At least as early as German American animator Oskar Fischinger’s studies in synchronizing charcoal-on-paper animations to recordings of popular and classical music, the motion picture medium’s capacity for creating a kind of induced audio-visual synesthesia has fascinated artists working in film, animators most particularly. Just as Fischinger’s experiments would beget Walt Disney’s magnum opus Fantasia, that magisterial work would, in turn, beget Bruno Bozzetto’s half-homage, half-parody of the Disney film, the 1976 cult item Allegro Non Troppo, which, appearing in a new sparkling restoration, would beget… well, this double bill of Animated Music, one so rich in visual imagination that even a viewer normally insensate to the pleasures of the string orchestra might find themselves gently levitating in their seat.
