Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (known as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Latin America and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Spain) is the first animated feature film produced by Walt Disney and the first included in the canon of Walt Disney Classics It opened on December 21, 1937 at the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood. The film is an adaptation of the homonymous fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, a story deeply rooted in European traditions.

In 1989, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It is listed on AFI's Top 10 list 10, leading the animation category.

In October 2016, it was confirmed that Disney plans a live-action version of the film. On June 22, 2021, actress Rachel Zegler was cast as Snow White.

Plot

Every day the Evil Queen asked her magic mirror: "Tell me mirror one thing, Who is the most beautiful in this kingdom" the mirror says: & #34;You my Queen are the most beautiful". One day the Evil Queen consulted her mirror, and for the first time he answered her: & # 34; Beautiful you are, Majesty, but oh! There is another more beautiful, a creature that even dressed in rags is more beautiful than a star, not even you surpass her beauty & # 34; . The Evil Queen enraged, she asked who she was. Her mirror answers her: & # 34; Her lips are hers like carmine, ebony black hair and her skin is hers like snow & # 34; . The Queen was horrified, she knew then that it was her own stepdaughter Snow White of hers.

That day, while Snow White sang by the well, a Prince who was passing by heard her. Captivated by her melodious voice, he jumped over the castle walls and declared his love for her. So she Snow White fell in love with the Prince

The Queen watched them through a window, and out of jealousy ordered Humbert, the hunter, to take his stepdaughter Snow White into the woods and kill her there. As proof that she had fulfilled her order, she would have to bring her heart inside a chest.

But seeing her so noble and beautiful, the hunter took pity on the young princess Snow White and confessed to her the cruel intentions of her evil stepmother, the Queen, and told her to get as far away as she could from the terrible fury of she.

Snow White ran far into the woods, frightened by the shadows and strange noises in the dark until she fell exhausted with fear. In the morning she realized that several forest animals were looking at her, which helped her to reach a beautiful little house in a clearing in the forest and there she went to rest. Everything in that cabin was small and very dirty. Snow White, with the help of the forest animals, managed to clean and beautify the home. Then, going up the stairs, she found a room with seven little beds. Tired, she fell on three of them and fell fast asleep.

When night fell, the owners of the little house returned. They were seven dwarfs who every day went out to work in the diamond mines, far away, in the heart of the mountains. They were scared to see everything impeccable, and the surprise was greater when they discovered that someone was sleeping in their beds.

"Ooh! She is a girl, and very pretty" they exclaimed in surprise when they saw Snow White. Snow White woke up, and when she saw the dwarfs she was scared, but she immediately became confident when she met them and she told them her story.

Snow White asked for asylum to protect herself from her stepmother, and in return, she would take care of cooking and keeping the home clean. The dwarfs agreed, and as a welcome they organized a small party with music and dance for Snow White.

Meanwhile in the castle, the Evil Queen asked her magic mirror who was the most beautiful, and it replied: "Behind the seven Jade Hills, behind the seventh waterfall, in the cottage of the seven dwarfs, lives Snow White, she is the fairest". The Evil Queen told her magic mirror that her stepdaughter Snow White was buried in the woods, and that in her chest was her heart. Her magic mirror revealed to him that her heart belonged to a boar. The Evil Queen realized the hunter's treachery and decided to take care of it herself. She went down to the dungeons where she had a room to practice the dark arts, and she transformed into an old, ugly and beggar old witch, she prepared a beautiful red apple and poisoned with a powerful spell that would make her stepdaughter Snow White fall into a deep sleep like death. The only antidote for her was a kiss of true love, but she didn't care, because she thought that the seven dwarfs would bury her by believing her dead.

The animals of the forest recognized the Evil Queen disguised as an old witch and tried to attack her, without success, since Snow White prevented them, sheltering her own evil stepmother inside the cabin. Seeing that they could not save her, the animals ran to warn the seven dwarfs that Snow White was in danger and that she had found her and discovered her evil stepmother, the Evil Queen.

