Top 15 Disney films I grew up with, #13

#13: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Now we come to a film much more deserving of a place in the top fifteen. If it were judged by modern standards, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (yeah, the spelling of "Dwarves" kind of irks me too) would be considered a terrible film. But it was the first feature-length animation that Disney ever made, way back in the 30s when Hitler was just getting started. It’s definitely a ground-breaking film, historically speaking, considering colour had only just become a thing, though the Depression somewhat crippled its initial success.

 Do I even need to explain the story? For the sake of not making this review longer than it should be, I’ll assume everyone knows it. Snow White established the Disney fairy tale genre with the mundane heroine, the mundane prince charming, the comedic side characters (in this case the dwarfs) and the purely malevolent villain. Disney’s more popular movies always have great villains and the evil queen, though some might say otherwise, is no exception. She is very well animated and has always given me the creeps, particularly when she transforms into a hag, though I don’t understand why she also has to go from being quiet and calculating to loud and cackling. She’s not the same character in a different body. She’s a different character.

But I shouldn’t point out every logical flaw in this movie. I did not forgive Pocahontas because it tried to give itself credibility with dates and names. Snow White is a fairy tale, so it doesn't have to make sense. It revels in the fairy tale’s emotional simplicity, and does a good job at balancing the cute and fluffy scenes that make me gag with the scary scenes that gave me nightmares.

As well as the queen, whose very name inspires fear in the other characters, I enjoy all of the dwarfs with their vivid comical personalities, especially Grumpy, who seems to keep the movie grounded with his cynical attitude, and Dopy, whose antics are particularly favourable among younger audiences. Doc, however, is so nice that he’s annoying. Kind of like Snow White.

Snow White is definitely the weirdest-looking of the Disney princesses. She looks like a baby’s head on a pre-pubescent girl’s body on the legs of a grown woman, and she acts like no female of any species in any time period. Watching this as a teenager, I find her simpleness and pure goodness gets downright irritating. And it’s hard not to notice that her relationship with the dwarfs is a little bit messed up. Trust the 1930s to give us a movie in which a bunch of men need a woman to cook and clean for them while they go out working. She is a product of her times, which I guess could function as an excuse for her ditziness. Snow White, like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the other early Disney princesses, unlike the more in-touch princesses of the 90s, accepts her role in a man’s world, wishing and dreaming for the shockingly undeveloped prince to resurrect her preserved corpse with a kiss and ride away with her. Apparently Walt Disney wanted to give the prince a song or something, or a subplot where the villain tries to stop him from saving the princess. He did, however, manage to pull off this very thing Sleeping Beauty, which consequently has a more satisfying and relatable prince.

While slow at times, with perhaps too many working and cleaning songs, Snow White is overall a good film to watch as a young child, as long as Snow White’s behaviour does not have an impact on little girls and rewind decades of hard-won women’s rights. I enjoyed it as a kid for the simple tale it was, as my parents and my grandparents before me did, and as many generations after surely will.

(image source: http://ilarge.listal.com/image/950773/968full-snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarfs-screenshot.jpg)