It was the
enormously ambitious and costly film project they said would spectacularly
flop; the 1937 feature length cartoon feature that even his own family tried to
talk him out of making; the realised dream of an all cartoon motion picture,
three years in the making, which broke new ground and cemented his place in
film history. It could have failed and it was a gargantuan gamble, but it paid
off handsomely and Walt Disney never looked back after the supremely seminal Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became a
global sensation and set him on his way to certain success with a succession of
captivating cartoon classics. Then came the parks, the publications, the
inevitable merchandise and the rest, as they say, is history. So much for this
being “Disney’s Folly†which Snow White was
unfortunately nicknamed - even during
its production! Indubitably, the film serves as a life lesson in believing in
yourself and following your dream. The visionary that was Walt Disney surely
deserved every cent of success for the wealth of wonder and excitement for
which he was responsible.
Picking up a copy
of “Disneyland†comic from a
selection of periodicals in the doctor’s surgery when I was a very young boy
was enough to captivate me and ordain me as a Disney devotee. It became a
weekly reading staple of mine from that point on, taking in “Mickey Mouseâ€
comics along the way. I never missed “Disney Time†on the Beeb and the first
big Disney movie for me at the cinema was Lady
and the Tramp. It completely blew me away and even at that tender age, I
knew that there was something extra special about this particular animation;
everything about it was so wonderfully lifelike (I then had no knowledge of
such animation processes and techniques such as rotoscoping). I eventually knew
all the Disney characters by heart and longed to see the other films on the big
screen. One by one, during school holidays and Easter weekends, I would get the
invaluable opportunity to thrill to these masterpieces: Pinocchio (1940), The Jungle Book (1967), One Hundred and One
Dalmatians (1961), The Rescuers (1977). However, the one Disney production
which never played at any of our local cinemas was the one film I wanted to see
most of all. And that was Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs, having adored the classic Grimms fairy tale as a nipper
and from which the film was adapted. Finally
that day came when I was in my early teenage years and I actually visited the
cinema to see it after all that time. I would have much preferred to have seen
it as a child, but it still cast its magic spell over me and delivered the
goods I had longed to see.
I think what
appealed to me most about the Disney films, especially Snow White, were the genuinely frightening moments in his films
that featured the villains of the piece. That stirred something deep inside me
and was instrumental in making me a horror film aficionado as I grew older.
So, back to Snow White. Disney did something quite
remarkable with the oft-told and much loved Grimms Brothers favourite Everyone
knows the story of how a young princess, forced to flee for her life when her
insanely jealous mother Queen demands she be killed because she is more
beautiful, encounters a cottage full of dwarfs, becomes a mother to them and
then is brought back from death by love’s first kiss, delivered by a handsome
prince for whom she always had the hots. After which, it goes without saying,
they all live happily ever after.
However, making a
short and sweet little story into a full length animated and consistently
entertaining film is no mean feat, but Disney knew exactly what he was doing
and his invention and attention to detail here is extraordinarily admirable. There
are no longeurs whatsoever and the
film is carefully and cleverly paced and crafted to ensure that there is no
extraneous material inserted to pad out the picture which has an the 83 minutes
running time. For a start, the dwarfs are imbued with their own personalities
and named accordingly; then there is that unmistakable anthropomorphic charm
with the woodland creatures who befriend the gentle and sweet-tempered Snow
White, help her with household chores but most importantly play a pivotal part
in the exciting climax; beautifully written songs are introduced into the story
along the way and could easily stand alone as classics in their own right. All
of this works wonderfully well and never looks out of place or appears poorly
judged.