Customer Reviews
Snow White - By: Janice Palin, 07 Nov 2007 
Very impressed with the speed & effeciency of delivery. Watched it this afternoon, it has not lost any of its magic - well worth the money.
The best Disney movie of all time - By: Nick D., 31 Oct 2007 This is the movie that established Walt Disney's reputation as the master of children's cartoons. Even by today's exacting standards, the animation is top notch.
Perhaps the best test of Snow White's enduring charm & beauty is to sit a variety of children between the ages of 5 & 10 in front of it & watch how they become spellbound by it. Visuallly there is so much to see & enjoy. The detail is stunning. A collection of hugely talented & imaginiative people have vividly brought a stunning array of characters to life in a magical way - magical is truly the perfect word to describe this work of genius.
Of course, adults can enjoy Snow White again & again too. One of the joys of this movie is seeing your sons & daughters enjoy it as much as you did, when you first saw it. And, when you see it again after a gap of 25 years, its power still amazes you.
You could describe this movie as a rite of passage, something that every child should see, & why not - we alll love a well-told story, which this unquestionably is. This is film that connects one generation to the next. Perhaps the only other movie that does this is "The Sound of Music".
My only gripe is that Disney releases it so rarely to preserve its value. So next time it comes out, I recommend you buy two copies because younger children will quickly damage the DVD in their eagerness to watch the film umpteen times.
What else can I say but thank you, Walt. It is a masterpiece.
The start of Disneyfication - By: T. Clarke, 22 Oct 2007 It's quite funny that today, as I trudged into University, the module we would be studying in the lecture was Animation, & the history behind it. As a young kid, I had seen Snow White many times, with varying experiences (mostly scared!) & so it was great to bring it alll back this morning in what would normallly be a few hours of boredom.
Snow White, released amazingly way back in 1938, could easily be one of the most important films ever created. That might sound ambitious, considering the other advances in life at the time, but to even dare & ask the audience to sit back & watch over an hour of animation was a gamble itself. In the early 1930's, a 'cartoon' was up to 6 minutes of black & drawings that could take months & months to make.
The reason this film actuallly was a milestone is because of Walt Disney's quick thinking....
1. Copyrighting Technicolour - The ability to master videos in full colour, which no other company could use)
2. Rota-scope - The ability to create life-like animations of people by tracing an original video of an actor. This was filmed with 2 actors & then drawn! This is how such life-like movements could be drawn by Snow White (just a young actor) & of course the evil queen.
3. "Disneyfication" begins - The original Snow White story was a grim & dark tale that had a clear moral. Walt Disney wanted this film to appear to an audience that could be entertained, hence for the first time, we get the 'happy ever after' ending. Note also how the whit, glamour, & humour normallly associated with animations at the time was lost.
4. Technological advances - Disney had made a special machine (almost as high as a house) that generated the 3-D effects in the movie, & enhanced such features as wind, rain, & room-spiral actions. A massive machine separated the cells, & then could alllow for precise arrangement to make shakey pictures & movements a thing of the past. Every movement, as you'll see, is 100% precice thanks to this clumbersome contraption.
Of course, we should alll know the tale of Disney's Snow White by now, & even if you don't it'd be a shame to spoil the film. While in typical Disney fashion, its fun & suitable for the family, with plenty of 'simple' gags & funny moments from the 7 dwarfs, it does have its scary moments. I'm not trying to sound like a wet-blanket - it's just a fact, & even now looking back I can understand why I hid by the couch cushions at certain scenes. But this surely proves how animation has changed - what was once an attempt to bring a watcher into the film & let them experience a moral, now is just a cheap attempt at making money at School Half Terms, when Mr & Mrs Average clogg up the roads with 4x4's, & head down the cinema's!
It reeks of elements from it's time, whether it be the Mask that speaks in the Queens mirror (its actuallly a voodoo style mask, as people at the time was fascinated by cultures abroad, especiallly Egyptology), or the character of the Evil Queen that was actuallly a spiff off a celeb at the time, Better Davis, who herself played evil characters.
Snow White is a milestone in animation history with beautiful artwork, & though its later counterparts may have easily exceeded it in terms of entertainment (the 40's/50's were a good era) they alll still kept the roots of teaching morals up until the funny but lame 60's (The Jungle Book, with its laughably bad spiff of The Beatles. Still a great film!). If you've seen alll the other Disney films & think they can't be topped, this should be watched anyway for the education of how perfect animation can be, & what we miss today.