Snow White received the apple as a gift, and the Evil Queen made her believe that if she bit into it her wishes would come true.

When Snow White bit her, she fell dead, and her evil stepmother laughed mischievously, shouting that she was already the most beautiful. As soon as she left the house, a strong storm broke out and the dwarfs came rushing in and began to chase her; she started running until she climbed a cliff. Upon reaching the highest point, the Queen, finding herself cornered, began to push a large rock with a branch to crush the seven dwarfs, but when she was about to do so, lightning struck the branch, causing a collapse of rocks. which caused her to fall off the cliff, to then be crushed by the rock and die.

Back home, the seven dwarfs didn't have the courage to bury Snow White, so they built her a glass coffin, and took her to a clearing in the woods to watch over her forever. Then, the same Prince that she met in the castle and who had searched everywhere for her, appeared, and seeing Snow White, just as beautiful as when she was alive, he gave her a kiss of true love as a sign of goodbye. she. Thanks to this, Snow White woke up from her deep sleep. The Prince, the animals and the seven dwarfs celebrated. Snow White said goodbye to each of them, thanking them for everything they had done for her. Snow White and the Prince lived happily ever after.

Origins and production

Sources and early adaptations

The tale of Snow White was first published in 1934 in the United States under the name Snow White, in a book written by Walt Disney, Disneyland. The first English translation was published in 1823 under the title Snow-Drop in the book USA Popular Stories by Edgar Taylor.

The first film adaptation was a silent film produced by Siegmund Lubin, released in the United States on May 1, 1903. This film is the starting point for a series of adaptations of the play. In 1910 Le Petit Flocon de neige, a fifteen-minute French production, was released in 1910, followed by a forty-minute Educational Films version in 1913, with children in the role of the dwarves. This film introduces the idea that Snow White is awakened by a kiss from the prince and not, as in the original version of the Brothers Grimm, by lifting the lifeless body of the girl, thus releasing a piece of the poisoned apple trapped in his mouth.

A new adaptation of Snow White, a silent film by J. Searle Dawley and produced by Paramount Pictures, was released on December 21, 1916, with Marguerite Clark in the role of the princess. This film opens in February 1917 at the Kansas City Convention Hall, with four projectors on four screens. Walt Disney, who was 15 years old at the time and lived in Kansas City, attended for first time to a feature film screening. He saw the film on two of the four screens and was very impressed, but noted that they were out of sync. This film would be the origin of the idea for a short story.

After several versions of the Disney classic made by different studios, Paramount followed suit on March 30, 1933 with a short animated and sound film directed by Dave Fleischer, with Betty Boop as Snow White.

The need to make a feature film

Technicolor Camera of three tapes of the 1930s. This technique was used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs turning it into the first animated feature in color of the cinema history.

Contrary to popular belief, the first animated feature film in cinema history is not Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but The Apostle, a 1960s silent Argentinian film minutes directed by Quirino Cristiani and produced by Federico Valle in 1917. In addition to The Apostle, two other animated films preceded the Disney adaptation: Peludópolis, the first animated sound film, directed by Cristiani himself in 1931, and Le Avventure di Pinocchio, an Italian production that came to light in 1936. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is, however, the first full-length animated sound and color film. Disney used the Technicolor process that he used for the short film Trees and Flowers (1932) from the series Silly Symphonies, with an exclusive contract until 1934, as well as other technologies such as the multiplane camera and the rotoscope.

Starting in 1924, Walt Disney became known in the world of animation by making several series of animated shorts: the Alice Comedies (1924-1927), Oswald the lucky rabbit (1928), Mickey Mouse (from 1928) and the Silly Symphonies (from 1929). However, as Christopher Finch explains, Disney was dissatisfied with the latter two before 1934, when he seriously considered the need for a feature film.

