This is a first for us. Both the first movie review we've done and the first movie as part of our Disney series. And there's no better choice for such a monumental occasion. This movie is also a first in it's own right, as it's the first feature length animated film. And what a film it is. To be truthful, I've never really liked this movie so much. I've always understood the important of this feature, but I was very young the last time I saw it and it's never stood out as a good film in my mind.
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| Original Poster Sourced via IMDB |
Summary: Snow White is a Princess living with her step mother, only referred to as The Evil Queen. The Evil Queen, being very evil and vain, asks her magic mirror who the fairest person in her kingdom is and is surprised to find out it's not herself, but Snow White. She tells her huntsman to kill Snow White, but he doesn't and Snow White escapes and finds a cottage with Seven Dwarves. She becomes friends with them and earns their respect just in time for The Evil Queen to turn into a witch, poison her with an apple and then get killed by falling off a cliff. The Dwarves are really sad, but the charming prince finds her and awakes her with a kiss and they all live happily ever after.
If anybody's like me, they may remember this film and know the basic plot points, but haven't seen it since the beginning of time. If you're like me, you may also dismiss this movie as old or boring. If that's you, do yourself a favor and watch this again. Seriously. Give it another watch. I was surprised to find that, in my most recent watch, this movie is great. Maybe not the best movie that Disney has ever made, but it is really quality in multiple ways.
First thing I want to point out in this regard is the art and animation. This movie is more beautiful than I remember. I would even say it's one of Disney's most beautiful films, though my opinion will probably change as I continue to progress through this series and review movies I haven't seen from a long time. I will definitely say that this movie looks better than a lot of Disney's other movies. As far as I understand, all the backgrounds were hand-painted and that quality really shows. At the same time, considering the time it was made, you'd assume that the animation would be 30's Betty Boop style animation, but I would say that everything is relatively smooth. At the same time, there are some areas where the age definitely shows. All the human character (Snow White, The Prince and The Evil Queen) have these strange, featureless faces that looks like those Facebook selfies where the photographer turns the saturation up to an insane level. On some level, it makes sense for Snow White, as radiant skin is her namesake, but it gives all the human characters a distinctly alien quality. Like wise, the lip synching is also pretty loose. This is one area where animation techniques have definitely improved. It can be disorienting to some, but I am familiar with anime, so I'm used to it.
The sound design and soundtrack for this movie is just as good as the animation. Admittedly, some of the voice acting is a little strange. It seems like the actors, not being used to animation, treated it like radio acting. With radio voice acting, it's okay to overact a bit, as there's nothing visual to back up the voice acting. As such, the voice acting in this movie comes off a little extra, but the animation doesn't seem to be reacting as melodramatically as the voices do. However, making up for that, is the excellent music and the synching between the animation and the music. I was surprised to discover that this movie had so many songs, despite not being considered a musical. The interplay between the animation and music is the best of both worlds, with the same synching you'd see in a hoppy 30's cartoon, but with the smoothness and quality you'd expect from a feature film. A large part of this movie is narrative light, really exploring what quality animation could be with the higher quality production and it's a joy to watch.
As far as narrative structure or plot goes, this movie is, admittedly, a little lacking. Everyone basically knows the story here and it's a basic blueprint for pretty much every princess film going forward after this. The plot moves pretty quickly, particularly in the beginning and the end. It seems that a large part of this movie was to just showcase the animation, which I appreciate, but I can understand how that might not be for every person. This movie is the genesis of a couple different Disney Princess tropes, but I'm not sure that people now understand the the intention or meaning behind these tropes. For example, Snow White is known to be beautiful and/or fair. It is this quality that she "uses" to get out of every situation. I have heard people turn this into a lame argument about how the movie is making some sort of statement about how beautiful people are good and, by extension, ugly people are bad. This is an easy conclusion to make from the material in this movie, but I think it's too simple and misses the overall idea that the film is going with.
I think the fundamental misunderstanding is with the term fair. Fair can mean beautiful, but it can also mean pure. Snow White, as a character, is fair in the beauty sense, but she is also fair in the sense of purity. She's good-natured, pleasant, naive, and hardworking She is also the rightful ruler of her kingdom. This level of purity is reflected by her extremely fair skin, sure, but it is also shown in the way she acts and the way the world reacts to her. This bring in another princess trope, the whole "princess controlling the forest animals" thing. Her presence is so good that nature responds to her positively. Her innocence is also shown by her actions, such as deciding to clean and fall asleep in the Dwarves' cabin as soon as she sees it. Likewise, she basically adopts the dwarves and "civilizes" these wild men, taking the absent role of a mother figure for them. Someone less naive or more skeptical would see this as a strangely dangerous series of actions to make, but to the good princess, putting the world into order is just a role she takes naturally.
Likewise, whenever The Evil Queen appears on screen, the sky darkens, the weather gets bad, the animals that follow are vultures, signals of incoming death. Her transformation partway through the film, also follows the same trend. I've seen it argued that her turning into an old hag is just a way for the film to reinforce the statement that ugly people are bad and worthy of death. However, I feel this mixes things up. I feel her transformation can be read two ways, the first being is that her obsession on being the fairest and getting rid of Snow White causes her to become disfigured. The other is that her true nature is being revealed. Narratively, I think it makes sense, as she sacrifices the one thing she has that is important to her in order to try to kill Snow White, at the same time revealing her true nature, that she may have seemed "fair" in the sense of beauty, but she wasn't "fair" in the sense of pure or innocent. Following on that line, when she commits her worst sin, the murder of Snow White, nature reacts to her in a hostile manner, so much to the point that a bolt of lightening destroys the cliff she's on, causing her to fall and the rocks around here to fall with her, killing her.
The Dwarves seem to be some sort of representation of the wild aspect of nature. The live in dirty, uncivilized conditions. They are civilized only in the sense that they have a furnished home and a career of sorts, but when they happen upon Snow White, a balanced force of both Civilization and Nature, they are completely befuddled, as if they have never seen a human before. Likewise, you find that they live savagely, as Snow White discovers when she has to force them to wash themselves before dinner. As she takes up these motherly duties, she shows the dwarves how humans live and leads them to a more balance existence, such as hers.
Overall, this movie was much better than I was expecting it to be. If you haven't seen it in awhile, definitely check it out again. I think it might be hard to beat this, but we'll be checking out some more things I haven't seen forever, so my mind might be changed. Either way, it was fun and I'm looking forward to moving on to Pinocchio next time.
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