Allegretto was the first film Fischinger made after he emigrated from Berlin to Hollywood in order to escape the increasingly difficult political situation in Germany. He made the film for Paramount, as a kind of interlude in a longer musical film, but the collaboration collapsed completely and it was never used. The resulting film, however, is one of Fischinger's richest and spatially most complex, presenting an intricate layering of a number of recurring motives.