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Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is one of those rare films equally beloved by every age group and culture on the planet. What’s not to love? The animation is exquisite, the characters wonderful, and the songs are worldwide standards.
At least as early as 1934, Walt Disney decided it was time for his studio to make an animated feature. Disney’s cartoon shorts were only enough to make ends meet, but a feature could bring economic as well as artistic freedom on a level the studio could never achieve otherwise. It was a financial risk and an unprecedented move, but Walt was passionate in pursuing it. Disney decided on a treatment of the fairy tale Snow White, a story with which his audiences would be familiar.
Nothing like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had ever been tried before. It required an entire new set of tools, from larger animation paper to a special “multiplane camera” which created the illusion of depth. The cost of innovation pushed the budget to a worrisome unheard cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Depression and the doubters predicted a colossal train wreck. Instead, the train arrived like a bullet, opening in December 21, 1937, premiering at the Carthay Theater in Los Angeles. The film was produced at the to glowing praise from critics and audiences alike. The Disney marketing machine, sold truckloads of Snow White storybooks, comics and dolls. The movie itself boasted record-setting runs in several theaters, more than quadrupling its investment with an $8 million take. Regular reissues have raised that figure considerably, making Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs one of the most profitable animated features in history.
It’s easy to forget over the course of more than six decades and hundreds of animated features (including a few dozen from the Disney folks themselves), that what Walt Disney and his large team of invaluable co-workers created was a completely new art form. Perhaps the reason we forget its influence is that Snow White doesn’t look like a history lesson. It plays in re-release to every generation as well as it did to the first. Dopey is still funny, the animals still adorable, the Queen still terrifying. This was the first animated movie that opened the door not only for future Disney animated films but all other future animation studios to come.
CLICK HERE to see images from the movie!
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This page was last updated on: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 01:10 PM