Just a bit of a heads up, this month I will be reviewing animated films from the early Disney stuff. To some from Europe, Pixar, and some other non-Disney films. Now with that out of the way, let’s get started. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first animated feature length film ever to be released. It propelled Walt Disney’s animation studio to new heights. As well as being the first Disney Princess film to kick off more adaptations as the century progresses. It made animation not just a genre, but a style that every studio has. This is considered to be the most important film in cinema.
1. Fairy Tale
Like most films, this one is based on a German story by the Brothers Grimm. You probably know the story, so let me sum it up. Snow White lives in the castle with the evil Queen. Occasionally, the Queen asks her Magic Mirror who’s the fairest one of all. The Mirror would tell her that Snow White is. The Queen soon hires a Huntsman to kill Snow White. He can’t muster enough to kill the princess and tells her to run away.
She befriends the woodland creatures and finds a small house. Unbeknownst to her, seven dwarfs are at a mine digging for diamonds. They return home and see that it’s clean, and see the princess sleeping on their beds. Meanwhile, the Queen takes it upon herself to kill Snow White. It’s a simple approach to the story and its something where it could’ve been longer. Although given the complexities of animation for the time, some moments had to been left on the cutting room floor.
Snow White is the purest character, well the mirror states that twice. One would think she would be one note, but it’s practically her character to be innocent. Like yearning for a lover, become playful with the forest animals, and also becoming a motherly figure to the seven dwarfs. Some people may be creeped out and ask that why are a bunch of small geezers hanging out with a young princess. The point is that the men have a childlike innocence to them, that’s why they’re perplexed that their house is actually clean for once.
If there is one complaint is that the Prince is only in the movie in the beginning and in the end. It’s both a complaint and an understandable compromise given that the animators had him do stuff in between. Such as a deleted moment where the Queen actually captures him, and he has to escape to save Snow White. I will talk about the animation next, but to really stress that it would’ve been difficult to animate.
2. Animation
For context with the cartoons that came out during this film’s release, most of the animation was roughly smooth. Animation has evolved from experimental, to rubber hose. Meaning that the objects like a car or other inanimate objects, has this bouncing feel to it. A good example would be the classic Betty Boop cartoons from Paramount. Disney’s animated studio was rolling with their animated shorts. Back then before a movie would start, a cartoon from either Disney, MGM, Paramount, or Warner Bros. would play before the film would start.
Snow White was revolutionary since it utilized this method to shooting a shot. This special camera is called the multiplane camera. How it worked was that the camera has 4 frames, think of how a painting looks and divide it between the foreground, the middle, and the background. The animators had to put in a shot of either Snow White or other characters in the frame that was made of celluloid and record it frame by frame. I was not aware that Walt Disney made a short documentary on how the special camera works, it's on YouTube if any of you guys want to see it.
It’s meticulous and its something where we really don’t think about whenever we watch a Disney movie from the past. Nowadays, everything is made via the computer. There’s an art to how the Disney animators made everything to have a life like look to it. In terms of motion, Walt actually made the animators to look at live-action references to perfect just how the animation has to look like. So much so that when they were doing storyboard, meaning they sketch out how the film is going to be. Walt performed and acted how each of the characters are supposed to be in the film.
3. One of Many Successful Disney Features
As the film was being made, it faced a lot of scrutiny in Hollywood. Since, any preconceived notion is that no one would be that interested in an animated film longer than a couple of minutes. They referred to the movie as “Disney Folly” since they thought that the film wasn’t going to be good. That must have been motivation to prove the doubters wrong since, this was an ambitious thing to do with vasts amount of money involved.
Lo and behold, after its release it has been hailed as an achievement. The film is actually the first to have tie-in merchandise, predating Jaws and Star Wars. It is interesting to read that for the press of the film, some audience members actually cried for what happened to Snow White. Just giving that character depth and to have it resonate with the audience makes it a feat in of itself since the character their grieving for is animated.
4. Overall
Obviously, any Disney fan has to watch this since it put the studio in the map. Any fan of animation has to watch it since it made the medium be respected. It’s an enjoyable animation feature that managed to be more than a “Folly”.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs gets a four out of five.
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