Though we disagree with Disney marketing's hyperbole that it was "the one that started it all" (it was the one that formed a new foundation for the Disney empire, but the company was already quite well-known and had one of film's biggest stars on its payroll), Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was Walt Disney’s first – and to some, greatest – animated masterpiece.  The pre-Eisner Disney organization had long said that of all of Walt’s feature-length animated films, Snow White – arguably Walt’s most personal animated film -- would never be released to home video because of its special place in the company’s history; but after eight theatrical reissues 1994 saw the the title make it to VHS and laserdisc, and now to DVD in a beautiful, though imperfect, 2-disc set

Make no mistake, the film is slow-moving by today's standards; it's fun to watch the collection of trailers on the supplemental disc, as each one reflects the age in which it was made by dint of the acceleration of the editing.  But despite the pacing -- or, quite possibly, because of it -- the film has a magic that has not been equaled.

Dubbed by his detractors "Disney's Folly," Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was for Walt Disney an artistic masterpiece, as well as a personal success; the end result of a dream to pioneer animation in a scope beyond anyone's imaginings, Disney created what many were convinced could not be done. The familiar story, adapted from the Grimm brothers' tale, pulls in the audience with its imaginative development. This was animation as never before experienced, with images both engaging and terrifying. 

Disney wisely realized the film could only work if it was full of believable characters. Each personality is distinct, from the purity of Snow White to the absolute evil of the queen. The seven dwarfs are aptly named, with characteristics that match their demeanors, and even the animals display anthropomorphized traits. Disney realized the importance of the forest inhabitants to their human counterparts, and his standards for the animals were rigid. Each sequence is a gem, carefully created, reflecting the enormous work that went behind the film.

<>Not surprising given the control that the Disney organization has over the stories of Walt’s early years, the origin of the idea for this groundbreaking film is unclear. According to official biographies of Walt Disney, he had gotten the idea for the film when he was a newsboy in Kansas City, and he saw a major presentation of a silent film version of the story starring Marguerite Clark. The screening was held at the city's Convention Hall in February 1917, and the film was projected onto a four-sided screen using four separate projectors. The movie made a tremendous impression on the 15-year-old viewer because he was sitting where he could see two sides of the screen at once, and they were not quite in sync. Other sources put the germination of the idea in 1933, when after encountering a Parisian theater manager who made quite a profit showing a program of only cartoon shorts, Disney began to toy with the idea of creating a feature-length animation. He was interested in exploring character development within a cartoon, and saw feature length as the only logical forum.

In the fall of 1934, Disney brought together his animation staff and explained his idea, insistent that the studio would bring the Grimms' "Snow White" to the screen.  He spent the next hour performing the entire story for the assemblage, playing each part with perfection. His enthusiasm was contagious and the staff eagerly began work on the project. Disney projected a budget of $500,000, which sent his money-conscious brother Roy into a frenzy. "You're going to ruin us," Roy exclaimed. "Half a million dollars for a single film? Why can't we just stay with Mickey Mouse?" Considering that an average release of the time cost no more than $250,000 to make, Roy Disney's qualms were not without merit. However, Disney pressed on, determined to make his dream come true. 

Wanting to make Snow White look realistic, Disney had the wife of animator Art Babbit, dancer Margery Belcher (who later married Gower Champion and had a fine screen career of her own) photographed, then used this footage to create Snow White. Louis Hightower modeled Prince Charming. The witch side of the wicked queen was handled by character actress Lucille LaVerne, who specialized in such roles, having portrayed old hags in films such as Orphans Of The Storm and A Tale Of Two Cities. LaVerne served as both voice and visual model for the transformed queen. Voices were tested, and at one point Disney considered using 13-year-old Durbin. Though impressed with her audition, Disney felt recordings of Durbin's voice sounded too mature, and decided against her. He took to listening to actresses over a loudspeaker system so their voices could be judged non-visually on their own merit. Eventually 20-year-old Caselotti was chosen, as Disney felt her thin soprano was best for the character.

