Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

November 8, 2022 11:19 PM

This is the first animated Disney movie (1937). How have movies changed in 85 years? Bechdel, for example, wasn't even born until 1960.

Snow White is fairy tale type #709. Here is the wikipedia page on Snow White.

I looked it up and a couple places seemed to settle on it's probably best to just use peoples' names rather than define them by their height.

I like the singing and the helpful animals.

posted by aniola (14 comments total)

Nice! $5 to MeFi for the tag #fund-ff! More info here.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:20 PM on November 8, 2022

The two movies I thought up were already posted, it was time to post a movie to fanfare, so here we are.
posted by aniola at 11:22 PM on November 8, 2022

jinx! & thanks!
posted by aniola at 11:22 PM on November 8, 2022

Remains in the Top 10 Lifetime Adjusted Grosses box office list to this day.
posted by fairmettle at 12:25 AM on November 9, 2022

This surprised me. Yeah, there were some cheesy sacchrine schmoopy parts (like, in the scene where Snow White was checking whether the dwarves washed their hands before dinner, did we have to see all seven individual inspections?), but the animation for several of the animals felt...surprisingly realistic.

And there's also a quick moment of really dark humor - after the Wicked Queen has taken on her Witch disguise, she is on her way out of the castle through the dungeon, and pauses at one point - there's a cell there, with a skeleton inside posed so that it is lying with an arm stretched out through the bars towards a pitcher lying just out of reach. "Oh, are you thirsty?" the Queen asks the skeleton, "Here, have some water!" and then she kicks the pitcher at the skeleton, smashing it to bits as she cackles.

Tarantino it ain't, but you have to admit that for Disney, that's dark.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:44 AM on November 9, 2022

This is the first animated Disney movie

I think you mean feature-length movie. Disney made quite a few notable shorts long before Snow White appeared. This is a Disney film I’d love to show my currently-princess-obsessed granddaughter, but my daughter won’t allow it. Way too scary, apparently. And, it definitely is that. I’m banned from showing her Pinocchio and Bambi, as well.

A bit of trivia on this film...This was the first and last Disney feature where watercolors were used to paint most of the backgrounds. They switched to gouache for Pinocchio.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:48 PM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

This was the first and last Disney feature where watercolors were used to paint most of the backgrounds.
Until Lilo and Stitch.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 2:39 PM on November 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

My dad's father only saw one movie in his life, and it was this. He was underwhelmed by the idea of acting on film, but a cartoon, drawn and painted? That was art.
posted by velvet_n_purrs at 3:04 PM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tarantino it ain't, but you have to admit that for Disney, that's dark.

There's a lot of darkness in Disney films, especially back when Walt was alive. He was of the opinion that a good scare was good for you.

I once saw an interview with someone who was at the premiere; they remembered looking over and seeing Clark Gable openly weeping at the sight of Snow White in her casket.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:12 PM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

There’s a (probably apocryphal) story that, in the weeks leading up to release of the film, there was palpable concern at the studio that the movie might end up being much too scary for kids. So Walt held a test screening for a large audience of children made to sit in specially constructed seats equipped with built-in moisture detectors—the idea being they could monitor the kids’ involuntary pee response throughout the film’s runtime to determine exactly which scenes were too frightening for the little tykes to handle.

Everyone was certain going in that the scenes involving the wicked queen would be the ones that caused the biggest (i.e., wettest) reactions. But it turned out the scene that really had them peeing in the aisles was the sequence where the dwarves sing the “Heigh-Ho” song—and not out of fright, but rather unbridled childhood delight.

Relieved, Walt gave it the green light and the rest is history.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:32 PM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I remember being eager to watch this but disappointed at how bland and marshmallowy Snow White and the prince were. But then, they are the least important characters, the movie belongs to the Witch and the dwarves and animals.

As for dark, this is no worse than Pinocchio's friend turning into a donkey or Bambi's mom getting shot in terms of trauma.
posted by emjaybee at 9:07 AM on November 10, 2022

I think what struck me about the Queen's "here, have some water" joke towards the skeleton was - Pinocchio's friend turning into a donkey or Bambi's mom getting shot were major plot points, but the Queen's joke was just a throwaway detail, her being snarky just for the sake of being snarky. The story could have gone on if that didn't happen. But it still did - and grown-up me dug it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:16 AM on November 10, 2022

Remains in the Top 10 Lifetime Adjusted Grosses box office list to this day.

Is that based on a single ticket price, adjusted for inflation? That would be a bit hinky, as the reality is the Real3D/IMAX entrants on that list brought in ~2x more each than a standard ticket.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:31 AM on November 10, 2022

(Doesn't invalidate the point that Snow White, adjusting for inflation was a megahit, though, which is definitely worth noting.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:48 AM on November 10, 2022