DISNEY'S FIRST FEATURE LENGTH ANIMATED FILM IS AN ALL TIME CLASSIC - By: stuart, 11 Oct 2007 To calll Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs a classic goes without saying that practicallly everyone has callled it such. It is a great film, but there are certain factors that make it so, & without them the film could've gone the other way & become important more for its technical breakthrough(s) than for the content. The fact is a story with the utmost simplicity like Snow White, the chief characters- Prince Charming, the wicked Queen/witch, & of course Snow White- are alll very basic, simple, if not one dimensional than basely two-dimensional characters. It's appropriate, to be sure, as it is based off a Grimm fairy tale. Despite the beauty & charm of the early scenes, its reallly on par entertainment-wise with the Silly Symphonies Walt Disney produced in the 30's.
This also goes without saying that Snow White's run through the woods is one of the highlights of the film, still bringing a sense of terror & the surreal for the adults in the audience (if you're a little kid it could be one of the scariest things you've ever seen). But then- just as Snow White settles into her little 'hide-out' in a house she thinks occupied by messy, orphaned children- we're introduced to the seven dwarfs, & this is where the film picks up most of its energy, laughs, & complete & total balance. In a way, not to analyze too deep for a filmed fairy tale, they each represent the different sides of men, & so it gives the film the appropriate human dimensions it needs (in this, also setting up practicallly alll the hand-drawn Disney films of the next seventy years or so). It's tempting to say which are my favorite, or whom I got the most enjoyment out of. There would be three, two for more obvious reasons, one for subtle ones.
Dopey, who is almost a perfect re-incarnation (in Disney Dwarf form of course) of Harpo Marx- he's a lovable idiot, with barely two sounds in the course of the film, who (and I hate to sound sappy) brings out the laughing kid in anyone. Grumpy, who I found to be maybe the most complete character in the film, has attitude to spare, & gets comic bit after comic bit happen to him from the animators- & yet, there is heart behind him, & when its revealed in key parts of the film, they act as the most emotional points. There is also Sleepy, who also barely says a word, but who's physical movements are reallly divine little moments among the big, inspired musical numbers. Indeed, there are little moments throughout the film that help make up the greatness: the mood & atmosphere in the Queen's dungeon of witchcraft; the scene where the dwarfs go to sleep (a fly that rests on Sleepy's nose); the traits given to the animals in the forest (that little turtle is hilarious).
All these parts help to add to the basic structure of the story- Queen wants the good looks, goes after her once the hunter fails, gives her the poison apple, then it goes even more predictable from their (though in a good way). The detail of the animated scenes, the backgrounds, the visual effects, are often mesmerizing. And the songs, which were some of the most standard I heard from the Disney oeuvre as a kid (they were always on those Disney 'Sing-along' videos) are still whimsical most of the time. Then there is also the icing on the cake- the voice of Snow White, Adriana Caselotti (who got contracted into this being her only film role, based of producer/uncredited director Disney's insistence), brings something to the film that's hard to describe, except to say that it's, well, serene.
Even if she's not the strongest character, her main goal of making people around her feel good & inspiring happiness makes her watchable, & in a way lovable. It's a very curious, though important, factor that she (and Prince Charming & the Queen pre-witch) are animated very traditionallly, apart from the cartoon-like dwarfs & animals. Its a reminder of the film's, & Disney's, strongest success- that as an imagined & visualized fairy tale, the representation is strong, & touching. In the new century studios move away from hand-drawn animated films, but it's a good idea to look back to the early Disney films, if not for just nostalgia (or to watch with your kids) to get a sense of the experimentation, the purity of it. It remains one of only several animated films, from any country or style, to have the crucial elements come together- music, voice-talent, usage of colors, & cinematography.
Enchanting - By: Ms. MacNeill, 05 Sep 2007 
What I found most impressive about "Snow White", after watching it for the first time since I was a child, were the landscapes. True, they don't look as appropriate for the story as those in "Sleeping Beauty" or "Hercules", both of which look like a Medieval painting & a Greek vase respectively, but there's something about the forests & castles in Disney's first feature-length offering that reallly intrigues me. Perhaps more than any other Disney film, it looked like the sort of world I would want to explore
However, "Snow White" is not without its flaws. Disney had not perfected the art of creating villains yet, & the Wicked Queen, formidable as she is, rather pales next to, say, Maleficent or Lady Tremaine. Furthermore, there is a disappointing lack of interaction between the Queen & Snow White; the only time they are ever reallly on screen together is during the famous apple scene when, of course, Snow White is unaware of her companion's true identity. If a few earlier scenes had been included where visual evidence of Snow White's mistreatment was provided, rather than the viewer having to rely on a narrator, I do think the film could have been improved. Similarly, the relationship between Snow White & the Prince is unconvincing, as the Prince gets so little screen time with her.
Of course, these are alll comments that can be easily made in retrospect, & I'm only reallly complaining because I know that Disney managed to improve over the years. Taken on its own, it is absolutely charming: far more innocent than Disney's later offerings & made with such good humour as well. Definitely deserves to be more widely-watched than it is. It's a "top ten" movie any day.
