Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Walt Disney
A film for little children? Yes, by all means! Why not? Except you become as people who would delight in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, you shall not even know what goodness is about.
Sometimes Debra and I feel like people on a far mountain, where the noise of the world can’t reach us, or at least it subsides into a low hum, while silence, full and rich, returns, and with the silence, messages from another world. Is that just our fantasy at work? Or is it that the imagination really does bring us those messages? — because the imagination is like a secret spring of clear and fresh water, and the world it comes from, and the world it beckons us to enter, is real and true, like sunlight instead of a neon sign, like music instead of shouting, like innocence instead of the worldly-wise and the weary? So when those messages come to us, we share them here at Word and Song.
Everybody knows the tale of Snow White, so I don’t think I need to give you a cast of characters, and I don’t have to worry about any spoilers. Then why should you watch this Film of the Week? For pure delight, if for nothing else! “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” comes from a time when Disney still spoke the universal language of the folk tale, and did not stuff the dialogue with topical wise-cracks that won’t make sense to anybody the day after tomorrow. And there’s no assumption that We Know Better than our ancestors who told these tales and passed them down by word of mouth, parents to children, parents to children, before folklorists like the Brothers Grimm set them in writing, for posterity. We have the great archetypes: the innocent girl, the noble and manly young prince, the dwarfs that are like little big brothers, the envious and aging queen, and the animals of the forest, most of which — not the vultures, mind you — are friends to man, as if we were back in Eden, if Eden included dwarfs and diamond mines and a wonderful array of musical instruments.
And what about that music? It’s classical, and folk, with a strand here and there of Americana and the big bands, all woven together apparently without effort, and Disney’s animation accompanies that music in delightfully inventive visual form. Every second of the film is filled with the spirit of the whole. Sergei Eisenstein, the titan of Russian cinema, called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the greatest film ever made. (It was the same Eisenstein, by the way, who once said that he learned how to direct movies from reading Milton’s Paradise Lost.) The colors are rich and lively, the personalities are well drawn, the songs get into your heart — “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go!” And real love is everywhere — even for the birds and the forest creatures that Disney draws with a fine eye for the way quails waddle and chipmunks scamper and bluebirds twitter from the throat. Of course it’s all aimed toward the love of man and woman, which really does make the world go round.
Be a child again, watch, enjoy — and do some whistling and singing too!
Watch “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at Internet Archive.
Once again Internet Archive provides us access to “Song of Love.” Click on the poster above to watch the film.
I think the saddest thing about seeing this wonderful film highlighted in my inbox today is that I immediately thought about how ironic it is that the last studio I would expect to make a film like it these days is the very one that did make it. But of course, we should be glad for the great works of art Disney was able to give us at the start, rather than glum at the husk of avarice, sloth, and pride the company is today. I do think they lasted longer than might be expected. Perhaps it's just nostalgia, but I still look back at the slate of films they produced in my childhood, from the late '90s through the early 2000s, and see well-written and powerful stories. But that is when the rot first started to creep in, and nowadays I sadly think that not a single executive or producer in the whole Magic Kingdom has ever even spoken to a child....unless, of course, they were trying to steal their allowance.
The Grimm Brothers also wrote down another fairy tale with a character named Snow White in it: "Snow-White and Rose-Red." The girls were named for the colors of the blossoms on the two rose bushes that grew in front of their mother's cottage. I mention this because I think there's an impression abroad that Snow White's name is based on her complexion. I always assumed so myself. But the other Grimm story would argue this is untrue, or only indirectly true. Except for the titles, the two stories don't appear related.