is a Japanese animated film, originally released by
Sanrio in the United States on May 3, 1979. The film is a retelling of stories from
Metamorphoses by the Roman poet
Ovid, set to rock music by
Arthur Simms and
Pattie Brooks. In all of its five parts, the protagonists are portrayed in the form of a recurring boy and girl.
The movie was Sanrio's second animated release in the US (following
their adaptation of The Mouse and His Child the previous year). Over 170 animators, all employed in Hollywood, worked on it for three years.
Metamorphoses tried to be the rock era's answer to
Fantasia, but its original run was critically reviled and closed as soon as it opened: according to many of its crew, a lot of problems with the production, music and plotting were to blame.
A year later, it was reissued under a new title,
Winds of Change, with seven minutes trimmed away from the first cut of 89 minutes. This time, the music was composed by
Alec R. Costandinos, and narration provided by
Peter Ustinov was added.
The five parts—"
Actaeon", "
Orpheus and Eurydice", "The House of Envy", "
Perseus" and "
Phaëton", in the original order—were re-arranged and slightly renamed for the new version; only the third and last parts remained unmoved. In the
Winds cut, the first two were now "Perseus" and "Actaeon", and the fourth "Orpheus".
In addition, the boy was now called Wondermaker, and the girl played different...
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