Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a landmark in cinema history for a number of reasons, most notably being the first feature-length animated film. It retells the Brothers Grimm fairytale about the princess Snow White and her wicked stepmother, known only as the Queen, who is so vain her desires to be the “fairest of them all” drive her to have Snow White killed. When the Huntsman given the task cannot bring himself to do it, he allows Snow White to run away into the woods and fools the Queen by giving her a pig’s heart.
Making her way through the scary-looking forest, Snow White stumbles upon the empty home of the Seven Dwarfs while they are off working in their diamond mine. With the help of animals, she spruces the place up and then falls asleep across a few beds. The Dwarfs return to find her asleep like Goldilocks. Although Grumpy is suspicious, they decide to let her stay. It seems the ideal arrangement until the Magic Mirror reveals the Huntsman’s ruse and the Queen decides to go after Snow White herself.
Snow White is a masterwork on mainly levels filled with iconic moments of animation and song that will forever endure. The Queen’s transformation into an old hag remains impressive. So is the chase sequence of the Dwarfs after the Queen, as exciting as any live-action film. Songs like “Heigh-Ho,” “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” and “Whistle While You Work” were so popular Snow White became the first film to release a soundtrack album. Many techniques used to create this film went on to become standards in the industry, such as the multiplane cameras to provide depth and animation techniques to create realistic-looking humans.
The Blu-ray does a great job presenting the film, although at times the high definition reveals limitations and there are some video issues with my copy that don’t appear to be widespread, so I may have gotten one from a bad batch.
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