Production problems mounted as the film took shape. Because so much detail was going into each animation cel, the studio had to devise a new method of photographing the work. The cels used in short cartoons proved to be too small to accommodate Snow White, so the size had to be increased. Next, in order to create depth of field, Disney employed the multiplane camera, an animation camera first used on the highly acclaimed short The Old Mill. This camera had seven tiers and was capable of photographing numerous cels simultaneously. Each cel could be moved at a different rate of speed to create realistic parallax differences between "near" and "far" objects, lending a feeling of depth to the picture. The result was a clear image capable of holding an incredible amount of information. With this camera, the Disney animators were able to conjure up some amazing moments. As Snow White runs through the forest, trees leap out, the eyes dance in horror, and logs change into alligators with frightening ease. The climactic chase of the dwarfs and the queen, a confrontation between good and evil, also benefits with the marvelous coloring of the sky, the shadows, the falling rocks, and the two ominous vultures that lurk above, swooping downward after the queen takes her plunge to doom. Some of the subtler character details were developed in less extravagant ways. Frank Thomas, a Disney animator, recalled (in the Christopher Finch book The Art of Walt Disney) the struggle to give Snow White's face a little color. Tinting only made her face red, but one woman in the inking department hit on a novel idea. "One of the girls said, 'Walt, can we try putting a little rouge on her cheeks?' He said, 'What do you mean?' So she took out her makeup kit and put some rouge on the cel and it looked keen. Walt said, 'Yeah, but how the hell are you going to get it in the same place every day? And on each drawing.' And the girl said, 'What do you think we've been doing all our lives? They just knew where it ought to go and, without any kind of guide, they made Snow White up on each cel..."

As the production wore on, problems grew with funding. "We considered changing the name of the picture from Snow White to Frankenstein," Disney later remarked. With the film still incomplete, the production found itself in need of another $500,000 to finish. Roy contacted the Bank of America in hopes of getting a loan. Joseph Rosenberg, an official with that institution, contacted other movie officials on the project's potential. Most felt a feature-length cartoon was a foolhardy idea, and Louis Mayer, the callous head of MGM, told Rosenberg: "Who'd pay to see a drawing of a fairy princess when they can watch Joan Crawford's boobs for the same price at the box office?" Though Disney was protective of the yet unseen footage, he finally acquiesced to Roy's pleadings when Bank of America executives wanted to see what Rosenberg was so eager to sink half a million dollars into. An extremely rough cut was shown, while Disney ad-libbed a narration to link the sequences. For moments where the footage was still unfinished, Disney himself substituted, once more playing out the Snow White story for a highly responsive audience. Fred Moore, an animator sitting in on the session, later recalled: "It was just too brilliant for words! Walt had never been so good, so eloquent. He played every single role in the movie, and each one was worth an Oscar. Even Roy, who was a tough nut to crack, had tears running down his cheeks." (Quoted from Disney's World by Leonard Mosley.) The loan was approved and the film neared completion. Confidence was high, and in an unprecedented move, Radio City Music Hall booked the film a year in advance, boldly taking out a Variety ad to announce their move. 

Shortly before the opening Disney cut some of the film's sequences, including one depicting the death of Snow White's mother (pictures of which had already appeared in Look magazine), and another in which the dwarfs indulge in some soup (both sequences have been included on the supplementary disc). Disney felt these sequences, though good, slowed the plot development. Ward Kimball, who had worked on the soup-eating sequence, later recalled: "...That was one of the early tragedies of my life.... As much as he hated to do it -- he even called me up on the phone and apologized -- he had to take it out of the picture.

Disney premiered his film December 21, 1937 at the Cathay Circle Theater in Hollywood, determined to show the filmmaking community that feature animation had triumphant­ly come to stay. Speaking before the star-studded crowd, Disney exclaimed: "I always dreamed that one day I would attend a gala premiere in Hollywood of one of my cartoons. Tonight you've made it come true. You make me feel like one of you." Later in the evening, he told his wife Lilly, "They no longer think I smell bad. It's wonderful!" Public reception was equally enthusiastic. The final budget, coming in at $1.5 million (Disney sources quote $1.4 million), was made back and then some as Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs grossed over $8 million in its first release, a figure that would translate into several hundreds of millions in today's dollars. For a while after its release, the film became the high­est grossing motion picture of all time, until finally surpassed by Gone with the Wind a couple of years later. This statistic is all the more surprising when one realizes that children were paying a dime to get into the theaters in 1937, and the film, of course, had great appeal to that age group. Re-releases added to the profit, making this Disney's single most popular film. Snow White-related items were also big business, with "Dopey" toys making over $100,000 for their manufacturer. A Snow White Cafe even opened on Hollywood Boulevard, complete with the title characters' footprints memorialized in cement.

