SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES (1937)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

As I just finished reviewing Disney's second feature film, PINOCCHIO, that was at least one reason for me to weigh the company's first, and in some ways, most successful venture into feature-length cartoons. Of course, the news that sooner or later the current incarnation of Disney will release a highly ideological version of SNOW WHITE plays into my decision as well. Though the 1937 film is not dominated by any ideology, feminist or otherwise, there have been over the years many attempts to critique the movie on that basis, and I'll probably be influenced by some of those critiques, if only to refute them.

Feminine jealousy provides the story's genesis, though it doesn't seem to be involved with sexual jealousy, as in many real folktales. The movie never mentions the fate of Snow White's father, but the viewer will assume he's passed on from the mortal coil, allowing his wife, only as "The Queen," to dominate the kingdom. One never sees anything of the inhabitants but the Queen's huntsman, the Dwarves, various animals, and a passing prince-- whom one assumes is an outsider. The Queen dresses the rightful princess of the land in rags and forces her to do menial labor, but she can't conceal the young woman's maturing beauty. The singing-interlude between Snow and the Prince was surely designed to eliminate any objections to the heroine being rescued by a complete stranger. The Queen, a severe rather than a wholesome beauty, wants no rival in the looks department even though there's no indication that she has any interest in sex, much less love.

In replaying the scene where Snow is threatened by the huntsman, I noticed that the Queen apparently allows her stepdaughter the luxury of donning an outfit befitting a princess before she dies. To be sure, this decision probably wasn't thought out in terms of internal consistence. Walt Disney could not have foreseen how his company would come to revolve around a "cult of princesses," but he and his animators may have had an instinct that the audience would want a Snow White in royal raiment.

I'll skip over the sections in which Snow charms the animals of the forest, which gave the animators the chance to utilize a lot of their cartoon-short humor in order to offset the heavier drama of the opening. Additionally, whereas I found a lot of the incidental jokes in PINOCCHIO to be superficial and distracting, even the weaker slapstick bits work pretty well-- though of course the ones with the Dwarves are much better than the ones with the cutesy woodland creatures. But then PINOCCHIO had a rather "hit-you-over-the-head" moral message, while SNOW WHITE's morality is implied more subtly.

Many feminists didn't like seeing Snow White defined only in terms of her housekeeping duties for the Dwarves. But of course, what most audiences from 1937 on have liked about Snow was her cheerful perseverance in the face of adversity, and her willingness to work for her daily bread-- in other words, not to act as one would expect a princess to act. No one knows how the Dwarves kept their larders full, though one assumes their work in their diamond mines keeps them covered. But Snow explicitly conceives of the idea of working for her upkeep, and she uses the skills she has to recompense her benefactors. 

At the same time, Snow may be soft-spoken, but female audiences could surely identify when she's faced with the slovenliness of the Dwarves. She gently persuades them to take up the customs of "gentlemen," and by so doing recapitulates woman's civilizing influence upon the male of the species. It's not surprising that Grumpy suspects of her 

It's interesting that once the Queen learns from her Magic Mirror that Snow is still alive, she doesn't just pull magical implements out of nowhere, as the cognate stepmother does in Grimm's Tales. She has a subterranean chamber filled with magical items and a book of spells, not to mention having a cell in which the skeletal remains of a prisoner testify as to the Queen's gratuitous cruelty. Maybe this is what happens when women stop wishing for their true loves? She never actually says that she can transform back to her old self after becoming the Witch, though one assumes that she wouldn't boast about reclaiming her status as "fairest in the land" if she could not. Incidentally, when the Dwarves try to kill her in a tempestuous attack, she comes close to destroying them instead. I don't think it's inconceivable that she's so evil, Heaven decides to execute her with a well-placed bolt of lightning.

Prince Charming is probably the one weak point amid all the film's strengths; for me his light-opera singing fell flat and his conventionalized handsomeness comes off badly in comparison to the much later Prince Philip of the 1959 SLEEPING BEAUTY. So my conclusion is that, for all the ideological attacks, SNOW WHITE is still "the fairest feature film of the first half of the 20th century."