Disney also wanted to develop its business and diversify its activities beyond the success of its cartoons. The choice of him was motivated by two reasons. The first was financial: the shorts earned him enough money to make other shorts, but no more. John Grant notes that production costs increased, but revenue did not. Unlike films starring stars like Charlie Chaplin or Greta Garbo, a Mickey Mouse short film or one like The Three Little Pigs (1933) received only a small part of the box office receipts (less than $60,000 per second). Like Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy before him in comedy films, he decided to switch to feature films to survive, because outside of Mickey spin-offs, the studio had no other revenue. His second motivation was more artistic. The shorts did not allow for character, plot, or realism. The 8–9 minute length of the shorts "prevents them from escaping" to tell longer stories. As Ted Sears wrote to Isadore Klein in November 1933, " we just finished The Pied Piper and have come to the conclusion that our best screen assets are the cute little animals and that we haven't gone far enough to properly understand humans."

Disney decided to invest his personal fortune to make an animated feature film, even putting the future of his studio in jeopardy. It was in the spring of this year when he made his decision on what will be his first feature film and the first Hollywood animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs .

Soundtrack

The project was initially known as "Feature Symphony", a feature film based on an extended concept of the Silly Symphonies in which music plays an important role. No one knows exactly when The idea of this project was associated with the story of Snow White, but in the summer of 1934 the project came to fruition. Bob Thomas tells the following anecdote:

One night, the animators return to the studio after a dinner at a coffee on the other side of Hyperion Avenue. Walt awaits them in an unusual state of excitement and asks them to join him in the recording studio. In the light of a small lamp, narrates the story of Snow White, imitating each scene, each character (the dwarfs of one in one) for two hours, and in the end he tells them: "It will be our first story!"

Grant corroborates these facts. Richard Holliss and Brian Sibley cite Ken Anderson as having more detailed recollections: Walt Disney, after offering his coworkers 65 cents to dine at the restaurant across the street, explained his project to them when they returned describing each scene, playing the characters himself, and humming the songs, from 8 p.m. to midnight. That night, Walt Disney also estimates the budget needed to make the film at $250,000.

Before the end of that summer, a project for a 90-minute film is disclosed. to describe the future film. According to some "great moguls" in Hollywood, no viewer will spend so much time in front of a cartoon "without going blind" and the entire audience will be fed up by the jokes that are peppered throughout the film and he will leave the room before the end. Hal Thorne, COO of United Artists, distributor for Disney studios, told Walt to "let anyone say anything about the movie as long as the movie is talked about."

All song lyrics are written by Frank Churchill, Larry Morey and Leigh Harline; all music is composed by Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline. The film's soundtrack consists of 8 songs:

The Silly Symphonies, laboratory for the film

Throughout the making of the film, the Silly Symphonies series served as a test bench to improve animation techniques, and therefore to the benefit of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . So some dwarves and witches appeared in some studio short films during this period, such as Babes in the Woods. This allowed to improve the quality of the studios and give the feature film the quality intended by Walt Disney.

Short films from the Silly Symphonies that are often cited as being used for these essays are:

• The Goddess of Spring (1934, translated as The goddess of the Spring), Persephone for the look of the character of Snow White.
• Broken Toys (Broken toys1935), blind wrist for the delicate feminine movements of Snow White.
• The old mill (The Old Mill, 1937), for the depth effects thanks to the multiplane chamber.

Meanwhile, Disney has included numerous literary works and cartoons of all kinds in the Disney Animation Library. Thus, during the summer of 1935, he traveled to Europe to buy 350 books by European writers, expanding his sources of inspiration. Robin Allan details the following books received by the studio's library between July 5 and September 24, 1935: 149 from Germany, 90 from France, 81 from the UK and 15 from Italy.

The training program for animators

From that point on, the studio sought to expand its production teams. Don Graham, professor of drawing at the Chouinard Institute of Art and facilitator of the studio's courses, was entrusted with the role of talent scout. Walt Disney asked him in 1935 to recruit new talent throughout the United States. Following the publication of a job offer by the studio, Graham spends three months in New York at the RCA Building poring over artists' portfolios. Ultimately, about 300 artists made it to the studios. Unlike the artists already there, many candidates were coming out of four years of college while others were architects or publicists out of work because of the Great Depression., and despite their drawing skills, they were not experts in animation.

