SNOW WHITE and THE SEVEN DWARFS: Blu-ray (Walt Disney Productions 1937) Walt Disney Home Video
In 1934, the
Hollywood trades rumbled with an insane rumor American entrepreneur,
cartoonist, animator, voice actor, and producer, Walt Disney had already begun
to lay the groundwork for his first feature-length animated motion picture. As
with most ‘firsts’ – having no precedence quickly equated to abject skepticism
almost overnight. For many in the industry, to say nothing of the critics, the
announcement was fraught with implausibility, pitfalls and certain failure. Oh
sure, the two-reel cartoon short had been around practically since the dawn of
motion pictures; and, equally the case, Walt and his small army of artists had
been at the forefront of that evolution; pushing the boundaries to include
Technicolor, the multiplane camera, and, occasionally, the combination of live-action
and animation. While these technological advancements had been met with
excitement, equally as popular with parents and their kiddies, virtually no one
could conceive of a time when animation could hold an audience spellbound in
the dark for two hours. We must first, if only in passing, tip our hats to Walt
Disney; that composite figure of unwavering audacity, blind constancy and
unparalleled ambition, in who all points of our collective 20th
century childhood have long since converged. There is a word for men like Walt,
however meager and grossly inadequate it remains in adequately summarizing his
towering list of achievements; but that word is sheer genius.
Ignoring the
seemingly sound counsel of not only his brother and business partner, Roy E.
Disney, but also his beloved wife, Lillian (both tried to dissuade Walt from
what the critics had already dubbed, ‘his
folly’), and borrowing against a life insurance policy and mortgaging his
assets when virtually every bank in America refused to loan him the necessary
funds to finish the picture, Walt spent the money wisely; hiring noted Chouinard
Art Institute professor, Donald Graham to begin the necessary training process,
meant to raise the bar in his animators’ art. For the next several years Walt’s
lucrative franchise, The Silly
Symphonies, provided the ideal platform for the animators to test the new
methods gleaned from this expert tutelage: also, to try out burgeoning
technologies, including the multiplane camera, that added depth of field to
this one dimensional art form. Arguably, without Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) there would never have been
a Disney empire. Certainly, the whopping $8 million windfall Snow White earned back on its initial
release (equivalent to $134 million today) afforded Walt the opportunity to
shudder his cramped Hyperion facilities and move his entire base of operations
to the more spacious and campus-styled Burbank Studios, expressly designed to
carry on the fledgling ‘tradition’. Today, Snow
White harks back to a cultural touchstone in what is today, sadly, the
all-but-defunct industry of hand-drawn cell animation; Walt’s coup complete
when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him a special
Oscar and seven miniature statuettes to mark the occasion; the award(s)
presented to him by an ebullient Shirley Temple, matched by Walt’s own
enthrallment, only partly for having achieved his goal. After all, there is a
greater satisfaction to be derived from having proven wrong one’s harshest
critics.
Indeed,
nothing like Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs had been seen before, certainly not at the world premiere held at
the Carthay Circle Theater; its forecourt cluttered in lavish replicas of Snow White’s cabin in the woods (complete
with working water wheel) and the queen’s castle; the bleachers packed to
capacity with eager fans ready to witness Hollywood’s glitterati descending on
mass in their lavish furs, frocks and tuxedos to mark the occasion. The same
critics who had condemned Walt’s enterprising notion to spend over a million as
a feat of complete ‘idiocy’ now began writing the picture’s epitaph with
plaudits. One cannot underestimate, or perhaps even fathom, what that night
must have meant to Walt; the first of many affirmations his creative verve had
truly come of age. There is not an
individual working in Hollywood today who can hold a candle to Walt Disney’s
dedication to a dream; begun under a very dark cloud of skepticism in 1934,
only to emerge victorious nearly three years later; the gamble well worth it. A
new distribution deal was orchestrated with RKO; Snow White becoming the first picture marketed under the ‘Walt
Disney Productions’ banner. Initially, Walt had hoped to produce Snow White for $250,000 (roughly ten
times the cost of a single Silly
Symphony). But with great hope there arose even greater responsibility to
ensure Snow White did not simply
match all the efforts thus far put forth, but went far beyond any level of
expectation, elevating animation to an art form; the ballooning bottom line of
$1,488,422.74 cringe-worthily astronomical by 1937 standards.
