Movie Info
Movie Name: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Genre(s): Animated/Musical/Family
Release Date(s): December 21, 1937
MPAA Rating: G
The start of most nightmares…
Snow White is the fairest in the land, but her wicked stepmother wants to be the one who is most admired. Sending a huntsman to kill Snow White in the forest, Snow White is allowed to escape and finds shelter in the home of seven dwarfs named Doc, Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Grumpy, and Dopey. The queen learns Snow White is alive, and will stop at nothing to become the fairest in the land…will Snow White ever find Prince Charming?
Directed by David Hand, Perce Pearce, William Cottrell, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson, and Ben Sharpsteen, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an animated family musical. The film is the first animated feature film and based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Musical Score and was given an honorary award for the film. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Dopey (and Sneezy) get down!
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs isn’t my favorite Disney film (though I was Dopey for one of my earliest Halloweens), but I admire it. It did something that wasn’t really done at the time, and the product was great. The movie has a weird pacing and that is partially due to the technical aspects of the film…but it is a classic.
The story is the biggest problem with the movie. The story is tight simply because the work and effort put into the story. It feels like there needed to be more time with the dwarfs to establish a relationship between Snow White and the dwarfs (that knew each other for maybe a day as portrayed), but it continues to rocket on.
The characters of Snow White is also part of the problem. She is pretty shallow and underdeveloped. The dwarfs are great and oddly not as involved in the movie until further in…but it would have been better if we had more time since there are seven of them. The queen is of the great villains of all time and her transformation and death is still a cinema high point (plus, it establishes the “fall to their death” aspect of Disney villains).
Lessoned learned old ugly people are evil
What cannot be faulted is the animation which not only holds up but you could argue is steps above much of the animation that takes place today considering the world and effort put into it. The designs of Snow White, the dwarfs, and the terrifying witch (before and after transformation) are classic. They are also a bit more graphic and darker than some of the modern Disney films…which is a plus.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an important, groundbreaking film. It helped really cement Walt Disney and opened up the idea of full-length animated films as a possibility. It took years for animated films to be accepted as something other than “kids’ movies”, but the film is the start of something new. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was followed by Pinocchio in 1940.
Related Links:
