USA 83m Dir: David Hand (Supervising Director)
It's hard to imagine how revolutionary Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was in 1937. Walt Disney had gradually been improving his animation techniques in short films but this first feature film was a huge step up.
The first act of the film focuses on Walt Disney's ideas that people could forget they are watching an animation because it seems so realistic. Snow White and the Queen are based on real people and rotoscoping animation is used where real footage of actors is used as the basis for the character's movements.
Suddenly though there's a scene where Snow White has nightmarish visions of a forest where the trees have faces and the real benefits of animation come to the fore. I don't really understand why Walt Disney wanted to make animation look realistic- the real benefit of the medium is that you can do so much more with it.
The dwarfs are not based on real people and so are proper cartoon characters that have great larks. This is a mixed blessing. The dwarfs are likeable, fun characters but at the same time the second act of the film is a series of dwarf shenanigans which add nothing to the plot and slow the film right down. Some portions of this section were cut but it felt to me like much more should have been cut.
The story is pretty simplistic here but it works (even if some things feel inappropriate from a modern viewpoint). Only Grumpy really has any character development- indeed, Grumpy is by far the most interesting character in the film for the way he fights against his own feelings for Snow White. Perhaps most surprising is that the animation doesn't feel particularly old fashioned and still stands up remarkably well- indeed, it's far better animated than many modern CG-animated films.
A huge landmark for animation and cinema in general that remains very watchable even today.
Comments
Post a Comment