Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

— Walt Disney

"I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters -- to make them personalities."

— Walt Disney

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1989.
The animated film that started it all.
Genre: Animation Family Fantasy Drama Musical Romance Directed by: David Hand (supervising) William Cottrell Wilfred Jackson Larry Morey Perce Pearce Ben Sharpsteen Written by: Ted Sears Richard Creedon Otto Englander Dick Rickard Earl Hurd Merrill De Maris Dorothy Ann Blank Webb Smith Based on: "Snow White" by the Brothers Grimm Starring: Adriana Caselotti Lucille La Verne Harry Stockwell Roy Atwell Pinto Colvig Otis Harlan Scotty Mattraw Billy Gilbert Eddie Collins Moroni Olsen Stuart Buchanan Photography: Color Distributed by: RKO Radio Pictures Release date: February 4, 1938 (United States) December 21, 1937 (Carthay Circle Theatre) Runtime: 83 minutes Country: United States Budget: $1.5 million

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated, musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions (originally released by RKO Radio Pictures), based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It is the first full-length and the first Disney animated feature film.

Why It's The Fairest One of Them All

1. At the time Disney and his crew were working on the feature, the company had never tried animation on this scale. Rather than writing a complete script, individual scenes were assigned to different groups and refined dozens of times with ideas added and subtracted. The animators even attended art classes.
   • The film may not be the first animated feature film, but it was the first cel-animated feature film.
   • Despite being often advised against numerous people (including his wife Lillian and his brother Roy) on producing animated feature films back in the mid-1930s, Walt Disney still proceeded with production of this film anyway, which turned out to be worth the effort and risks he took because not only did the film was a huge critical and commercial success, yet it won multiple awards along the way (including a nominated for Best Music Score), and successfully urged both filmmakers and moviegoers of the time that animation indeed could be taken seriously as feature-length projects too rather than just cartoon shorts.
   • It was also noteworthy as the first American animated feature film.
2. Walt Disney's most notable contribution to the film may be realizing the lead character had to be surrounded by vivid (preferably comic) roles. He had the dwarfs christened with names that would define their personality and behavior, and the results showed that he really made the dwarfs appealing and often proved to be even more colorful than even Snow White (Dopey, Grumpy, and Sneezy being notable stand-outs)
3. European storybook illustrations influence the animation style as a way to pay homage to the film's ancient source material. This is especially apparent during the forest scene where the forest Snow White runs through turns into a living beast.
4. Snow White is particularly memorable for its music. "Some Day My Prince Will Come" became for a time a popular standard, but "Whistle While You Work" was the real standout from the score. Modern viewers may be surprised by the country's inflections to some of the songs; Disney always fancied yodeling ("Heigh-Ho" being a notable example.)
5. Talented voice acting that both came from studio ranks (such as Pinto Colvig) and starred in their own right (such as the late Billy Gilbert).
6. It keeps the source material of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale intact and doesn't change anything important to its story or ruin the characters to appeal to a wider audience, as it decides to keep everything the same and even expand upon some key elements that were missing in the fairy tale and give them more life that would work for a feature-length film at the time, since Walt Disney knew that the film needed to work by keeping its source material and properly adapting it to the wide theater, thus making the movie timeless and proves how important Disney was as an innovator of cinema.
7. The title character, Snow White, is an adorable and beautiful princess who is a very likable protagonist and is known to be one of the kindest Disney princesses of all time, she is great friends with the Dwarves and all of the woodland creatures, which makes her a great leading role for Disney's first film.
8. The film is a good mix between simple, emotional, dark, and whimsical, as it shows numerous moments that can get scary at times with the climax where the Dwarves chase after The Evil Queen trying to kill them but fail and fall to her death, or moments that are very sad and can make audiences cry, such as Snow White's funeral where it's portrayed as very depressing with a dull atmosphere and heartbreaking music to accompany the scene.
9. The Evil Queen is an extremely threatening and cool antagonist that is jealous of her step-daughter, Snow White, for how pretty she is and wants to be the prettiest in the world, and heavily plans to kill her so she can be the fairest in the land of them all, which makes her one of the most iconic villains of all time, and her witch form makes her more of a threat with how she gives Snow White a poisonous apple to eat and she then falls dead, which gives her an edge when compared to other Disney villains, and makes her one of the most intimidating Disney villains of all time.
10. Unlike most cartoons at the time, it had a more calm and progressive tone that was suitable for a feature-length film, and it didn't rely on any sort of wacky shenanigans or use rubber-hose movements and utilized Squash and Stretch just for humorous purposes, as it focused more on the story and the characters that were helped by phenomenal writing and the decision to focus less on the animation this time around like what they did with their Mickey Mouse shorts, making the film feel more consistent and be able to show the character's expressions a lot more that made them so iconic in the first place.
11. The film started the legacy of Disney's film career that became a part of many people's childhoods and was important to the history of both animation and cinema for various reasons, and became a stepping stone for Walt Disney and his crew to create more great films in the future and helped the studio from their bankruptcy stage during The Great Depression of the 1930s and is often considered by many to be one of the most iconic films of the early 20th century for how much it changed the world of both cinema and animation forever and is still beloved to this day.

Bad Qualities

1. The film is mildly outdated, compared to the production and aesthetic of today's Disney films.
   • Some parts of the film haven't aged very well, such as the designs of Snow White and the other human characters, aside from the Dwarves, which suffer from the uncanny valley and look quite terrifying nowadays.
   • There were parts of the film that weren't expanded upon properly and felt incomplete likely due to the troubled production and Walt Disney Animation Studios nearly suffering from bankruptcy at the time, such as The Prince and his relationship with Snow White.
2. Snow White's Prince love interest gets barely any screen time and merely serves as a plot device for Snow rather than an actual character. However, this is partially justified as the animation crew didn't know how to draw human males at the time and didn't like his appearance. Walt Disney himself would regret how the Prince was portrayed.
   • In fact, the Prince is a fairly bland character with no personality and doesn't have the iconic status that most of the other characters have, mainly the Seven Dwarves and The Evil Queen. He often gets forgotten about by a majority of Disney fans and is never shown on any promotional material of Snow White merchandise nor is he acknowledged by Disney themselves, since he's so generic that he gets overshadowed by many other Prince characters that came after him and is never considered by most Disney fans as an iconic character, since his lack of screentime and zero personality resulted him becoming mostly forgotten by many, and is only remembered for this film and even then, Snow White and the other characters are generally more popular and remembered than The Prince himself due to this.
3. Snow White and the Prince don't have that great of a chemistry. As it is implied, they get married at the end without getting to know each other.
4. The Evil Queen's witch form is incredibly ugly and creepy-looking enough to scare younger audiences, which got the film banned in China and Southeast Asia.

Trivia

• The film was originally going to have a sequel called Snow White Returns, which would have followed the dwarves as they prepared for Snow White's first visit back to their cottage since getting married. Deleted scenes from the 1937 film would have been used to create the sequel, along with the famous soup scene accompanied by Frank Churchill's song, 'Music in Your Soup,' and as another deleted scene that showed the dwarves' unsuccessful attempt at making a full-sized bed for Snow White. Unfortunately, the film was canceled shortly after being pitched.

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