Disney's vision proved to be a powerful one in its depictions of good versus evil, and some of the sequences were so frightening that in England, the film was deemed too scary for children, and those under 16 had to be accompanied by a parent (making it effectively Disney's only R-rated animated film). Disney received special recognition at the Oscar ceremonies for his work, accepting (from presenter Shirley Temple) one large statuette accompanied by seven smaller Oscars. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs remains a classic film, a shining example of the wonderment and brilliance that defines the best Disney animation. A stage version of the movie played at Radio City Music Hall in New York in 1979. For its 1993 reissue the film was completely restored, being the first ever to be completely digitized by computer, cleaned up, and then printed back to film. The film was reissued eight times, in 1944, 1952, 1958, 1967, 1975, 1983, 1987, and 1993, and released on video in 1994.

Technical

Video:	Fullscreen 1.33:1 (Original Academy ratio)
Audio:	ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC] ENGLISH: Original Mono FRENCH: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles:	English, Closed Captions

The film is presented in its original 1:33:1 aspect ratio, and this is easily the best video presentation the film has ever seen.  Colors are vibrant, though not oversaturated, and the image is so sharp that the movement between cels is noticeable -- in some scenes almost to the point of being distracting.  This we found surprising since Snow White, more than later feature length animated films, relies greatly on 24-frame animation.  Before the use of computers in interpolating cels, it was usually the case that cel elements lasted two frames in order to reduce costs, particularly in slower-moving scenes where the differences between frames would be small (modern anime is often drawn so that only six or fewer frames per second contain movement).  To reduce the obviousness of this, overlapped cels would be double-photographed alternately; the effect on the screen would be that as you step through the frames, two objects would alternate movement.  But Snow White had little of this, as animators were still working their way through the process.  Previous incarnations of the film were slightly blurrier, which served to hide the frame flickering; the new look is not objectionable, but we mention it only to point up the new clarity.

Compared to the 1994 laserdisc restoration, overscan has been reduced and slightly more of the original frame is visible, particularly along the right side.  Though we hadn't noticed at the time, colors on the 1994 restoration are slightly yellower than the new DVD, although it's difficult to tell which is more "correct."  Both are acceptable; the new color correction serves to freshen the look of the film and appears much closer in tone to the distinct color palette of Technicolor film stock, but the older palette had a charming look that felt right for a film of this vintage.  Either would have been acceptable.

What would not have been acceptable would be to have left uncorrected the "staticness" of the 1994 restoration.  Digitized image processing had been relatively raw at the time, and the result was a picture that had been so jitter-corrected that the film completely lost its organic feel.  Thankfully, seven years' advances in the field have done much to reduce the artifice, and the new restoration seems to have greatly reduced that negative side effect.

For the 1994 theatrical rerelease and subsequent home video, Disney remixed the original mono soundtrack into stereo; here they've gone a step further and remixed it yet again into a new 5.1 matrix that may be fine for younger viewers, but we prefer the original mono track -- and Disney has thankfully provided it on an alternate audio track.  There are times when we would like to shake marketing people by the shoulders and tell them that it's not necessary for every film to have the audio presence of Star Wars; Snow White does just fine with a non-directional soundtrack (particularly when Caselotti's Jeanette MacDonald-like soprano is front-and-center)

The DVD features clever animated menus featuring new animations of the Magic Mirror, painstakingly drawn in the style of the movie but with humorous lines and readings that place it clearly in today's world ("Please make a selection; I don't have forever.  Oh wait, yes I do.").  Once a selection is made the interstical animations take a little longer than we would prefer, but it fits in with the leisurely pace of the film's style.

Easter eggs:  On disc two, Select "Wishing Well / History," then go left for a hidden selection that will take you to the DVD credits. There are likely to be other Easter eggs, too; if you find one, post it below.

The packaging consists of a double Amaray-style case with one of the better-done inserts we've seen for DVD; besides the standard chapter list, the booklet includes several fold-out pages containing a full "site map" of the two discs, making it a fairly simple task to hunt down any desired feature.  We wish that future producers of dense special editions will use this design as a model.

Supplements

Movie disc:

• VIP tour of Disc One (20:58)
• The Making of Walt Disney's "Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs" (38:52)
• All-New Rendition Of "Some Day My Prince Will Come," performed by Barbra Streisand (4:03)
• "Heigh-Ho" -- Karaoke or Sing-Along (2:30)
• -Silly Symphony animated short "The Goddess Of Spring" (9:43)
• Audio Commentary, featuring Walt Disney (84:00)
• Set-top game, "Dopey's Wild Mine Ride"
• VIP tour of Disc Two (2:55)
• DVD-ROM content 

Supplementary disc:

	·	Snow White's Wishing Well
		·	History And Development
			·	Walt Disney Biographical Timeline
			·	"Snow White" Production Timeline
			·	Brothers Grimm Original Version Of "Snow White"
		·	Story
			·	Introduction To Storyboards
			·	Storyboard To Film Comparisons:
				·	The Queen Orders Snow White's Death
				·	Snow White And The Huntsman/Forest Chase
				·	Snow White And Animals Clean House
				·	The Dwarfs Chase The Witch
	·	The Queen's Castle (Art And Design)
		·	Visual Development Gallery
			·	Preliminary Designs And Deleted Concepts
		·	Layouts And Backgrounds
			·	About Layouts And Backgrounds
			·	Layouts And Backgrounds Gallery
		·	Camera And Tests
			·	Excerpt From "The Story Of The Silly Symphony"
			·	Camera And Filter Tests
		·	Animation
			·	Character Voice Talent
			·	Live-Action Footage
			·	Character Design Galleries:
				·	Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
				·	Queen/Witch
				·	Huntsman/Prince/Animals
	·	The Queen's Dungeon
		·	Abandoned Concepts
			·	Snow White Meets The Prince
			·	"Some Day My Prince Will Come" (Fantasy Version)
			·	The Prince Is Captured
		·	The Restoration Of "Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs"
	·	The Dwarfs' Mine (Rare Treasures)
		·	Deleted Scenes
			·	Introduction
			·	The Witch At The Cauldron
			·	The Dwarfs' Bedroom Argument
			·	Song: "Music In Your Soup"
			·	The Lodge Meeting
			·	Building A Bed For Snow White
		·	Original Opening And End Credits
		·	Disney Through The Decades
	·	The Dwarfs' Cottage (Wonder Of An Era Gone By)
		·	The Release
			·	Los Angeles Premiere
			·	Merchandise
			·	Restoration
			·	Trailers
		·	Publicity
		·	Poster Gallery
		·	Publicity Scrapbook
·	Vintage Black and White Short Subjects
	·	"A Trip Through Walt Disney Studios"
	·	"How Disney Cartoons Are Made" (Tricks of Our Trade?)
·	Supplemental Audio
	·	Lux Radio Theater, 1936 and 1937 Radio Broadcasts From The Premiere Of "Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs" (1937)
	·	Mickey Mouse Theater Of The Air (1938)
	·	Radio Commercials
	·	Deleted Song: "You're Never Too Old To Be Young"

By number if not running time, most -- though not all -- of the supplements contained on the two DVDs date from the 1994 laserdisc remastering. They comprise a fascinating insight into the making of this historic film, and it is wonderful to have them available again to reach a wider audience.

The DVD includes nearly all of the supplements originally found on "The Making Of A Masterpiece" (the title given to the supplemental third disc in the 1994 $100 boxed "Deluxe CAV LaserDisc Edition"), updated versions of the remaining supplements, and a few brand-new items: "The Prince Is Captured" abandoned scene and "Disney Through The Decades," among others.

The supplements' image quality is not up to the standard set by the film proper, which is to be expected as they have not gone through the same restoration process, but they are still wonderful -- and appear here in a much sharper quality than in the previous laserdisc version.

In total, there has never been a DVD set with the price/value ratio of this opening salvo in Disney's "Platinum Collection."  We truly hope that future titles in the series can approach the care and quality that have been lavished on Snow White.