FILMS/
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
World Cinema
USA, 1937, 83 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sat, May 5 / 10:00 / Kabuki / SNOW05K
CREDITS
- dir
-
David Hand
- prod
-
Walt Disney
- scr
-
Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander
- cam
-
Maxwell Morgan
- mus
-
Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline, Paul Smith
- cast
-
Adriana Caselotti, Lucille La Verne, Roy Atwell, Eddie Collins, Harry Stockwell, Moroni Olsen
- source
-
The Walt Disney Studios, 500 S. Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521
Celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, Walt Disney’s animation masterpiece—the studio’s first and perhaps finest feature-length film—endures as a lustrous fairy tale in which that famous "mirror, mirror on the wall" still reflects startlingly adult truths and psychologically loaded metaphors amid childlike enchantment and magical musical numbers. Widely referred to as "Disney’s folly" during production, the budget of which eventually skyrocketed to a then unheard-of $1.5 million, Walt’s ambitious, painstakingly hand-drawn, whimsical yet threatening tale of infanticide and wish-fulfillment was released in 1937 to worldwide acclaim. Sergei Eisenstein called it the greatest film ever made, and subsequent generations have similarly embraced this timeless classic. While younger viewers remain enraptured by the dark yet "happily ever after" story of a charming princess rescued from the clutches of her evil stepmother by a septet of small-statured, adjective-named forest dwellers and a handsome if rather bland prince, adults returning to the film for the first time in years or decades might be shocked by its subtexts. No doubt many a doctoral thesis has been written on the film’s twisted familial betrayals, complicated gender politics and thinly veiled critiques of impossible beauty standards and rampant capitalism (heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go, indeed). And what are the relationships among Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy and Dopey (Blabby, Jumpy and Shifty didn’t make it past the script’s first draft) if not codependent? Rife with symbolism as potent as the poisoned apple that nearly does in lily-white Snow, resplendently animated and buoyed by superb songs ("Whistle While You Work," "Some Day My Prince Will Come"), Disney’s Technicolor triumph fully deserves this anniversary celebration, its first SFIFF screening since 1965, when Disney himself appeared to talk about the making of the film. A sparkling new print has been struck specially for SFIFF50, making this even more of a special event for families. Recommended for ages seven and up.
—Steven Jenkins