From the
beginning, Walt was centered on ‘the dwarfs’ as the picture’s stars; given no
names or individual personalities in the original Grimm fairy tale, first
published in 1812. But Walt wanted seven unique personalities rife in comic
relief; the eventual names chosen for these beloved dwarfs distilled from a
list of nearly fifty; virtually all of them chosen to reflect a distinguishing
characteristic. Staff writer, Richard
Creedon did extensive work to flesh out the story, borrowing from Grimm
wherever possible, but also inventing scenarios along the way. In this
preliminary outline the story became somewhat more cleverly ‘involved’,
overwrought and unnecessarily complex; plans to have the Queen employ a
poisoned comb (taken directly from Grimm), entrap the Prince in a plot to marry
him for herself under a spell; then, leaving him for dead in a dungeon filling
with water, were all eventually discarded. Walt believed firmly in animation to
tell stories, but he also felt such meandering narrative threads were getting
in the way of the base innocence and charm of the piece. In simplifying the
story, Walt chose to almost telescopically focus on Snow White’s gradual warming
to the seven diminutive fellows in her midst. Early on, Walt made his most
critical decision, ultimately to ensure the picture’s success. Apart from the
dwarfs, virtually all the humans would be drawn in an, as yet, uncharted manner
of heightened realism; the huntsman, the Queen (and her alter ego, the old
hag), Snow White and her Prince Charming affecting a highly romanticized
Hollywood-esque charm, but with realistic human behaviors and mannerisms. As example, it was Walt who reformed the
original design of the Queen from portly curmudgeon to stately and statuesque
villainess, a critical decision adding an unsettling dimension of wickedness
and austerity to her presence.
By November
1935, the basic story elements were locked into place and Walt and his
animators proceeded to concentrate on the stylistic elements in Snow White’s
evolution; Walt, refining the particulars while keeping tight reigns on the
project as a whole; encouraging his staff to see as many movies as possible to
stimulate their creativity and expressly finding inspiration in MGM’s 1936 Romeo and Juliet, for the romantic pas
deux between Snow White and Prince Charming, and, 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the Queen’s transformation into the old
hag. The now iconic ‘Heigh Ho’
sequence was animated almost exclusively by Shamus Culhane, although the
overriding arc of design was the work of Albert Hunter, with artists, Ferdinand
Hovarth and Gustaf Tenggren refining the characters. Ably assisted by
Chouinard’s fine artist and art instructor, Donald W. Graham, the animators
dove head (and heart) strong into their respective tasks of achieving a
heightened sense of realism, the collaboration affectionately dubbed ‘brutal
battles’, fueled by a mutual inability to grasp one another’s basic concepts –
at first – but gradually buoyed by as an enthusiastic willingness to learn and
frenetic creative energy to surpass even their own expectations. Although rotoscoping (tracing over live
action footage) was generally frowned upon, in the final hours of production,
several sequences were rotoscoped to expedite finishing the project in time to
meet its Christmas release.
