I figure that, since this is my first review here, I might as well start with another cinematic first. Namely, the first animated feature ever released to theaters, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by Disney.
I'll first give a little background behind this movie. It's 1937, and Disney is clearly on top of the animated featurette business after a long series of technically and artistically appealing shorts. Disney was hailed a pioneer for creating the first sound cartoon only a decade earlier with Steamboat Willie. What followed was a series of technical firsts for the animation business: the first successful melding of sight and sound with The Skeleton Dance, the first technicolor cartoon (and theatergoing experience) in Fowers and Trees, the first animated cartoon to win a Best Song Oscar from The Three Little Pigs, the first successful animation of speed in The Tortoise and the Hare, and the first demonstration of his remarkable Multiplane Camera in The Old Mill. Keep in mind that all of these innovations and firsts happened in a mere 10 years. Nor were these minor improvements or innovations either. Disney once said, "By 1935 even The Three Little Pigs looked dated and a bit shabby in comparison with the newer Symphonies." It took only two years to create this incredible growth, but Disney was not lying. The brilliance of Pigs was in its score and its script, and the animation that was above and beyond anything before it, but was outclassed by what followed.
Disney began preparing for Snow White as far back as 1934 when he realized that the animated short business was increasingly becoming unprofitable for his needs and wants. Disney was a man obsessed with perfection, and he expected no less from anybody working for him. Thus, his shorts began to yield less and less profit as he increased the budget for each short. He knew the future of his type of animation would lie in the feature film, and he knew he needed more people in order to successfully create a feature length film. Remember that Xerox technology wasn't available at this time. When animators drew their images, they passed them on to hand copiers, who would transfer the images onto celluloid by hand, a tedious process to be sure. Even without the need for hand copiers, there was still the need of more workers simply to create the drawings that went into Snow White. Disney's animated shorts were all 7 minutes long. Snow White runs for 84 minutes, almost 12 times the amount of drawings that went into each individual short.
In short, Disney succeeded. Snow White launched in 1937 to intense accolades and was held over many, many times in virtually all theaters it ran.
Just as Disney wanted, the final product looks superb. Every shot in every scene could go straight into a picture book and succeed. The backgrounds are lusciously crafted and seamlessly integrated into the animation of the characters. The animation of the characters is beautifully executed within the limits of their subjects and the inexperience of the staff at creating characters that moved for such an extended period of time. The dwarves and the animals in particular have some of the most fluid movement ever put to screen, either in animation or in live-action. Snow White's animal companions all maintain their realistic proportions and movements to some extent, and are all exaggerated just the right amount for the purposes of animation. The dwarves are wonderfully constructed and executed, and each has his own personality and manner of movement, no small feat given that they are all basically built the same. It's impossible to mistake Happy for Sleepy, or Sneezy for Grumpy, and that's due to the very individualistic movements of each character.
Quite easily the most fantastic sequence of this entire movie, from an animation and composition standpoint, is Snow White's flight from the Hunter. In one of Disney's first forays into surrealistic imagery, the forest is made into something terrifying by simply altering minor details. Snow White's cloak catches on some tree branches, which sprout arms and continue to grab the cloak. She runs into some branches that grab at her as she tries to escape. She falls through the maw of a dragon-like stump only to come face-to-face with logs that act like crocodiles. Trees have faces that would haunt the dead. Eyes point from everywhere, the bodies that they inhabit shrouded by shadows. This is one of the most terrifying sequences in animation history, and the capable artists and animators at Disney pull it off superbly.
Snow White, told in its most basic form, is a wonderfully short tale. Disney had to extend this tale enough to suit an entire feature by adding segments that felt like they belonged in the story. The Dwarves washing for dinner and the extended dance scene aren't in the original fairy tale, yet they flow quite naturally from the events that precede them and flow into the next series of events. This is due to a wonderfully crafted script that both tells and enhances this well-known tale. The movie also features a score that fits both the film and its audience perfectly. Everybody knows the incredibly catchy Whistle While You Work and Heigh-Ho, and even less catchy segments like the Dwarves washing and Snow White's dance are memorable because of the character movement in the segments.
There is no such thing as a perfect movie, however, and Snow White does have its share of flaws, even though they were made mostly due to inexperience with the form. The main flaw was the animation of the human characters, particularly their faces. The Disney animators can create a wonderful scene with animal characters and characters whose faces can stretch and shift as necessary for a given scene. The faces of the human characters, on the other hand, are very flat, and there's very little room for expansion or exaggeration, which is the forte of the animation medium. Snow White's facial expression does not change throughout the movie. No, eye movement does not equate to a change of expression. They fared slightly better with the Queen, mostly because her formal prose is almost perfect for a flatter, more rigid style.
The characters also have a propensity to overact, Snow White in particular. Her arms flare out unnaturally when she enters a room, and her movements, meant to be graceful, are simply overdone. It doesn't help matters when the characters themselves are designed in a completely unrealistic manner even though they are meant to be completely realistic. Snow White is designed to be about 5 heads tall, when a realistic human form is closer to 6 heads tall (have somebody measure the size of your head, from your neck to the top, and compare it to your entire body to prove this). This is best seen when Snow White is leading the Witch into the Dwarves' cottage. Both characters are supposed to be full sized humans, yet the stooped Witch is exactly the same height as Snow White.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves represents a key moment in the evolution of animation. It is funny, witty, heartfelt, and terrifying at various points. The animation is a little spotty at times, but the overall feel of the movie is exactly as it should be.
I give this film 4 out of 5 stars.
