Snow White & 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 is a 1937/38 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 animated feature film and the first Disney animated feature film.

Disney's take on the fairy tale has had a significant cultural effect, resulting in popular theme park attractions, a video game, a Broadway musical, and an upcoming live-action film.

Plot
Snow White is a lonely princess living with her stepmother, a vain Queen. The Queen worries that Snow White will look better than her, so she forces Snow White to work as a scullery maid and asks her Magic Mirrordaily "who is the fairest one of all". For years the mirror always answers that the Queen is, pleasing her.

One day, the Magic Mirror informs the Queen that Snow White is now "the fairest" in the land. The jealous Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her. She further demands that the huntsman return with Snow White's heart in a jeweled box as proof of the deed. However, the Huntsman cannot bring himself to kill Snow White. He tearfully begs for her forgiveness, revealing the Queen wants her dead and urges her to flee into the woods and never look back. Lost and frightened, the princess is befriended by woodland creatures who lead her to a cottage deep in the woods. Finding seven small chairs in the cottage's dining room, Snow White assumes the cottage is the untidy home of seven orphaned children.

In reality, the cottage belongs to seven adult dwarfs—named Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey—who work in a nearby mine. Returning home, they are alarmed to find their cottage clean and suspect that an intruder has invaded their home. The dwarfs find Snow White upstairs, asleep across three of their beds. Snow White awakes to find the dwarfs at her bedside and introduces herself, and all of the dwarfs eventually welcome her into their home after she offers to clean and cook for them. Snow White keeps house for the dwarfs while they mine for jewels during the day, and at night they all sing, play music and dance.

Meanwhile, the Queen discovers that Snow White is still alive when the mirror again answers that Snow White is the fairest in the land and reveals that the heart in the jeweled box is actually that of a pig. Using a potion to disguise herself as an old hag, the Queen creates a poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into the "Sleeping Death", a curse she learns can only be broken by "love's first kiss", but is certain Snow White will be buried alive. While the Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away, the animals are wary of her and rush off to find the dwarfs. Faking a potential heart attack, the Queen tricks Snow White into bringing her into the cottage to rest. The Queen fools Snow White into biting into the poisoned apple under the pretense that it is a magic apple that grants wishes. As Snow White falls asleep, the Queen proclaims that she is now the fairest of the land. The dwarfs return with the animals as the Queen leaves the cottage and give chase, trapping her on a cliff. She tries to roll a boulder over them, but before she can do so, lightning strikes the cliff, causing her to fall to her death.

The dwarfs return to their cottage and find Snow White seemingly dead, being kept in a deathlike slumber by the poison. Unwilling to bury her out of sight in the ground, they instead place her in a glass coffin trimmed with gold in a clearing in the forest. Together with the woodland creatures, they keep watch over her. A year later, a prince who had previously met and fallen in love with Snow White learns of her eternal sleep and visits her coffin. Saddened by her apparent death, he kisses her, which breaks the spell and awakens her. The dwarfs and animals all rejoice as the Prince takes Snow White to his castle.

Why It's The Fairest One Of All

 * 1) It is generally considered to be Walt Disney's most significant achievement, his first-ever animated feature. Snow White was the first major animated feature made in the United States (several full-length animated films were made in other countries prior to this film), the most successful motion picture released in 1938, and, adjusted for inflation, is the eleventh highest-grossing film of all time and the historical moment in motion picture history that changed the medium of animation.
 * 2) *The film may not be the first animated feature film, but it was the first cel-animated feature film.
 * 3) *Despite being often advised against numerous people (including his own 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.
 * 4) 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 really showed as he really made the dwarfs appealing and often prove to be even more colorful than even Snow White (Dopey, Grumpy and Sneezy being notable stand-outs)
 * 5) Snow White is a very sweet, kind and sympathetic main character, as despite having to put up with the fact that her evil stepmother is out to murder her, she still manages to stay strong with positivity and optimism.
 * 6) 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 inflections to some of the songs; Disney always featured yodeling ("Heigh-Ho" being a notable example.)
 * 7) A fair amount of several frightening and intense sequences that are still regarded as some of Disney's most frightening moments, such as the scene where Snow runs through the forest, or nearly any scene with the Evil Queen involved.
 * 8) The animation style is influenced by European storybook illustrations as a way to pay homage to the film's ancient source material.
 * 9) The film was deemed "as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field. It also began and started off all the animated movies made by Disney, thus considering it to be the first-ever Disney movie ever to be released in cinemas worldwide.
 * 10) Snow White is one of the few Disney films that did not get a direct-to-video sequel that ruined the creative integrity of the original.
 * 11) While Snow White’s “death” towards the end of the film is very heartbreaking, the ending gets better.
 * 12) This scene which makes one of the most memorable moments in Disney history.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Although this was the very first animated feature, it hardly has any morals, it's just your basic, run-of-the-mill fairy tale movie.
 * 2) The film is mildly outdated, compared to the production and aesthetic of today's Disney films.
 * 3) Some scenes could be a bit creepy and also frightening for younger children, such as the spooky forest scenes as well as the Evil Queen's old hag form's overall appearance and mannerisms.
 * 4) Snow White's Prince love interest gets barely screen time and merely serves as a plot device for Snow than the actual character. Although 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.
 * 5) Snow White and the Prince don't really have that great of a chemistry. As it is implied they get married at the end without getting to know each other.

Trivia

 * Walt Disney won a special Academy Honorary Award "for creating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon" during the 11th Academy Awards. Shirley Temple presented him with one full size statuette accompanied by seven miniature ones.
 * This film was Walt Disney’s first feature-length production, making this the oldest feature film in Disney's library, not counting some early movies from 20th Century Fox, and even its predecessors, Fox Film Corporation and 20th Century Pictures.
 * Around 20 million people saw Snow White in its first three months.
 * During the film's making, 2 million illustrations were prepared with 1,500 shades of paint.
 * This is the first film to have its own soundtrack album.

The Film
Snow White The Seven Dwarfs