Snow-White
Tags: psychedelic

Plot synopsis:
At the beginning of the story, a queen sits sewing at an open window during a winter snowfall when she pricks her finger with her needle, causing three drops of red blood to drip onto the freshly fallen white snow on the black windowsill. Then, she says to herself, "How I wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony." Some time later, the queen gives birth to a baby daughter whom she names Snow White, but dies shortly thereafter.
A year later, Snow White's father, the king, takes a new wife, who is very beautiful, but a wicked and vain woman. The new queen possesses a magic mirror, which she asks every morning, "Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?" The mirror always replies: "My queen, you are the fairest in the land." The queen is always pleased with that, because the magic mirror never lies. But as Snow White grows up, she becomes more beautiful each day and even more beautiful than the queen, and when the queen asks her mirror, it tells her that Snow White is the fairest.
This gives the queen a great shock. She becomes envious, and from that moment on, her heart turns against Snow White, whom the queen grows to hate increasingly with time. Eventually, the angry queen orders a huntsman to take Snow White into the deepest woods to be killed. As proof that Snow White is dead, the queen demands that he returns with her lungs and liver. The huntsman takes Snow White into the forest. After raising his knife, he finds himself unable to kill her and he spares her life. Snow White is told that her stepmother wants her dead and to get far away from the kingdom as possible. He instead brings the queen the heart of a wild animal.
After wandering through the forest, Snow White discovers a tiny cottage belonging to a group of seven dwarfs. Since no one is at home, she eats some of the tiny meals, drinks some of their wine, and then tests all the beds. Finally, the last bed is comfortable enough for her and she falls asleep. When the dwarfs return home, they immediately become aware that someone snuck in secretly, because everything in their home is in disorder. During their loud discussion about who snuck in, they discover the sleeping Snow White. She wakes up and explains to them what happened, and the dwarfs take pity on her and let her stay with them in exchange for housekeeping. They warn her to be careful when alone at home and to let no one in when they are away delving in the mountains.
Meanwhile, the queen asks her mirror once again: "Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?" The mirror replies: "My queen, you are the fairest here so true. But Snow White beyond the mountains at the Seven Dwarfs is a thousand times more beautiful than you". The queen is horrified to learn that the huntsman has betrayed her and that Snow White is still alive. Planning to kill Snow White, the queen disguises herself as an old peddler. The queen appears at the dwarfs' cottage and offers Snow White colorful, silky laced bodices and convinces Snow White to take the most beautiful laces as a present. Then the queen laces her up so tightly that Snow White faints, causing the queen to leave her for dead. But the dwarfs return just in time, and Snow White revives when the dwarfs loosen the laces.
The queen then consults her magic mirror again, and the mirror reveals Snow White's survival. The queen dresses as a comb seller and convinces Snow White to take a beautiful comb as a present. She brushes Snow White's hair with the poisoned comb and the girl faints again. She is again revived by the dwarfs when they remove the comb from her hair. When the mirror again indicates that Snow White still lives, the queen makes a third and final attempt on Snow White by disguising herself as a farmer's wife, an offering a poisoned apple to her. The girl is at first hesitant to accept it, so the queen cuts the apple in half, eating the white (harmless) half and giving the red poisoned half to Snow White. The girl eagerly takes a bite and falls into a state of suspended animation. This time, the dwarfs are unable to revive Snow White. Assuming that she is dead, they place her in a glass casket.
After a short period of time, a prince traveling through the land sees Snow White. He strides to her coffin. Enchanted by her beauty, he instantly falls in love with her. The seven dwarfs succumb to his entreaties to let him have Snow White. The moment he lifts the coffin to carry it away, the piece of poisoned apple falls from between her lips and Snow White awakens saying "Where am I?" The Prince then declares his love for her and soon a wedding is planned. Snow White and the prince invite everyone to come to their wedding party, including Snow White's stepmother.
Meanwhile, the queen, still believing that Snow White is dead, again asks her magic mirror who is the fairest in the land. The mirror says: "Thou, lady, art loveliest here, I ween; but lovelier far is the new-made queen", which enrages the queen. Not knowing that the Prince's bride is her stepdaughter, the queen arrives at the wedding and sees that the bride is Snow White, whom she thought dead. She chokes with rage, falls down, and dies. Snow White and the prince reign happily over the land for many, many years and sometimes traveling into the mountains and visiting the dwarfs, who had been so kind to Snow White.

Review: The Strangest Snow White You'l Ever See. This is another of those Betty Boop cartoons that feature two things: music and an insane storyline with wild visuals where crazy things happen one after the other.
I say that because this is not any Snow White story you've ever seen.