Meanwhile,
Walt had hired composers, Frank Churchill and Larry Morey to write catchy songs
to be interpolated between the more somber and adventurous moments in the
picture, relying on Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline to supply Snow White’s
incidental underscore. Because Walt did
not own a music publishing apparatus at the time of Snow White’s release, the rights to all this music fell to Bourne
Co. Music Publishers who have long since held onto them, much to Disney Inc.’s
chagrin, forcing them to re-license their own work for subsequent reissues of
the movie; also, its soundtrack albums, of which Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved the forerunner. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opens
with a majestic fanfare, the rest of the score veering from rambunctious
melodies like ‘The Silly Song’ and ‘Heigh-Ho’, to melodic ballads (Someday My Prince Will Come, and, I’m Wishing) to the operatic, ‘One Song’. In short order we are
introduced to the wicked Queen (voiced by Lucille La Verne); her magical
incantations of “Mirror, mirror on the
wall…” forcing the ghostly visage (Moroni Olsen)
caught in her reflection to confess another as being the ‘fairest in the land’. This, the Queen absolutely will not
tolerate. Learning it is Snow White (Adriana Caselotti) whose beauty is far
beyond compare, the Queen commits a huntsman to take the girl deep into the
woods and commit murder, ordering he should bring back Snow White’s heart in a
tiny box as proof the crime has been carried out. Before her outing with the
huntsman, Snow White inadvertently meets Prince Charming (Harry Stockwell). The
couple are smitten, but deprived of any genuine way to show their affections,
other than a very brief musical interlude.
Snow White is
taken into the woods as planned. However, at the last possible moment, the
huntsman experiences his own change of heart, begging for her forgiveness and
revealing the Queen’s evil plan. Snow
White flees deep into the woods to escape the Queen’s wrath. Terrified and
lonely, she eventually comes across a wood cutter’s cottage. Exhausted by her
ordeal, she collapses into a deep sleep upon one of the upstairs beds. A short
while later, the seven miners who occupy this house; Sleepy, Grumpy (both
voiced by Pinto Colvig), Sneezy (Billy Gilbert), Happy (Otis Harlan), Bashful
(Scotty Mathraw), Dopey (Eddie Collins) and Doc (Roy Atwell) return to discover
Snow White still very much asleep. Doc, the self-appointed leader of the group,
demands she leave at once. However, Snow White quickly establishes herself as
an integral part in all their lives; the perfect housekeeper and cook, winning
support from virtually all the dwarfs – even Doc, who would rather hold
stubbornly steadfast to his original conviction, but cannot entirely refuse all
her hard work and kindnesses.
As fate would
have it, the Queen learns of the huntsman’s treason. She concocts and drinks a
hellish magic potion that transforms her stately features into the hunched and
gnarled disguise of an old hag. This transformation sequence is one of the most
harrowing and haunting of any in a Disney movie; Walt and his artisans tapping
into German Expressionism to create a truly memorable and disturbing visualization. Passing herself off as the peddler of juicy
apples, the hag arrives at the cabin. Innocently, the girl takes a bite from
one of the poisoned fruit and falls instantly, and presumably, dead. The hag
relishes her victory. But the dwarfs, realizing what she has done, make chase
through the woods. A terrific storm invigorates their pursuit. The hag makes an
attempt to dislodge a bolder from the top of a mountain, surely to crush her
pint-sized pursuers. But at the last possible moment she is thwarted in this malignant
deed by Mother Nature; a bolt of lightning causing the hag to topple from the
mountainside to her death. Returning to the cottage, the dwarves mourn the loss
of their beloved Snow White, placing her in a glass coffin. Having learned of
the young girl’s demise, the Prince arrives. His farewell kiss breaks the evil
spell. Snow White is not dead, but merely in a trance from which she now
awakens. The dwarfs rejoice and the Prince leads his beloved to his castle in
the clouds where surely they will live, ever predictably, happily ever
after.
In addition to
putting his critics to shame and allowing Walt the opportunity to build an even
bigger studio to house his future dreams, Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs also afforded Walt the ability to pursue two
even more ambitious projects; Pinocchio
and Fantasia (both released in
1940). Regrettably, neither matched the commercial success of Snow White, and, in fact, sent the new
studio’s balance sheet sinking deep into the red. In the lean years that were
yet to follow, buffeted by wartime rationing and Walt’s commitment to churning
out military training and goodwill short subjects for the U.S. government (an
admirable, though hardly profitable endeavor), the 1944 re-issue of Snow White managed to stave off the
specter of total ruin, as well as establish a tradition of re-releasing
animated features every seven to ten years. Consequently, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would enjoy re-re-re-issues in 1952,
‘58, ‘67, ‘75, ‘83, ‘87 and ’93 with its lifetime gross surpassing $418.2 million, to say
nothing of the profits derived from its various reissues on home video. In 1993,
this cornerstone to Walt’s fairy tale kingdom received a much needed and
labor-intensive photo-chemical and digital restoration; the files scanned in at
4K resolution for future archival preservation.
