Why Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs is still loved 80 years on

In the 1930s, Disney’s ani­ma­tion stu­dios was a con­stant hive of activ­i­ty. Ani­ma­tion was a nascent art­form, and Walt’s team of artists were con­stant­ly push­ing them­selves to dis­cov­er new and excit­ing forms of expres­sion. The first ani­mat­ed shorts were released around 1908 and Ger­tie the Dinosaur changed the game in 1914 by cre­at­ing a dis­tinct, appeal­ing ani­mat­ed char­ac­ter. Dis­ney him­self had been cre­at­ing ani­mat­ed shorts since the ear­ly 1920s, pio­neer­ing syn­chro­nised sound and new ani­mat­ing tech­niques. Now, how­ev­er, their sights were set high­er. They were want­i­ng to cre­ate America’s first ani­mat­ed fea­ture film, and the first fea­ture in the world to use cel ani­ma­tion. Then, after an intense peri­od of inno­va­tion and fer­vid cre­ation, they released Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, 80 years ago this month.

Watch Disney’s first mas­ter­piece today and it can feel uncom­fort­ably dat­ed in places. Most of the crit­i­cisms of the Dis­ney Princess brand can be traced back to Snow White, an under-devel­oped saint who sings at ani­mals with an aggra­vat­ing vibra­to. This is where arche­types were born. There’s a sim­plic­i­ty to the plot, a cloy­ing straight­for­ward­ness, that may leave the mod­ern view­er won­der­ing why this is loved as some­thing more than just the first film of its kind.

The fact that this was such a land­mark achieve­ment, how­ev­er, is what pow­ers the film’s bril­liance. Dis­ney staked his rep­u­ta­tion on Snow White and was deter­mined to impress, push­ing his team beyond their known abil­i­ties to cre­ate some­thing the likes of which had nev­er been seen before. There are mul­ti­ple direc­tors list­ed on IMDb (each respon­si­ble for sep­a­rate sequences), which sug­gests not only that Walt was the sin­gu­lar vision­ary behind the film, but also that it was a huge team effort. It’s no won­der the film opens with a note of thanks from Dis­ney to every­one who worked on the production.

To make the film, the stu­dio devel­oped new tech­nol­o­gy, such as a sys­tem known as the ​“sweat­box” for pre­lim­i­nary ani­ma­tion as an ear­ly form of pre-viz, which allowed for con­stant improve­ment as they ani­mat­ed. Prob­lems were over­come with sen­si­ble struc­tur­ing – the move­ment of human char­ac­ters was par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult (most ear­li­er ani­ma­tions depict­ed non-human char­ac­ters), so they cut down their role in the sto­ry, almost eras­ing Prince Charm­ing entirely.

Frank Thomas and Ollie John­ston, two of the famous team of experts known as the ​‘Nine Old Men’, described Walt’s thrifty approach to cre­at­ing qual­i­ty. ​“Reach­ing for new achieve­ments, try­ing things that had nev­er been done before, ask­ing for more of his staff than they knew how to do – all this cost mon­ey. And Walt knew it, but he chose to spend what mon­ey he had in those very areas, fig­ur­ing that he could save some­place else. For exam­ple, sim­pli­fy­ing the con­cept for a whole pic­ture could make it less expen­sive: elim­i­nat­ing cost­ly scenes, extra char­ac­ters, crowd shots, any­thing that took more time or more work for the same result.”

Disney’s pri­or­i­ty was to pour qual­i­ty into every frame and the result is a film that bursts with detail with­in the con­fines of a sim­ple sto­ry. Not a sin­gle cel is wast­ed, every moment serv­ing the char­ac­ter and tone of the film. The scene of Snow run­ning into the woods as the trees claw at her dress con­tin­ues to haunt audi­ences to this day. Yet there’s also space for small­er moments, like a chip­munk sneez­ing him­self into a mug, liq­uid drip­ping men­ac­ing­ly into the shape of a skull or the con­stant­ly droop­ing sleeves of Dopey.

One of the high­lights of the film is a song and dance num­ber, seem­ing­ly in the film sim­ply for the sheer joy of it. The sev­en dwarfs play a jig while Snow White dances, in a sequence rem­i­nis­cent of the studio’s ear­li­er Sil­ly Sym­phonies. It’s a show­case for the skill of the ani­ma­tors, imbu­ing each dwarf with an instant­ly recog­nis­able char­ac­ter. One of Disney’s key tech­niques, ​‘Squash and Stretch’, leaves skin flex­i­ble and respon­sive to an exag­ger­at­ed ver­sion of physics. In this scene, you can watch the stretchy faces of the dwarfs as they respond to the music and to Snow, each twitch of a nose or wob­ble of a cheek per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing the essence of the char­ac­ter. Walt was deter­mined to show the poten­tial for fea­ture ani­ma­tion to be an art form in its own right; here you see that dream being achieved.

Snow White was a for­ma­tive moment in ani­ma­tion for Amer­i­can ani­ma­tors and audi­ences. John­ston and Thomas, Walt Disney’s trust­ed friends from the start, lit­er­al­ly wrote the book on char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion. Their 12 prin­ci­ples of ani­ma­tion are used along­side the writ­ing of Richard Williams as guid­ing lights for young ani­ma­tors even to this day. Beyond its tech­ni­cal achieve­ments, it also tapped into a form of sto­ry­telling that Dis­ney is still riff­ing on to this day, rev­el­ling in the joy of sim­ple storytelling.

Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs may not be com­plex or pro­gres­sive – it’s prob­a­bly even respon­si­ble for start­ing some harm­ful tropes that have haunt­ed children’s cin­e­ma – but it is still loved 80 years lat­er because it used every tool it could to cap­ture the cin­e­mat­ic thrill of romance, mag­ic and happily-ever-after.