Dalí y Disney

Such an odd paring, isn't it? ~ Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney.


I remember hearing, long ago, that Dalí worked at the Disney studios on an animated film, but silly me always assumed it was 'Cinderella' or 'Sleeping Beauty' ... you know, one of Disney Studios' released movies.


It was not.


The short film, Destino, was begun in 1946 at the Disney studios as a collaboration between the two men (along with unsung Disney animators) but the project remained unfinished until Walt's nephew, Roy E. Disney, undertook to finish the project in 2003.


Not quite seven minutes in total length, the short film is energetic, flowing, and ... odd. I'd've expected nothing less from Dalí. I'm totally surprised with Uncle Walt.  

From Wired.com ~

"Though Dalí's admiration for Walt Disney might seem strange today -- for some the name Disney now evokes the opposite of subversive -- the outrageous surrealist painter held the animator and studio chief in high-enough esteem to want to make a movie with him.

"'I have come to Hollywood and am in touch with the three great American surrealists -- the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney,' the artist wrote to his friend Andre Breton in 1937.

"The remnants of the aborted film include 150 storyboards, drawings and paintings, which have sat for the last half-century in the Disney vaults. Those works were the basis of the new Destino, which combines some of Dalí's iconic images -- the melting clock, the tower of babble, a nightmarish beach, a pyramid with a clock embedded in its base -- and adds motion. Images morph into one another, everything unfolding with a haunting, dreamlike serenity."

I have happened across the finished short film, Destino and post it here now for you to enjoy.

It's beautiful. And odd. Enjoy.