Growing up in North America, I of course grew up with Disney animation. The first film I saw in theatres was a re-release of The Great Mouse Detective, and I saw all of their big animated releases from Beauty and Beast through Hercules in their initial theatrical runs. Plus a bunch of earlier ones released on home video. However, for whatever reason, apart from Dumbo, mom and dad never got my brother and I any of Disney's 30s/40s output (and the only 50s one that I recall seeing was Peter Pan). So, with the current DVD release of the 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I decided this was the time to finally take a look at it, given how significant it was.
Overall, I thought it was a perfectly charming piece. It looks great (you can see how much work they put into the animation, given how make-or-break this was for Walt Disney). You can also see a lot of the ways that this being a first attempt led to some indulgence; compared to later films, it doesn't have much of a plot. After the initial flight from the queen's castle, the dramatic plot more or less vanishes for about an hour, only to reappear in the last twenty minutes or so. The vast gaping middle is filled with hijinks with Snow, the various woodland critters, and the dwarfs. All perfectly amiable, with more than a few clever gags, but this is clearly the sort of thing got away with because nobody in their audience had ever seen anything like this before. A similar script under consideration today would probably have to be totally rewritten to include more dramatic tension.
It took a bit of time to get used to Snow White's VA (really high-pitched), but after a while I enjoyed it.
Also, queen-as-hag? Still pretty effectively scary (though about as subtle as an atomic bomb in her attempts to get Snow to eat that apple).
Thoughts on the film?
Overall, I thought it was a perfectly charming piece. It looks great (you can see how much work they put into the animation, given how make-or-break this was for Walt Disney). You can also see a lot of the ways that this being a first attempt led to some indulgence; compared to later films, it doesn't have much of a plot. After the initial flight from the queen's castle, the dramatic plot more or less vanishes for about an hour, only to reappear in the last twenty minutes or so. The vast gaping middle is filled with hijinks with Snow, the various woodland critters, and the dwarfs. All perfectly amiable, with more than a few clever gags, but this is clearly the sort of thing got away with because nobody in their audience had ever seen anything like this before. A similar script under consideration today would probably have to be totally rewritten to include more dramatic tension.
It took a bit of time to get used to Snow White's VA (really high-pitched), but after a while I enjoyed it.
Also, queen-as-hag? Still pretty effectively scary (though about as subtle as an atomic bomb in her attempts to get Snow to eat that apple).
Thoughts on the film?
