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.

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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.


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Comments (31)
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  • 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

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