Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The effect and influence of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs can't really be overstated enough. Disney battled public jeering and a rapidly expanding budget to produce the first full-length animated film, achieving a level of previously unmatched artistry and care that's still evidence more than 80 years later. As a film it's very much a product of the 1930s (as you might assume) but such is its originality in the context of this time that there's a certain uniqueness that still reverberates when you watch the film today. The combination of an archetypal fairytale with (then) cutting-edge storytelling techniques has made it the unavoidable template for the vast majority of animated films since.

Case in point - the use of songs make sense in the context of 1930s entertainment (ala Wizard of Oz, Broadway, Fred and Ginger, etc). The way that this music is used, and the type of comedy brought into play through the dwarfs and the cute ever-so-slightly anthopomorphic animals, is very much in keeping with modern entertainment in the 1930s. It's the equivalent of how animated films are made now - the pop culture we see in CG animation films now, and the sassy self-referential humour that has been a hallmark of big screen animation since the 1990s - is simply a reflection of our era. Shrek is the 21st century overhaul of the fairytale much in the way that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a Grimm fairytale updated for sophisticated 1930s audiences. Some aspects of the story (like... where's Snow White's dad?) might be a little simplistic by today's standards but I don't think we should miss the fact that the scripting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was every bit as groundbreaking as it's animation.

And the animation is amazing... the Disney team achieve a multitude of effects that we now take for granted, drawing on a range of impressive influences (incluidng Robert Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and expressionistic German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) to create a vivid and sometimes creepy re-imagining of the fairytale. Examples include the image of Snow White as seen through water, the wavering haze that the Queen's mirror is shrouded in, or the misty swamp scene when the Queen comes to visit Snow White disguised as an old crone. The human characters (especially our heroine and the Prince) are unnervingly realistic in their movements (due to the partial use of rotoscoping), which can be a little jarring. The animals on the other hand seem (paradoxically) more lifelike due to their more 'cartoonish' tendencies, as if the animators were able to invest more passion in these characters due to not being restricted by the need to be accurate.

I was surprised by how graphic some aspects of the film were in comparison to more recent Disney films, such as all that "bring me her heart" stuff, and the bit where a pair of hungry vultures swoop down to eat the Queen's corpse. I guess audience familiarity with the Grimm fairytale may have already desensitized the audience to some aspects of the story. Nonetheless, giving the film this touch of Grimm darkness, and offsetting it with the humourous shenanigans of the dwarfs, makes the sugary sweetness of Snow White a bit more palatable (and endurable).

Disney wisely never forgets that this is a feature-length film either, his team abandons the flat and largely gimmick-free style of early animated shorts to create a tableux of shots that can compete with live-action films directed in real environments. They create a sense of space, and even give cinematic techniques a wider scope in some cases. Witness the Queen's magical transformation - the 'camera' revolves around her in a way that was beyond the technological constraints of the era for live-action films. Also, check out the scene where it fades out but leaves the Queen's menacing eyes on the screen that little bit longer.


DIRECTOR: David Hand was the suprvising director, and under him were about five other guys, such was the complex nature of the project.
WRITER/SOURCE: Script contributed to by Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill de Maris, Dorothy Ann Black and Webb Smith. Based on the fairytale collected and interpreted by the Brothers Grimm.
KEY ACTORS: Adriana Caselotti, Lucille La Verne, Pinto Colvig, Roy Atwill

RELATED TEXTS:
- The most famous version of the fairtyle Snow White (besides this film) is the version collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century.
- Variations on the fairytale have popped up in European folklore since at least the 17th century, and it may have been based on real events from the 16th century.
- The Walt Disney version took it's cues from the 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (though the dwarfs have different names). There were also at least two silent film versions of the fairytale, in 1902 and 1916.
- An animated (and rather racist) parody was made by another studio in 1943, called Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.
- There was also a live-action comedy version called Snow White and the Three Stooges.
- A German live-action version was produced in the 1950s, also called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There have also been several straight-to-video live action versions made in more recent times.
- Various TV shows, including The Goodies and The Brady Bunch, have also featured the story of Snow White. There was also a shortlived American sitcom about Snow White called The Charmings.
- There was a Japanese anime series produced in 1994 called The Legend of Princess Snow White.
- Sydney White, a modern re-imagining starring Amanda Bynes, was made in 2007.
- The live-action Disney film Enchanted also features some elements of the Snow White story as originally featured in the Disney animated film.
- There are at least two new live-action versions of the story currently in pre-production stages.
- Seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as very much a successful template, Disney have since revisisted fairytales time and time again for their full-length animated films - from Pinocchio (their second) right through to their most recent one (at the time of writing), Tangled.
- My favourite re-envisioning of the Snow White story would have to be the hilarious Rammstein filmclip for their single Sonne.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Honorary Award. Also nominated for Best Music.
Venice Film Festival - won Grand Art trophy.