Disney Series Part 2: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (Patreon)

Disney Series Part 2: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

By Walt Disney Studios

1937

Intro

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Snow White after this) is the story of a princess, trying to escape her murderous stepmother, the Queen. Along the way she befriends a group of woodland critters and seven dwarfs, Doc, Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, and Dopey. After the Queen disguises herself as an old hag, she puts Snow White into a deep sleep, a sleep of death. It isn't until love’s first kiss from the prince brings her out of her sleep that our princess is able to ride away into the sunset with her prince.

Part 1: The History

We left off in this series, Disney had just released Steamboat Willie. Since then, Disney had worked on more shorts, perfecting their craft. These shorts are known as the Silly Symphonies and include shorts like Skeleton Dance 1929, The Three Little Pigs 1933, and  Music Land 1935.

By 1937 Disney had also created what is known as the Multiplane Camera. The Multiplane Camera is a large setup where the camera is looking down through several layers of glass. These layers of glass can be moved up and down, giving the image depth. This also allows for characters to move freely through an environment and imitates the movement of a real camera through space. The best example of this is used in the Silly Symphony The Old Mill 1937.

So, this movie was extremely ambitious when it was released being the first fully colored feature-length animated film, the first animated film was El Apóstol, a lost film from 1917. In the west, however, this had never been done. This was a first and not only that, but the Disney company had so much riding on the success of this film. (Put in part about Disney going flop here) Due to this, if the movie flopped the company was going to go under.

Snow White is a cell animated film, this process is the classic setup. You sketch out the animation. Then you take the sketch version of the animation to inkers who line and ink the characters frame by frame on plastic sheets, also called cellophane. This movie, sadly, does not have many surviving cells as they would be wiped clean and reused for other films.

The hardest part of the cell animation process is getting gradients in your art. So, for Snow White’s blush and the highlights in her hair, they used actual make-up. The inkers, mostly ladies, would ink the frames then apply make-up to Snow White’s cheeks. This would later be used on films like Fantasia to simulate waves crashing or shooting stars. When released, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a chance that was well worth the risk. It made its money back and more so. Walt had hoped to win an Oscar for the film, for best picture, and did, but the Oscar won was more of an honorary Oscar, with seven little Oscars on the award to represent each of the dwarves. This picture proved that audiences would sit and watch a long-form animated cartoon and that these were not just for gags and giggles, but were also for compelling storytelling.

Part 2: the review

This review was extremely hard to write. I’m trying to write these without letting nostalgia get in the way of my thoughts. Snow White is hard to do this with, I remember sitting down with my sister when we were young and watching this movie on VHS. The scene where she’s running away in the woods after being told to run by the huntsman scared me so much when I was little. However, rewatching this as an adult, the scene still carries this sense that the character is in danger, which I feel shows just how good the character acting is in this film.

For this movie I'm breaking my review down into character design, story, and the overall animation; then I'll have some additional notes.

So, this movie’s character designs are an example of adaptation. The original fairy tale is supposed to be set in renaissance era Germany, however, all the clothing designs are the 1930s inspired costuming. Snow White, for example, wears a plain and simple skirt with a blouse with 30s inspired pumps. If she were to be designed with the actual period taking into consideration, she’d have a fuller dress, long sleeves, a high starch collar, and a head covering. Not the kinda outfit you want to animate. Furthermore, the Queen; this design screams 1930s. the cowl and makeup set the time at which this film was created.

For my fanart, I’ve decided to redesign Snow White to better fit her period. (Write more about your concept ideas.)

The dwarves, there’s not a lot of notes I have for these guys. They’re rather one-dimensional in their personalities, and the only thing separating them is their colors. Sleepy and Bashful literally could be considered color swaps, they’re so similar in design. (Move this up before your proposal)

Now for the story, the story of Snow White is, in my opinion, second to the animation. The story takes the back burner to the animation. There are just several beats that kinda interrupt the flow of the story. For example, I feel we spend way too much time with the dwarves sneaking around in the cottage, and if we are spending this time in the cottage we should at least get some character development for these characters. Which we don’t, except Grumpy who seems to be the most interesting of the dwarfs. I think the two characters that need more screen time are the Queen and the Prince. The Queen has such a presence, maybe it’s the design, but you just feel that she’s a threat, I wish we got more of her character. Then the Prince- Snow White is head over heels for this guy, but we don’t know anything about it, or why we should care about him, OR why Snow White should care about him. This prince furthermore doesn’t even have a name, he’s just the prince. At least with the other movies, we have names for the princes. (Eric, Philip, Charming, Naveen, Adam) I think that the princess movies need to show the princes just a bit more and build up their characters.

Animation is the main focus of this movie. As I stated before, the story has taken the back burner for the animation. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, this is the first full-length Disney film, a lot was riding on this. This movie is more of a showcase of what the company could do, and what the public could expect from them in the coming years. In my notes, I noted every time a piece of animation caught my eye, and the list is long. To keep it short I’m gonna list the three I liked the most.

First, this movie is experimenting, we got light animations, for example, we got flames on candles and for the first time, animated light. If you watch this movie we get the actual light from the candle animated so it flickers and casts light on the walls. Also, the shadows from the characters are fully animated as well, and well.

Second, doors and windows, one of the hardest things to hand animate are doors and windows opening and looking natural. But to have a door with an intricate carving design on the front and the design not morph or change as the door moves, now that is impressive.

Third, the rotoscoping, I spent most of this film trying to find where things were rotoscoped and what wasn’t rotoscoped. Rotoscoping is the process where an animator will trace over a live-action performance to capture the movement. Lots of studios use this and still use it to this day. Disney used this for how the dress and clothing move in this film. The fluidity of the dresses is amazing, you get the sense of the weight of the clothes, and this is best seen in the dance sequence at the cottage.

Further notes: the backgrounds in this film are amazing. My favorite is the queen's peacock throne and the mine. I like the inclusion of the vultures when the Queen, in her hag form, sets out to kill Snow White, symbolizing someone is going to die, but it isn’t who the Queen was intending to die. The animals have solid animation, but we’re not at the peak of animal animation yet, Bambi (still have two movies to get to first). Lastly,  the cuts in this film are odd, we get these small cuts or these strange transitions.

Part 3: Cultural Impact

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is like Steamboat Willie, it is referenced in so much media, and I think that this movie might have larger importance than Steamboat Willie has. The whole future of the company was riding on this film, and without the success of Snow White, we wouldn’t have any of the Disney films we have today. I do however feel that this movie is a product of its time, as most of the Disney films are; we’re going to have several examples of this when we get to the films of the 40s. Overall, I think that Snow White is an important film in both the history of Disney and the history of Film.

With bias aside, I think I give Snow White an 8/10 rating. It’s good and enjoyable, I think some of the pacing and transitions are odd. It had been a while since I last watched this movie, I had forgotten some of the story beats. Overall I enjoyed watching it and will be revising Snow White again sometime in the future.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs © The Walt Disney Company

Citation

Welcome to the Walt Disney Family Museum. The Walt Disney Family Museum. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://www.waltdisney.org/