It's so strange, and it's almost hard to describe.In one fairly long scene, we hear the voice of the great Cab Calloway while some ghostly spirit-like figure dances through some Dante's Infero/hello underground.
It's really bizarre!Earlier, we get the ugly queen talking several times to her "looking glass" (mirror) with dialog such as, "Am I the fairest in the place?"The mirror answers, " If I was you, I'd hide my face!"I'm telling you; these guys MUST have been on acid who wrote and drew some of these early Betty Boop cartoons!
You can't do much better in terms of pure, clever cinematic fun, than revisit these Betty Boops, the ones that mix Cab Calloway, ghouls and sexy Betty cavorting with demons.
This is much more complex, mixing in Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, all of which would be mined by Disney later.What brought me back to this was seeing "Corpse Bride." It was brilliant, I thought, and drew heavily from the two "Skeleton Dance" cartoons and this little window into the underworld given to us by the Fleischers.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching..
This is a wonderful short humorous cartoon, predating the Disney feature inspired by the same folk-tale.The Wicked Witch/Queen is jealous of Betty Boop's beauty, and orders Boop's execution.
As in "Minnie The Moocher", the scene shifts to a spooky cave where we are serenaded by the voice of Cab Calloway.The music and action mesh beautifully, keeping the momentum strong throughout.
Watch carefully for a plethora of visual jokes to the sides and behind the action.Unfortunately, most copies of this cartoon on video were taken from 1950s television prints, which cut off part of the frame.This is perhaps as close to perfection as the Fleischer Studios achieved.
Most of this cartoon is top-notch Fleischer fare and definitely worth watching, but there's one part that makes it absolutely stand out: the darkly hypnotic scene where Koko the Clown sings an elegy in Cab Calloway's voice in the underworld while Betty Boop is marched down in her glass coffin by pallbearers.
The first time I saw it, it was literally breathtaking; all conversation in the room stopped as soon as Calloway started singing, and we watched, hypnotized, as Koko turns into a skeleton and dances with Calloway's moves in Hell while skeleton fish fly through the air and skeleton humans play poker deep in the background.
A great short and possibly the best Fleischer ever did!.
The music is perfect, the animation is superb and quite darkly creepy in spots, the story is excellent and everything fits together like a seamless jigsaw puzzle.
When Koko (voiced by Cab Calloway) sings "St. James Infirmary Blues", watch his movements.
The animators captured Cab Calloway's movements perfectly here.
The character is Koko, but the walk is Calloway and it works completely.
Anyone who is a fan of both Koko and Cab Calloway (I may be the only one, although I hope not) will see both characters in one place at one time, a perfect blend without either dominating.
I bow humbly to genius.
you can not get animation like this anymore, apparently it scares children, but how i do long for the sight of Betty Boop being carried in a frozen coffin by 7 dwarfs into a tunnel.
for many, the Fleischer's aren't their cup of tea (not making sense, not the best animation, creepy) but for me, the animation is fun and inventive and is far more intelligent than Disney's work which i find un-stimulating at times and can drag.
fair enough, they embellish the story a tad but, to be fair, they only had ten minutes and they still managed to produce innovations (the dancing, singing, transformed coco the clown has his dancemoves roto-scoped from Cab Calloway's dancing, roto-scoping was invented by them).But, what i believe sets this out as a true gem among gems is Cab Calloway.
the music is enthralling, the animation entertaining and the end product, magical.
This cartoon starring Betty Boop as Snow White, also with elements from 'Sleeping Beauty', is funny from start to finish.
It shows how the queen is no longer the fairest in the land, but Betty Boop.
They lift her up in her bed of ice and take her into a cave where the story gets the happy ending.The whole things is put on music that sounds very familiar.
Not only funny but with nice animation as well, this is one of the better cartoons I have seen..
Their visual style often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her.
Koko is hilarious with some really imaginatively strange moments, while Cab Calloway's involvement proves to be a masterstroke.'Snow-White' is for me up there with Betty Boop's best cartoons, the story of 'Snow White' is told at its most wonderfully weird and a case of that done to great advantage.
It's so rich in imagination, never less than entertaining and is up there as one of Betty's boldest.Furthermore, the black and white animation is extremely good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive.
A lot of it is actually very imaginative as well, some of the most inventive and eye-popping of the early Betty Boop cartoons to me.
Even better is the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the composition style.Overall, outstanding cartoon and up there among Betty Boop's best.
This is one of the great cartoons of all time..
Decent Betty Boop.
Trouble starts when the queen's magic mirror says Betty Boop is fairest.
Cab Calloway sings "St. James Infirmary Blues." The part of the cartoon with the Snow White story is pretty decent, though nothing really all that amazing, either.
It has the distinction, I believe, of beating Walt Disney to the story, though this film does not nearly do what Disney did.I love how when Cab Calloway appears in Betty Boop cartoons, it is always weird and sort of spooky.
