RUMOURS

Rip It Up, Issue 17, 1 November 1978, Page 6

fast but not rocking RUMOURS

Peter Thomson

The film Allegro Non Troppo— Italian for "fast but not rocking’— presents cartoon interpretations of six well-known musical pieces in a parody of Walt Disney's Fantasia. The orchestral score includes Vivaldi, Dvorak, Ravel, Debussy, Sibelius and Stravinsky.

Director/animator Bruno Bozzetto has made a very funny movie which goes beyond Disney’s middle-American wholesomeness into more bizarre and often bawdy areas of the imagination. Moreover Bozzetto is not content with mere visual interpretation but uses his work to pass wry comments on human folly. Debussy's faun has a frustrating afternoon because the nymphs think he’s past it. Ravel’s over-performed “Bolero" seems refreshed as it propels a demonstration that life evolved from dregs in an abandoned Coke bottle. (Disney'd dinosaurs were always realistic; Bozzetto's spring from his own fertile mind.) Sometimes the animation incorporates con-

ventional photography, whether delicately as in the wistful Sibelius or for vigorous impact in the Stravinsky. Linking the musical sections is a nonanimated story involving an orchestra of old women, their bombastic conductor, a master of ceremonies and a meek cartoonist. While the jokes in this framework occasionally become heavy-handed, the animated humour is something else again. The finale alone suggests a meeting between Playboy's Gahan Wilson and the National Lampoon. Ultimately the film is a celebration of the animator’s art which, as suggested by the fate of the cartoonist and his girl, has a power akin to magic. Purists may complain that Bozzetto’s work lacks Disney’s detailed splendour but it also avoids his smugness. There’s nothing remotely Mickey Mouse here. Allegro Non Troppo is a stone delight.