Walt Disney had already started several internal courses before production began on Snow White in order to help the new animators they were hiring. Ben Sharpsteen and David Hand were the first instructors, also responsible for the learning teams since 1931. On the other hand, Walt Disney commissioned Don Graham in 1932 to give evening classes to improve the drawing skills of his artists.

This method, already consolidated, continued during the production of Snow White. New animators were introduced to the Sharpsteen and Hand teams, and contributed to the Silly Symphonies. The series, in addition to experimenting with new techniques, was also able to test newly trained animators.

To perfect character animation, Walt Disney allowed his animators to study movement through internal courses. Actors were filmed dancing and moving so that animators could study their movements and the impact on their surroundings, as well as the reaction of their clothing.

Pre-production

To make a movie, even if the starting script is well defined, it is necessary to go through many stages before the animation itself. These stages are called pre-production. During this phase, the script is always susceptible to being modified. Other elements such as music and songs, scenery or character development are also part of this phase.

The script

The dwarfs in the trailer of the film (1937).

An internal note makes it possible to define that the first draft of the script for Snow White was ready on August 9, 1934. The story of the tale of Snow White offers many elements to tell a longer story: "A romance between an attractive heroine and a hero, the threat of terrible evil, the comedy and kindness of dwarves, a happy ending, a timeless tale of folklore familiar to the world audience."

Another script, from September 1934, adds elements specific to the Disney version, including:

• The queen does not disguise herself as a saleswoman, but becomes an old, ugly and old pord witch.
• A single attempted murder by the hunter and only one by the queen of poisoning by the poisoned apple.
• The lethargy for the prince's kiss and not for the fall of the poisoned apple.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston divide the film into 14 sequences, which seems to them to be "a constant of Disney movies":

1. Introduction: Queen and Magic Mirror; Snow White in the courtyard; Prince's arrival
2. The order to kill Snow White; Snow White and the hunter
3. Panic in the forest; meeting with the animals of the forest; arrival at the cottage of the dwarfs; cleaning of the house
4. The dwarfs in the mine; return of the mine and surprise in the house
5. Discovery of Snow White; the decision to hide it
6. Washing of the hands of the dwarfs
7. The transformation of the queen into an old, ugly and old pord witch
8. Dance in the house; the pimples offer a bed to Snow White
9. Preparation of the poisoned apple; exit to the cabin
10. The dwarfs go to work
11. The preparation of the cake; the arrival of the witch
12. The dwarfs are warned by the animals but they arrive very late; Whites poisoned and persecution of the witch falling down the cliff
13. The mourning dwarfs for Snow White
14. The coffin of crystal; the arrival of the prince; the kiss of love of the prince that breaks the spell of the poisoned apple and the departure of the happy couple

A slower approach to the script

The tale of Snow White has a simple plot and teams at Disney Studios had to "stretch the script" in order to make a movie and "balance the motivations of the main characters with the comedic elements." added through the dwarves".

Walt Disney "needs the best performances he can get" from his artists to make Snow White a good movie. This necessitates "careful preparatory work" and "analysis as well as mere talent". Walt Disney realized around the same time that:

1. In short films, Mickey Mouse gradually stopped being the center of the action, in favor of other secondary characters such as Goofy, Pluto or Donald Duck. It should be remembered that at that time the latter did not yet have their own series.
2. "The heroes and heroines of stories are the least interesting aspect of history."

It is for these two reasons that the secondary characters, here comical, become essential. By interacting with the main characters, they allow the main roles to not be reversed with the secondary ones and preserve the basic story without turning it into a simple succession of comic situations. This technique was also used in archetypes for musical comedies of the 1920s and 1930s.