There is another Cab Calloway cartoon, and I suspect he is every bit as weird in that..
An Evil Stepmother and a Magic Mirror--Must be Snow White.
Betty Boop was the signature of surrealism in her time.
Here she goes to visit her evil stepmother/queen, who is caught up in asking her mirror who the fairest is.
Then Betty Boop shows up.
Wonderfully bizarre and well animated version of Snow White.
When the Simpsons or other modern animations try to create the "old style" cartoons from the 20's or 30's they tend to do it by having black and white figures constantly bopping around in motion even when standing on the spot not doing anything.
That is the style that is here in this 1933 version of Snow White.
The plot is essentially an evil stepmother seeks to kill Snow White when her magic mirror turns its affections to the younger woman but from here we have some variety in the telling as the dwarfs are hardly in it and instead we spend a lot of time with a ghost singing a Cab Calloway song in some sort of hellish underground mine.As a version of the story is not where you want to go for the story, but as a cartoon it is very enjoyable because it is creative and fluid in what it does.
The first half is pretty good and I liked it for its old style animation and sense of character but the second half is much better when the song starts and we focus on this ghost character changing shape etc in time to the words and music.
The animation does have this great vision to it – as another IMDb writer here has said, if this was done in the 1960's we would have said the guy was stoned but that it was a real trip; it does say a lot that this cartoon from the 1930's fitted in so easily with the style in the 60's and 70's.It is worth seeing because although it not a hilarious cartoon it is creative with the animation and all has a very nice flow to it – and the addition of Cab Calloway singing just adds to the appeal..
SNOW-WHITE {Short} (Dave Fleischer, 1933) ***.
Another of the Fleischer Studios' "Betty Boop" cartoons, here putting their mark on a beloved fairy-tale 4 years before this was immortalized by the rival Walt Disney Productions, which would be chosen for the company's first feature-length venture.
Though we still get to hear Cab Calloway sing a tune (through the usually silent Koko!), thankfully, the idea that an animated short basically serve as a promo for the current musical hit was on its way out by this stage.
Here, Betty obviously fills the title role – arriving at the castle to visit her stepmother, the Evil Queen; when the latter's proverbial mirror states that the heroine is truly the fairest in the land, the older woman orders her beheading (taking a leaf out of "Alice In Wonderland"!).
Incidentally, the Seven Dwarfs barely figure into this at all: Snow-White turns up on their doorstep already encased in ice!
Snow White (1933) *** (out of 4)Very good telling of the famous story has the Wicked Witch getting upset when her mirror says that Betty Boop is better so it's off with her head.
Boop ends up with the seven dwarfs but the Wicked Witch comes looking for her.
This film certainly isn't in the same league as the Disney feature that would follow four years later but this is still fairly interesting and features a terrific closing song.
The nearly seven-minute running time goes by quite fast and we get some good visuals including the various ghosts and other dancing going on.
I think the highlight is towards the end when Koko the Clown sings a song but it's Cab Calloway doing the actual singing and it's very good.
I doubt anyone is going to watch this and throw away their Disney versions but this one here is certainly worth checking out..
This Betty Boop cartoon has a higher rating than Disney's SNOW WHITE?!?!?
In 1937, Disney produced the ground-breaking full-length cartoon, SNOW WHITE.
Four years earlier, Fleischer Studios made a short version of this classic tale and it starred, of all characters, Betty Boop.
Now, for the average Betty Boop cartoon, SNOW-WHITE is a pretty good cartoon--but I would never confuse Betty Boop with great art!
The animation, while decent for 1934, is incredibly poor compared to the Disney effort--yet miraculously the overall score for this short is higher than the great Disney film--even though SNOW WHITE is one of the best and most important films in animation history!
The very cartoony black and white artwork is passable but shows little artistic flair and,...well,...it's only Betty Boop!
About the only really interesting thing is a musical number performed by Koko the Clown and is actually sung by the great Cab Calloway.An oddity, of course...but NOT in the same league as the Disney classic..
Average cartoon overshadowed by Calloway.
This cartoon is about average- the storyline is somewhat contrived, some of the voices (the witch with the mirror) are terrible.
These shorts were definite precursors to some of the more imaginative 70's cartoons.There is one part of this film that definitely shines above the rest- when one of the Witch's guards breaks out into song.
The voice is Cab Calloway, singing "The St. James Infirmary Blues"- the song is absolutely amazing and fits right into the movie.
The way the animation flows through his song, and the transformations that the guard goes through as he sings are just amazing.Calloway and the animation make this average cartoon remarkable- 9/10.
A Delicious Feat of Genius!.
