Disney’s latest bright idea—a‘woke’ remake of its 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, without the dwarfs—hasn’t gone down overwhelmingly well. As Laura Dodsworth points out:
Snow White is the latest remake and misstep from a company that appears determined to fail. In a recent controversial interview, Rachel Zegler, who plays the princess, trashed the original film as outdated, cancelled Prince Charming and acted a little too big for her princess slippers. Perhaps playing a Girl Boss version of Snow White went to her head?
Laura Dodsworth, How the Woke Fairy Cursed Disney
Here, anyway, rising from the grave, is the review that I wrote for In Dublin magazine, when the original surfaced in Dublin, one Christmas back in the early ‘eighties…
The supporting feature to this year’s Walt Disney Christmas release is a short cartoon about a boy and his donkey, The Small One. Originally released in 1978, it exhibits all the weaknesses of the studio’s late animation style. The figures remain flat cut-outs, only tenuously related to the environment they are supposed to inhabit. The graphic style lacks conviction and, half-way through, undergoes a disconcerting change. The Small One is of interest only in comparison with the film it supports, Disney’s first, wonderful full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, made in 1937.
As well as reflecting a decline in confidence and inspiration which became acute after its founder’s death in 1966, the inadequacies of the studio’s late work are also, I suspect, economically determined. Animation is, after all, a time-consuming, labour-intensive art. An 83-minute cartoon is an expensive proposition. In some of the forest sequences in Snow White, some thirty animals bound across the screen. Each one is individually characterised and animated. It is impossible not to share the production team’s collective exuberance, their pride in their own skill, their joy in the possibilities of the techniques they were pioneering. Alas, such prodigality is no longer economically feasible, even if the studio still had the heart to attempt it.
Not that Snow White is unflawed. Disney’s best work came later and, back in 1937, there were still technical lapses: the Prince’s horse does not always tread securely on the ground, and the drawing of the dwarfs’ heads is sometimes unhappy. Indeed, with changed attitudes to physical difference, the dwarfs seem in questionable taste; and the film’s treatment of Dopey, who, apart from being small, is made the butt of cruel jokes against his mental retardation and cross-eyes, is simply offensive.
And then there is Snow White herself. It is hard to see why the dwarfs should fall so enthusiastically for her, since she gives them a pretty hard time, ordering them about like so many recalcitrant children. She is a vapid, charmless creature, much given to warbling in a voice so high- pitched as to pass almost beyond the range of the human ear. Her urge for domesticity and order is quite alarming. Entering the dwarfs’ house, her first impulse is to clean it from top to bottom, and she rallies the forest animals to the task with all the enthusiasm of a Regimental Sergeant Major. Clearly she is a Young American Miss and will make the Prince a wonderful Wife And Mother To His Children.
Yet when I tried to root for the Wicked Queen, I couldn’t quite manage it. As the tiny birds and fluffy bunnies nestled up to Snow White in the forest; as she shrilled into Someday My Prince Will Come… and as he did come, to wake her with a kiss and lead her to his golden castle in the clouds, I found myself sobbing helplessly into the pack of paper tissues that I always take to one of the old Disney cartoons.
Donald Hounam 