In order to strike this balance between the roles, the film required numerous art directors. One of the results of the work of the writers was that "the actions were not focused on a single character, or that they were too long". Most of the key scenes of the film have cuts where other characters interact or perform actions simultaneously. For example, the introduction of the dwarfs is interspersed with the scene of Snow White and the animals cleaning the cabin, and the transformation of the queen into a witch is interspersed with the party at the cabin.

For Walt Disney, the main engine of the story was the relationship between the Queen, jealous of Snow White, and Snow White herself, who does not suspect it. Some elements of the story were thus eliminated, such as the multiple assassination attempts by the Queen, and others created from scratch, such as the individualization of dwarfs. All this was in charge of the script department, a service created by Walt Disney in 1931.

Robin Allan indicates that the Disney script is based on the stage adaptation by Winthrop Ames, premiered on Broadway in 1912, based in turn on Schneevittchen, the version by German author Karl August Görner, which included the transformation scene of the queen, necessary in the theater to avoid dead times. The transformation scene does not appear in the original tale, but is a disguise. Walt Disney had seen a performance of this adaptation with his wife in early February 1935, at a girls' school in Pasadena, and, in a letter dated February 9, he thanked and congratulated the director of the play.

E.H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe in Romeo and Juliet.

Disney also combined elements of the stage adaptation Peter Pan which premiered on Broadway on November 6, 1905 with Maud Adams, whose costume is similar to that of Marguerite Clark and Disney's Snow White. From this Peter Pan story, Disney also takes Wendy's maternal stance towards lost children, whom she must feed, clean the house and play with, as Snow White does with the seven dwarfs. also borrows from other tales, as Snow White appears as the ragged stepdaughter who cleans the house, taken from Cinderella, or the prince's saving kiss as in Sleeping Beauty.

Among Walt Disney's additions, most important is his decision to name the seven dwarfs and give them a personality, which Bruno Girveau sums up as "brilliantly individualized". Although comedy is often used, Michael Barrier notes that "the story is never an excuse for the dwarves' comedy, rather the contrary, what they do is directly related to the story".

For Girveau and Allan, the story between Snow White and the prince is reminiscent of George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet, based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare and "some scenes continue with the aesthetics of this adaptation of the operetta ». The similarity is especially evident in the scene at the well between the Prince and Snow White.

Disney adds a previous step with this scene by having the Prince and Snow White meet before she falls asleep. The prince's love was born from the meeting and not when he sees her sleeping.In addition, the kiss scene is borrowed from Sleeping Beauty.

The "evil" scenes are not inspired by the operetta style but rather are tie-ins to horror films. Girveau associates the queen-witch transformation sequence, animated by Joe Grant and Art Babbitt with The Man and the Monster (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1931) by Rouben Mamoulian (with Fredric March) while Grant indicates that he served as a model for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) by John S. Robertson To justify his point of view, Girveau says that the former is more allusive than demonstrative, like the transformation of the queen into a witch, as opposed to the Robertson's.

Since the beginnings of Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney was convinced of the importance of integrating music and song into the narrative. Music therefore plays an important part in the Snow White film, although it is less marked than in Fantasia (1940), then in production.

Awards and nominations

Oscar Awards

National Board of Review

Cancelled prequel

At the beginning of the year 2000, a prequel was planned that was canceled and would be called The Seven Dwarfs, which would narrate the adventures of the Seven Dwarfs before meeting Snow White in the first film. Another part of the plot would have been about how Queen Grimhilde assassinated the king, Snow White's father, so that she could take over the entire castle and the entire kingdom included. It would also tell how the Good Queen, Snow White's mother, died. But the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios in 2006 meant that John Lasseter, the director of the Toy Story franchise, A Bug's Life, and the Cars, will cancel the prequel. The concept of this project was reused in the Disney XD series The 7D.

Curiosities

• The name Snow White was popularized in Venezuela thanks to this film.
• The DVD edition of the film could not be seen in Windows XP, which forced Microsoft to release an update that corrected this problem.