Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American-German animated musical fantasy movie. It was made by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is based on the German fairy tale Snow White by the Brothers Grimm. It is the first full-length cel animated movie and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen directed the movie's different sequences.
Snow White was first shown at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937. It was released across the United States on February 4, 1938. With international earnings of $8 million during its initial release, the movie for a bit had the record of highest grossing sound movie at the time. The popularity of the movie has led to it being re-released theatrically many times, until its home video release in the 1990s. Adjusted for inflation, it is one of the top ten performers at the North American box office.
At the 11th Academy Awards, Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar. The movie was nominated for Best Musical Score. It was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1989 and is ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films, who also named the movie as the greatest American animated movie of all time in 2008. Disney's take on the fairytale has had a huge cultural impact, resulting in popular theme park attractions, a video game, and a Broadway musical.
Story
An evil queen has a mirror and asks "Magic mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" The mirror answers "Snow White". Snow White is the princess of the kingdom and the evil queen is her stepmother. The evil queen is jealous of Snow White's beauty so she sends a huntsman to kill her. However, he decides not to and lets Snow White escape.
Snow White is lost in the woods, and comes across the home of seven little men, or dwarves. She cleans their home, and they allow her to stay with them. The queen eventually finds out that the huntsman did not kill Snow White. The queen, who is also a witch, transforms into an old hag. She goes to the dwarfs' cottage the next day while they're out and gets Snow White to bite into an apple with makes her fall dead.
Suddenly, the dwarfs chase the old hag up a cliff and trap her. The hag tries to crush them with a boulder but lightning strikes the cliff and she falls off. Snow White is awakened by the kiss of a handsome prince and they get married.
Production
Development on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began in early 1934, and in June 1934, Walt Disney announced the production of his first feature to the New York Times. Before Snow White, the Disney studio had been mainly involved in the production of highly successful animated shorts in the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Disney hoped to enlarge his studio's reputation and money by moving into features, and estimated that Snow White could be produced for a budget of $250,000 - ten times the budget of an average Silly Symphony.
Walt Disney had to fight to get the movie produced. Both his brother Roy Disney and his wife Lillian attempted to talk him out of it, and the Hollywood movie industry mockingly referred to the movie as "Disney's Folly" while it was in production. He even had to mortgage his house to help finance the movie's production, which eventually ran up a total cost of just over $1.5 million, a huge sum for a movie in 1937.
Characters
Snow White
Princess Snow White (voiced by Adriana Caselotti) was the daughter of a great king whose wife died when the daughter was born. Her evil stepmother forced her to work as a maid in the castle because she was afraid of Snow White one day will be fairer than her. Despite this, she is cheerful but naive and everyday wishes to has a beautiful life with her Prince Charming. One day who the magic mirror said Snow White is fairer than the Queen she sends a huntsman to kill the princess. At last that's very hard and the huntsman leaves her go to the forest.