Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

When talking about cinematic achievements, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is one that arguably a lot of people from every age would know about. Disney is one of the crowning companies of the entire world, but back in 1934 when Walt Disney announced production on the first feature-length cel-animated movie, it was a gamble that no one else had done at the time. Cartoons were all the range back in the 20s and 30s and Disney was primarily involved in making animated shorts (specifically ones in the Mickey Mouse or Silly Symphonies series) and making this animated movie would cost them ten times the amount it would usually take to make a short. But this was something that Disney really wanted to attempt and after a lot of hardships (even having to mortgage his house), the movie was released and in turn made history. Within a castle in an undisclosed kingdom lives Snow White (voiced by Adrianna Caselotti), a young girl who’s treated like a servant by her evil stepmother, the Queen (voiced by Lucille La Verne). After being told by her magic mirror (voiced by Morini Olsen) that Snow White is now the fairest in the land, the Queen tries to have her killed, but she manages to escape and hides herself away in the house of seven dwarfs named Doc (voiced by Roy Atwell) Grumpy (voiced by Pinto Colvig), Happy (voiced by Otis Harlan) Sleepy (also voiced by Pinto Colvig) , Bashful (voiced by Scotty Mattraw), Sneezy (voiced by Billy Gilbert) and Dopey. They quickly take a liking to her and they agree to let her stay and she decides to become like a mother to the dwarfs. Once the Queen discovers that Snow White is alive, she once again tries to find Snow White and kill her once and for all so she can be the fairest in all the land by taking on the appearance on a weak old woman and offer her an apple laced with a deadly poison. Considering where Disney is in the current generation and how animation has grown massively over the years in both cinema and television, this movie is responsible for that by starting a whole new way of watching movies on the big and small screen. While nothing that remarkable nowadays with so many stronger options from Disney or other animation studios, the movie is still a good film with pleasant elements that warrant looking back on.

Based on the 1812 German fairy tale by the Brothers’ Grim, the story of Snow White was told in other cartoon shorts previously to this point (most notably the Betty Boop cartoon made in 1933), but the extra length that this movie was going to add made it significantly different from others at the time (being roughly 83 minutes in length). Making the first animated movie about a fairy-tale that would be fairly easy to translate to the screen was a smart choice and allowed Disney to take something familiar and not have to go fully original with this risk. For its first outing, the transition can definitely be felt as the movie does feel like scenes have been padded and drawn out in moments, mainly to stretch the running time out as it can sometimes feel like animated shorts segmented in a longer manner to fill out time like whenever the animals are given more focus or the dwarfs are washing their hands for an extended amount of time, but that would be expected during the time period. The actual story of Snow White doesn’t have a lot to it and it can be felt in how a lot of the plot pieces aren’t given much focus or even much time to develop, but rather puzzle pieces to get the film going. While that was done a lot in cartoons at the time (where plot was mostly a side-element for its visual), this movie really operates on reaching people’s emotions more than anything else. It works on people’s feelings to get them invested and that was something Disney wanted to achieve when making this in the first place (he wanted to see if children were crying when Snow White died to see if animation could illicit a similar reaction to regular movies, and it managed to succeed at that). When moments are presented as friendly, romantic, or even scary, it’s trying to make the audience embrace its simplicity and get suck in through more emotional means. When the movie ends, it’s not from a logical or even built-up conclusion (if it was, it would be pretty creepy all things considered), it’s because the movie needed a happy ending and that’s what people would have wanted to see.

While the characters were previously set up thanks to the fairy tale, they didn’t have distinctive looks or identities so that’s where animation can come in and really add a lot to a basic framework. Since this was the 30s and plot and character weren’t the biggest focus, especially for animation (when your villain is literally just called ‘’The Queen’’, it says a lot). But even though the characters aren’t great, some have lasted the test of time. The dwarfs are easily the most memorable part of the movie and the part that everybody enjoys the most (even Disney himself). While most of them don’t look drastically different and their personalities are literally just one-note aspects, they do stand out as the characters with the most presence in the whole movie. Snow White for example is very much a product of the time character, looks a lot older than she’s supposedly (she supposed to be 14) and her voice can be very ‘’Betty Boop’’ like with the incredibly high pitch, but her motherly nature towards the dwarfs and overall pleasant demeanor makes her bland, yet enjoyable enough. The one with even less personality is the prince; with a design and ridiculously ‘’masculine’’ voice that it almost comes off as comically bland, clearly just being there as a tool to save the day at the end and for Snow White to fawn over, so it can’t be helped. The Queen stands out more thanks to her design rather than anything else. Her just being an incredibly vain woman is nothing special, but both her forms have great designs to them; her normal form is so cold and stern-looking, it feels like it drips malice, and her hag appearance is just great with a striking design and memorable voice, she clearly has the most memorable look out of the entire cast and it found that right balance between over-the-top and legitimately creepy to work really well.

Considering this movie was made during the 1930s, its still a very pleasing looking movie to look at. The 2D animation style is one that is very tricky to date as it has so many various styles in which it can be drawn in, but the smooth, painting like style of this movie allows for a lot of pleasant and even imaginative imagery. The human characters can look a little off due to the rotoscope done for the faces where it feels like they aren’t even the same shape and size of the character’s heads, but otherwise the designs, colors, and movements of all the characters are very well done. The dwarfs move like the more traditional goofy cartoonish characters would in the shorts, while Snow White and the Queen move with more weight and timing that makes them feel different and react with more purpose. The backgrounds can have a nice range from traditionally softer brighter backgrounds that work nicely in the slower lighter moments, but it also has its fair share of dark and even creepy imagery scattered throughout also. Scenes like Snow White lost in the woods and the Queen’s transformation really take inspiration from several expressionist films that highlight the dramatically creepy, and this balance between the dark and light elements of something that can look very child-friendly was something that Disney was going to stick with in his movie for a bit longer after this. The music composed by Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline is quite effective at conveying the emotions each scene requires whether it be calming and nurturing, light and uplifting, sad and depressing, or dark and disturbing. The songs for the movie written by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey has its fair share of classic memorability but doesn’t do much outside of that. Heigh Ho and Someday, My Prince Will Come are obviously well known from the movie but considering its literally the same lines over and over again, its definitely a hint of nostalgia making it hold up as well as it does.

Snow White isn’t going to be one of the Disney great for what it accomplishes in terms of story or character, even today, it’d be hard to really place it in the ‘greatest of all times’ pile for what it has on the surface level, but for what this movie accomplished and what it achieved back when it all started, it makes sense why its left such an impact and why it deserves to be recognized by everybody. Even taking away the imperfections, there’s still some likeable characters and wonderful visuals to check out, even if a lot of the other stuff isn’t fantastic. It operates on emotions before logic and draws people in with its light-hearted nature and timeless appeal. Whether for a nostalgic rewatch or a brand new introduction, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a perfectly nice showing for kids or adults to see how the wonders of animation as well as the wonderful world of Disney was taken to new heights.