Retrospectively, Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs remains nothing short of a milestone. Indeed, filmmakers
of Walt’s time, Sergei Eisenstein and Charlie Chaplin were quick to add their
notable praise; Eisenstein going so far as to suggest Snow White the greatest movie ever made. There is little to deny
the picture’s influence on pop culture. It opened up the field of
family-orientated fantasy film-making capped off by MGM’s The Wizard of Oz and rival animator, Max Fleischer attempting to
breathe life into Gulliver’s Travels
(both released in 1939). Snow White also
spawned imitators and parodies; Howard Hawk’s 1941’s screwball gem, Ball of Fire, costarring Barbara
Stanwyck as a hep cat girl of the jazz age and Gary Cooper as her scholastic
Lochinvar; also, Bob Clampett’s unapologetic and irreverent 1943 Merrie Melodies
short, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs;
war-themed and with the entire ‘black’ cast warbling jazz tunes.
To suggest Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs changed
the trajectory of animation is an understatement. Once regarded as little more
than a minor diversion for tots, suitable only as one reel shorts sandwiched
between other features, the movie once dubbed ‘Disney’s folly’ achieved overnight landmark status by which all
like-minded endeavors have long since been judged. Today, Snow White continues to entertain us, although, in hindsight, it
tends to seem tamer and less ‘appointed’ in direct comparison to Walt’s other
‘princess-themed’ features: Cinderella
(1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959)
among them. And yet, what remains perennially appealing is Snow White’s virginal tenderness; Walt and his artisans tapping
into the inescapably wholesomeness too often stripped from family-themed
entertainments today; replaced by sentimentalized treacle or worse, rank adult
cynicism, designed to mature (or rather steal away with) our childhood
memories, instead of staving off the specter of adulthood for just a little
while longer.
The best of
Disney’s animated features – particularly those Walt supervised – tap into
childhood with a magically timeless diviner’s rod, capable of bringing forth
oft buried remembrances from our own happier, carefree times. In Disney films
we escape the realities of life; not by being shielded from them, but rather,
gently coaxed out of its darker recesses, safely kept at arm’s length by the
proverbial ‘happy ending’. Within
this context there is a lot to unpack; virtue triumphant; goodness preserved
and/or restored, evil vanquished; the natural order held together by the purity
of a take-charge heroine, and so on. Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs promises all this and more and for 83 minutes at
least, this much rings true; the world is a place where fears are faced, but
where any dreams dared to be dreamed can come true. Is it wrong to believe in
wishing wells and fairy tales? Do we do our children a disservice by keeping
them unawares for a little while longer? Flying in the face of abject
scholarship that suggests as much, personally, I think the opposite is true.
Stimulating impressionable minds ought to be the ensconced precept of any great
work of cinema art endeavored for the young. Walt distinctly understood this as
an elemental necessity. His movies thus appeal to the young and young in heart,
and, collectively endure because they speak to renewable human longings, despite
changing mores, tastes and socio-political upheavals, perennially enjoyed for
their undiluted fresh-faced naiveté. Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs is among these timeless works of art. It lives
because Walt never gave up or into the prejudices facing him at the start. For
this, I say, ‘Courage, thy name is Disney’…uncle
Walt, if you prefer, as I do.
'Perennially satisfying’ is also a
good way to describe Disney’s Blu-Ray. If you do not already own the previous
Diamond Edition Blu-ray, now many years out of print, I suppose it is as good a
time as any to pick up this edition, although, already owning the
aforementioned, I am really not loving the studio’s new slimmed down look; the
cardboard sleeve and homogenized vertical writing having become something of ‘a
thing’ with Disney Inc. hi-def releases. The company really did put its best
foot forward on the aforementioned 2009 Blu-ray, housed in a handsome blue
embossed booklet or, for those with very deep pockets, a red velvet deluxe case
also containing a book, lithographs and other sundry bling and tangible extras.
