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.