3D: Dali and Disney = Destino

September 8, 2007 1:43 PM

Salvador Dali and Walt Disney collaborated in 1946 on the short animation Destino. Disney had concerns about some of the graphics and it was never released. Lost for 56 years, it was restored in 2003 and has not yet been released for wholesale distribution. Tommorrow is your last chance to see it at the Dali and Film exhibit at the Tate Gallery. Previously.
posted by Xurando (25 comments total)

Oh my... that would have been quite something. I don't generally like Dali that much, but this brief clip was fascinating. It's an interesing what-might-have-been if this had been released. It probably would've altered the course of animation. Maybe even made animation a "grown-up thing" in the US.
posted by Kattullus at 2:19 PM on September 8, 2007

She looks like Pochahontas
posted by A189Nut at 2:20 PM on September 8, 2007

Sorry, I didn't know when I posted, that the Gregory Peck dream sequence, designed by Dali, from Spellbound by Hitchcock, was in the film clip too. This was at the Tate exhibit as well.
posted by Xurando at 2:29 PM on September 8, 2007

Related to this theme, Giraffes on Horseback Salads.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:37 PM on September 8, 2007

Tomorrow it's going back to the Disney Vault, never to be released again?
posted by null terminated at 2:41 PM on September 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I saw the movie on a cruise last year. It was pretty cool.
posted by oddman at 2:47 PM on September 8, 2007

how surreal
posted by Mick at 2:49 PM on September 8, 2007

Sorry, I didn't know when I posted, that the Gregory Peck dream sequence, designed by Dali, from Spellbound by Hitchcock, was in the film clip too. This was at the Tate exhibit as well.
posted by Xurando

What do you mean sorry? Thank you! I didn't know about that Hitchcock movie with Dali, I'm gonna look for it. Great post, man.
posted by micayetoca at 3:08 PM on September 8, 2007

This is only your last chance to see it at the Tate. It isn't being "locked up". It's coming to LACMA in October.
posted by lilnemo at 3:15 PM on September 8, 2007

Here is another video which seems to be a more complete version of Destino. Apparently recorded in a theater.
posted by DarkForest at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2007

I saw this in the theater just a few years ago. I forget in front of which movie.
posted by empath at 3:25 PM on September 8, 2007

I've been wanting to see this movie for years, I must have seen the trailers for it about 10 times. Nice that someone has a bootleg on Youtube, that will suffice for now.

empath, the movie was probably Triples of Belleville.
posted by cloeburner at 3:45 PM on September 8, 2007

I was just going to post that I just remembered. It's a good short, but the Triplets movie was so bad I walked out, though.
posted by empath at 3:45 PM on September 8, 2007

Shame, I love Triplets of Belleville, I would've loved to have seen it in theatres.
posted by cloeburner at 3:49 PM on September 8, 2007

Yes, it was before Triplets of Belleville, which was incredible on the big screen. If you liked it.

I don't care for either Dali or Disney much and the film was kind of a weird combination of both. I kind of had the odd sensation that it was Dali "cute-ified." The old-school Ub Iwerks era Disney cartoons seemed a lot more surreal to me.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2007

I saw a great play about this; it was called Lobster Alice and featured Noah Wyle (the guy who played Dr. Carter on "ER") as Salvador Dali.
posted by infinitywaltz at 7:17 PM on September 8, 2007

And now I know where Aeon Flux came from.
posted by 517 at 7:18 PM on September 8, 2007 [2 favorites]

Fantastic - great post.

I'm SO going to be at LACMA for this when it rolls around! Probably eight or nine times, even. There's no such thing as too much Dali.
posted by perilous at 7:20 PM on September 8, 2007

OK... this is fantastic, i've loved Dali's works since i first laid eyes on them (as my walls will attest).

A Question, though -- is that Youtube link, the one that DarkForest had linked to the whole film or not? I was really expecting a whole feature-length collaboration.
posted by phylum sinter at 8:43 PM on September 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Dali's still paintings are full of images that change into other things, using a number of effects. Pause the closeup of the batter's face, observe the negative space, rotated sideways - one of many Freudian images in the film Disney studios may have found disturbing, at least subliminally. The grotesque disembodied heads on stilts are like a magician's distraction; their merger creates 'beauty'.
The flipped perspective of the pearl, the man on the "tall" building, and the roof shadow make good use of animation. Dali would have loved some of the things you can do with computers, such as those 3-D posters and image morphs.
Would like to see the whole thing on a big screen.
posted by AppleSeed at 8:45 PM on September 8, 2007

I think it would be most fitting if this film was made a permanent part of the Teatre-Museu Dalí in Figueres.
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:59 AM on September 9, 2007

Should also be part of the permanent collection of The Salvador Dali Museum in Tampa, second largest collection of his work!
You should go there if you are in town.
posted by lee at 6:23 AM on September 9, 2007

Son of a... when I was in Tampa I had no idea that museum was there. Now my vacation has diminished.
posted by Talanvor at 6:41 AM on September 9, 2007

I was lucky enough to see Destino (along with several scenes from Fantasia) with the music performed live at the Hollywood Bowl last summer, it was absolutely brilliant, amazing stuff...

Too bad Disney feels compelled to crank out direct-to-DVD Cinderella sequels instead of actually trying to further the art of animation. What could have been.
posted by davros42 at 5:05 PM on September 10, 2007

Everything Disney has ever for television or the music industry should be dumped in a landfill; it's the very definition of cheap, shitty, forgettable, solely-for-profit, disposable art. It chews up little kids to make its margins, and I find that whole process nearly as despicable as the child pageant system.
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:13 PM on September 10, 2007