The Pilgrims[1] are the last onscreen characters featured in the "Ave Maria" segment of Disney's 1940 film Fantasia. They are a group of hooded people who carry candles in the form of a procession.
Background
Development
During development of the "Ave Maria" sequence, Walt Disney and the animators looked at the sketches showing the pilgrims going to church in the early morning. One of the storyboard artists asked Disney: "I always wonder if we're taking full advantage of the cartoon medium, with a picture like this." Walt replied to him, "This is not the cartoon medium; it should not be limited to cartoons. We have worlds to conquer here." He also replied, "The best answer I can think of is this: that we've got an hour and forty-five minutes of picture, and we're doing beautiful things with beautiful music. We're doing comic things, fantastic things, and it can't all be the same. It's an experimental thing, and I'm willing to experiment on it. We've got more in this medium than making people laugh. We love to make people laugh, but I think we can do both."[2]
According to animator Ed Gershman, he stated that some of the closest animation ever attempted by any animator at the Walt Disney Studios was the animation of the pilgrims in a long pan shot. The pilgrims were animated in a slow movement carefully, so as that the more the animators did carefully, the more the drawings they made in animating the characters perfectly.[2]
Despite the limited animation, the "Ave Maria" segment proved to be one of the biggest challenges on the film as the result of the massive scale of its procession scene and the deep use of multiplane camera work for the final scene. The sequence with the pilgrims had to be shot three times in order to achieve the final sequence as a result of an incorrect lens being used the first time and an earthquake causing the camera to shake the second time. The third and final version was completed with only a day before the film's premiere in New York.
Appearances
Fantasia
The pilgrims appear in the film's last segment "Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria" during the film's last scene where "Ave Maria" plays, where they are seen holding glowing candles walking across a river during the early morning in the form of a procession. The pilgrims' faces are never seen in the film, so only their hoods are visible. Throughout the song, the procession of pilgrims walk across the landscape while their reflection appears on the river below. As the procession continues, the pilgrims move over a bridge with three arches and later a forest full of trees within the landscape while a pale mist obscures their surroundings. As an offscreen choir sings, the camera moves slowly to the right where the pilgrims continue walking across the landscape quietly. The pilgrims are last seen walking past the landscape where they pass through a large patch of countless trees, as the camera zooms close towards the trees, which later transitions to the film's very last scene showing a sunrise over the horizon on a small hill.
Other appearances
The "Ave Maria" sequence was shown as one of the flashbacks in Fantasia 2000, recapping the events of the first Fantasia film showing archived footage of the pilgrims seen in the prologue of the film alongside various other segments just before transitioning to the "Symphony No. 5" segment.
Disney Parks
Fantasia Carousel
In the Shanghai Disneyland attraction Fantasia Carousel at Fantasyland, a painting of the pilgrims from "Ave Maria" appears as one of the photos decorated on the carousel's rounding board, where it is located between one of the sculpted heads of Sorcerer Mickey and Zeus decorated on the carousel.
Trivia
- In an early version of "Ave Maria", one of the storyboards would have showed a scene of the pilgrims entering the chapel as the camera continued to zoom close to the front of the screen where an image of Madonna would appear when it continued to zoom close to a stained glass window. However, this sequence was cut from the final version of the film, as Disney felt that the ending was overly religious for an animated film, resulting the ending scene to be altered and replaced with the scene of a sunrise over the horizon.
- Clips from the "Ave Maria" sequence showcasing the pilgrims walking across the forest bearing candles was later used for the "Silent Night" segment in the Disney's Sing-Along Songs volume of Very Merry Christmas Songs - although the scene where the camera zooms in to the part where they passed by a chapel made of trees was omitted in this version.
