Salvador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Short Animated Film, Destino, Set to the Music of Pink Floyd

In 1945, Walt Dis­ney and Sal­vador Dalí began col­lab­o­rat­ing on an ani­mat­ed film. 58 years lat­er, with Dalí long gone and Dis­ney gone longer still, it came out. The delayed arrival of Des­ti­no had to do with mon­ey trou­ble at the Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios not long after the project began, and it seems that few laid eyes on its unfin­ished mate­ri­als again until Dis­ney’s nephew Roy E. Dis­ney came across them in 1999. Com­plet­ed, it pre­miered at the 2003 New York Film Fes­ti­val and received an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. Now, fif­teen years lat­er, we know for sure that Des­ti­no has found a place in the cul­ture, because some­one has mashed it up with Pink Floyd.

Unlike The Wiz­ard of Oz, which has in Pink Floy­d’s Dark Side of the Moon the best-known inad­ver­tent sound­track of all time, the sev­en-minute Des­ti­no can hard­ly accom­mo­date an entire album. But it does match nice­ly with “Time,” Dark Side of the Moon’s fourth track, in length as well as in theme.

Though in many ways a more visu­al expe­ri­ence than a nar­ra­tive one — if com­plet­ed in the 1940s, it might have become part of a Fan­ta­sia-like “pack­age film” — Des­ti­no does tell a sto­ry, show­ing a grace­ful woman who catch­es the eye of Chronos, the myth­i­cal per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of time itself. This allows the film to indulge in some clock imagery, which one might expect from Dalí, though it also includes clocks of the non-melt­ing vari­ety.

Only with “Time” as its sound­track does Des­ti­no include the sound of clocks as well. All the ring­ing and bong­ing that opens the song came as a con­tri­bu­tion from famed pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons, who worked on Dark Side of the Moon as an engi­neer. Before the album’s ses­sions, he’d hap­pened to go out to an antique shop and record its clocks as a test of the then-nov­el Quadra­phon­ic record­ing tech­nique. The tran­si­tion from Par­sons’ clocks to Nick Mason’s drums fits uncan­ni­ly well with the open­ing of Des­ti­no, as does much that fol­lows. “Every year is get­ting short­er, nev­er seem to find the time,” sings David Gilmour. “Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scrib­bled lines.” Though Dis­ney and Dalí came up with much more than half a page of scrib­bled lines, both of them prob­a­bly assumed Des­ti­no had come to naught. Or might they have sus­pect­ed that the project would find its way in time?

You can watch a doc­u­men­tary on the Dis­ney-Dali col­lab­o­ra­tion here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Des­ti­no: See the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Film, Orig­i­nal Sto­ry­boards & Ink Draw­ings

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


by | Permalink | Comments (31) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (31)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Enrique says:

    Fantastic…great piece of art!!!

  • jose gabriel lugo says:

    Very good pice of art i liked

  • Melike says:

    Amaz­ing, beyond words! Thank you so much for shar­ing.

  • Mario Perrett says:

    A won­drous piece of art that moved me with its por­tray­al of the fragili­ty of the human con­di­tion ❤️

  • Richard Obermeyer says:

    This is an amaz­ing artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion by Dali and Dis­ney. I would love to see this in a Film The­ater on a big screen and with The­ater Sound Sys­tem.

  • Mo MacArbie says:

    I thought Richard Wright sang that part of the song.

  • Lynne says:

    I won­der what the orig­i­nal me doc was? I’d love to see/hear that.
    This was fab­u­lous, but I think a great clas­si­fied piece would also be won­der­ful.

  • Lynne says:

    Music, not “me doc”

  • Marcus Lynch says:

    The track isn’t “Time”, but “Breathe”…

  • Killian says:

    Was­n’t it Rick Wright that sang “Every year is get­ting short­er…” and not Dave G? Thought I saw that in one of the Pink Floyd doc­u­men­taries, that David sang the rest of the song. Does sound like Rick.