So there is not a whole lot of room for improvement this time around, and, in
fact, none is forthcoming; the video/audio quality virtually identical to the
old 2009 release.
Sourced from a
painstaking restoration of the original camera negative, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a sumptuous feast for the eyes
and ears. I am always blown away by the resiliency of metal dye transfer
Technicolor; its overall fidelity and sensitivity to even the subtlest changes
in light and shadow. Contrast levels are again perfectly realized and much – if
not – all of the image exhibits razor-sharp clarity; the minor caveats, the
result of the source – not the hi-def mastering process. Disney Inc. is
somewhat adverse to grain but Snow White
escapes the studio-sanctified verve to eradicate it altogether. There’s a light
smattering present, indigenous to the source, and without the added distraction
of age-old dirt and debris. Just shy of its 80th anniversary, the
fairest of the fair can still hold that claim with more than a modicum of
pride. Once again, the vintage audio is presented in both original mono
(restored) and a splendid new 7.1 Dolby Digital mix. Bottom line: an A-list
reference disc to be beloved for as long as the child within remains the
centerpiece of life.
Extras are a
mixed bag. Disney scholar, John Canemaker hosts a vintage commentary with
excised comments from Walt and other Disney staff no longer with us. It’s a
comprehensive history and well worth the listen. We also get ‘In
Walt’s Words’ almost five minutes of a 1956 interview, but a virtually repeat
of the comments interpolated throughout Canemaker’s commentary. At around the 7 min. mark is Iconography,
a chance for current Disney alumni to reminisce about Snow White and then produce sculptures. @DisneyAnimation: Designing
Disney’s First Princess is 5 min. of animators recognizing the
influences of Snow White on the
contemporary Disney heroine, and, clocking in a full minute short of this is, The
Fairest Facts of Them All with Disney Channel’s Sofia Carson relating ‘little known’ facts about the movie.
Honestly, I could have done without ‘Snow White in Seventy Seconds’ a
minute’s worth of gutless rapping meant to contemporize the tale for today’s
youth, who seemingly cannot contextualize anything unless it comes with a beat.
For a while now, it has become something of a thing at the Mouse House to offer
insight into the movie that never was. In Alternate Sequence: The Prince Meets Snow
White we get a pseudo-representation of a story meeting and Walt’s
original concept for how the fairest of them all and her comely prince should
have found true love.
The best extras
are all carry-overs from the old Blu-ray release; beginning with The
Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, at just a little over a half
hour, about as densely packed as one might expect with historians, Neal Gabler
and John Canemaker telling the tale. Personally, I think it still a tad
truncated – condensing four years into 33 min., including the film’s premiere
and cultural importance. To flesh out the particulars, we get Andreas Deja, Bringing
Snow White to Life – 10 plus min. of intensely discussed animation with
his fellow artists. I have always liked Deja and felt the company continues to
under-use him as the ‘new’ spokesman for the studio’s rich heritage. He clearly
has a passion to become the eminence grise. Hyperion Studios is an
interactive tour of the original animation studio. This, and Decoding
an Exposure Sheet, a technical look at the record kept on each sequence
of the movie, are holdovers from the Platinum edition DVD. Ditto for Snow
White Returns: a reconstruction of a never realized animated sequel.
There’s also, Story Meeting/Dwarfs, Story Meeting/Huntsman, Deleted Sequence/Soup/Bed,
and finally, an all too brief puff piece on the various voical talent.
Shameless to the end, Disney Inc. cannot resist giving us theatrical trailers
for their new movies, Zootopia and The Good Dinosaur. Bottom
line: if you don’t already own Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs you definitely should. This disc comes highly
recommended, but only for those who do not already own the fairest of them all
in 1080p.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
4
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