And I suppose `The Pickwick Papers' was Charles Dickens's best novel

Rating: 8/10 (4 January 2000)

What was the first X-rated animated film? Most people who have any kind of clue at all would say `Fritz the Cat', but they'd be wrong. It's `Snow White'! - which received the equivalent of an X-rating in South Africa. (Parts of it ARE grisly, even if the Grimm brothers' story was more grisly still: in the story, the Queen asked for Snow White's lungs and liver - with the intention of eating them.) This should dispel anyone's idea that the film is all cloying sentimentality.
Here's another one: `Gone with the Wind' was the biggest box office hit of the 1930s, but what was the second biggest? Oh, well, I guess everyone here knows the answer to that one. It must be said that the second-biggest hit deserved its success far more than the first.
`Snow White' can boast other things, too. But let's not get carried away and say that in addition it's the BEST film of the 1930s, or the best animated film of all time, or Disney's supreme masterpiece, or something silly of that kind. It clearly isn't any of these things. Let's distinguish between `good considering that it's a first effort' and good simpliciter, and see how `Snow White' rates.
Many things are good simpliciter. Although the visual spectacle is dwarfed by that of `Pinocchio' and `Fantasia' - to name but two - it's still visual spectacle, and it still works. Some of the special effects can still startle us. (I have absolutely no idea how they managed to get that shot of Snow White's reflection in well, for instance.) The art direction vividly creates a world of cosy dwellings surrounded by choking forest. The use of colour is as marvellous and subtle as anything the studio produced after 1942 (if not quite up to the standards set by `Fantasia' or `Bambi'). In fact, every single feature after `101 Dalmations' (1961) fails to measure up to `Snow White' so far as colour is concerned. A muted, watercolour effect (achieved WITHOUT actual watercolours) is enlivened by the rare splash of brilliance on the Queen's cape or on the poisoned apple, but there's more to it than that. Note how we're not shown a wide palette of colours until the dwarfs appear, when it seems that every hue under the sun makes its way onto the screen. The dwarfs are the only rounded characters, representing, between them, all aspects of humanity. (Brilliantly animated, by the way.) It's surprising, or perhaps it isn't, that in an age in which computers allow art directors to fiddle around with the colour balance as much as they like, no-one seems to be able to use colour nearly so effectively.
But there are also signs that the art wasn't yet ripe. The most obvious one is the limited range: `Snow White' never does anything more than a particularly good pantomime might do (which is more than you might think), and while this isn't even a flaw, it does mean that the film simply can't compare with the broader masterpieces Disney produced immediately afterwards (`Pinocchio', `Fantasia', `Dumbo', `Bambi'). In 1937, Disney (and Hand and everyone else at the studio) still didn't know what to do to make a well-proportioned cartoon over an hour in length. After the dwarfs have been around for a while the film starts to lose its way. It even has to resort to title-card narration, indicating that while the first part of the story had been thought through properly, the rest hadn't been. And there are minor technical difficulties throughout, with awkward animation of Snow White here, a clumsy use of the multiplane camera there.
Don't get me wrong. It's a lovely film, among the better ones the studio has produced. We do it no service when we exaggerate its virtues.