  • Robert Williamson says:

    That tune was out of this world, but still think­ing and won­der­ing what am i doing on here? Love sal­vador Dali work.use to have a cal­en­dar by him. My best friend bought it for me.loved it and his work ever since.

  • Bobby Williamson says:

    Excel­lent they were both fan­tas­tic.

  • dragonfly says:

    Great ani­mat­ed art! But, as much as I love Pink Floyd, this is not the right music for the ani­ma­tion.

  • Tilton Davis says:

    Thank you to whomev­er brought this out for me to see. I am old, but this makes me hap­py.

  • Roy says:

    What per­fect sym­bio­sis

  • Mike W. says:

    A HUGE fan if P.F. and Dali along with Dis­ney… this just rocked my world.…! Amaz­ing!

  • Hunter says:

    Yooo man thank you for say­ing this. I hope you see my com­ment. This video fits extreme­ly well to the song Tela by Phish. It has exist­ed for years since this copy art came along. You should real­ly check it out .

  • Pamela Hatfield says:

    I Love Pink Floyd and Sal­vador Dali, they both r awe­some. I love the art. I have lis­tened to Pink Floyd for over 40 years and I will keep on lis­ten­ing.

  • Keith Battye says:

    That was a delight­ful meld­ing of my favorite artist, Dali, and Pink Floyd doing Breathe.

    I quote the lines to many friends who feel that their lives are rac­ing away from them and tell them to do some­thing, any­thing, to fill up their days with joy, love and won­der.

    Dali, well what can you say. The most mind­ful of mod­ern artists. Provoca­tive and insight­ful.

    Thank you Mr. Dis­ney for mak­ing the ani­ma­tion so taste­ful­ly and faith­ful­ly. The mash up artist who saw the Pink Floyd serendip­i­ty deserves a medal.

    Thanks.

  • fernandes leitão says:

    trés bom le filme ha music não téin rien ha dire uau je adore trés cooll

  • Ronald Shane says:

    A won­der­ful and inspir­ing piece of work ‚but not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing these two giants. Thank you for the gift.

  • Jeremy Cooper says:

    Visu­al­ly stun­ning, but spoiled by the music. Per­haps if the Floy­d’s words were intel­li­gi­ble it might help. I doubt that either Dali or Dis­ney would have enjoyed Pink Floyd — after all they start­ed this in 1946!

  • Mark says:

    Awe-maz­ing, but cer­tain­ly not “mashed” with the music of Pink Floyd, by any means. This is blend­ed to per­fec­tion.

  • Jim says:

    Try watch­ing this with the song Clocks: The Angel of Mons by Steve Hack­ett. Start the music at 26 secs into the film. The live cut at 4:55 off the remas­tered Defec­tor CD works well.Also the song The Steppes live cut same CD works well. Again start music at 26 sec in.

  • Linda G says:

    Fan of PF and Dali but this meld­ing is obtuse. This is more like an Ayn Rand chap­ter from Atlas Shrugged set to PF than a Dali.

  • Roberto says:

    Im con­fused, there is a lot of com­put­er ani­ma­tion in this. Is this sup­posed to be all hand drawn from their col­lab­o­ra­tion or has it been doc­tored up?

  • Robert Levy says:

    You are cor­rect. I was just com­ing here to post that.

  • Robert Levy says:

    Yes, David Gilmour and Rick Wright alter­nat­ed vers­es, and the quot­ed lines are from Wright’s vocals.

  • Robert Levy says:

    Shoot, my replies are post­ed out of order, and there­fore out of con­text. I had clicked “Reply” to the two posts point­ing out that the quot­ed lyrics are from the part(s) of the song that Richard/Rick Wright sang, but rather than post as replies to those posts, they sim­ply got added to the end of the list, out of con­text.

  • Darren says:

    I did this years ago but with deftones, fits bril­liant­ly:

    https://youtu.be/3TnpMjTsnKk

  • Eddie Simon says:

    Absolute­ly Bril­liant… Per­fect music to the amaz­ing video

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.