In today's Politically Correct world, something like this is an absolute treasure; the sort of thing even the best of today's cartoons don't even approach.
"St. James Infirmary Blues," what a great song; Cab Calloway, what a GREAT musician!
The collective imagination of the artists who created the breathtaking imagery of happy skeletons laughing and playing games during the Great Depression's darkest year -- what a treat!These cartoons were made for the general public and that included children.
Betty Boop's take on this classic fairy tale.
Mention Snow White and everybody will immediately think of the Disney masterpiece; this version made four years earlier is much more surreal though...
Betty Boop appears as the eponymous Snow White and her regular sidekicks Bimbo and Koko appear as a pair of Knights who are ordered to chop of her head when the queen's magic mirror says that Snow White is the fairest in the land.
After a series of mishaps the end up in a cave, Betty in what appears to be an 'ice coffin'; the evil queen turns up and uses the mirror to turn Koko into a strange apparition that sings 'St, James Infirmary Blues'.
Ultimately the mirror saves Betty and her friends and turns the queen into a hideous monster.This was a very imaginative take on the Snow White story; cramming the whole tale into just seven minutes; including a musical interlude featuring the voice of the great Cab Callaway as Koko.
and Betty's Snow White might not be as well known as Disney's but I don't recall the latter's doing a rather sensual dance while tied to a tree!
If you haven't seen this I'd definitely recommend checking it out; you might not think of Snow White in the same afterwards though!.
Funniest Snow White ever.
Only the Fleischer studios would be able to make a cartoon like this, showing all the magic and imaginativeness from the Golden Age of Animation.There always have been several condensed versions of fairy tales, and several parodies as well, but none of those condensed versions or parodies were so wonderfully crazy as this one.This short is funny, beautifully animated and incredibly strange and imaginative, taking a very well-know story from the perspective of the Fleischer Studios animations, being one of the fascinating animated shorts ever made.There aren't cartoons like this anymore, and that's a shame.10/10 (I would rate this with eleven stars if I could).
This is "Snow-White", the Betty Boop version.
However, I have to say this has nothing on the classic animated "Snow White" film that was done a couple years later.
But the best thing about this 7-minute black-and-white cartoon to me was Cab Calloway.
Great singing voice really, but not enough to make this film worth a watch in my opinion.
Betty Boop as Snow White.
This black & white cartoon appeared far before Disney released its version of "Snow White," and it shares little in common with it aside from the the witch with her mirror and the dwarfs.
Betty Boop is the eponymous character, and she is a sexy little thing in a black mini-skirt.
Everything gets off on the wrong foot when the Queen learns from her mirror (this is the same mirror that comes to life and shines her snout like a shoe-shine boy) that she is the fairest in the land--that is--until Betty arrives.
Interestingly enough, the mirror resembles an African-American singer Cab Calloway.
Narratively, Betty Boop visits the Queen's castle in search of her step-mama.
When she approaches the Queen, Her Highness sticks her face through her magic mirror as if it were a hoop and her head transforms into a skillet with two fried eyes as she ogles Betty.
The next scene shows Betty tied to a tree while KoKo sharpens his ax.
Betty's mournful song distracts KoKo enough that he grins his ax into powder.
The magic mirror doesn't tell the Queen what she wants to hear and she scoops the snow off the entrance to the hole and steps through her mirror, transforming herself into the witch.
She rides the mirror like a broom down to the end of the hole and KoKo and his canine pal follow her.
At this point, KoKo warbles a tune but it is really Cab Calloway singing "St. James Infirmary Blues." Truly, this cartoon qualifies as the most unusual rendition of Snow White ever seen!.
Marvel at the animation done to "St. James Infirmary" on Fleischer's Snow-White.
If there's a unique classic moment in a Fleischer cartoon, it has to be the "St. James Infirmary" number recorded by Cab Calloway as enacted by Koko the Clown who during this number has the evil Queen place her mirror through him and turns him into, I guess, some ghoul that does some great Calloway steps due to the rotoscoping that was done here.
Most of the other stuff involving Betty and Bimbo were pretty entertaining but nothing here compares to the sequence I just mentioned.
So on that note, Max Fleischer's Snow-White is definitely recommended..
There's an old- fashioned animated short for just about anything you could think of.
There's ones about Santa, living toys candy and musical instruments, gods and devils, good and evil, seasons of the year, animals, bugs...But this one, this is the fevered dream of a madman one!
Not so much any real kind of Snow White tale, more of a revolving freakshow of phantasmagorical imagery gone wild.
I'm not sure why, but the sight of Betty Boop's freakishly large, melon-like head bugged me.
It's awesome and disturbing all at once, and absolute nonsense from start to finish, but ever so much wicked fun to watch-a surreal triumph of early animation and a visual feast!!!