Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10524 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-10-01
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Animated, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Portuguese, English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 80 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was nicknamed "Disney's Folly" by contemporary observers; they doubted that the short cartoons shown before the main film could ever successfully make the transition from filler to feature presentation. Surely, no one would sit still for over an hour to watch an animated film, their eyes smarting from the bright colours on screen? Fortunately, Walt Disney and his army of artists persisted and the world's first full-length animated feature was finally released in 1937 to widespread acclaim.

Adapted from the Grimm fairytale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is chillingly dark in places, reflecting its roots in European folklore, but the deft Disney touch ensures that the overall tone remains light and the story develops apace, swept along on the perfect musical score. Any lingering gloom is quickly dispelled by the superbly characterised dwarfs and by the humorous antics of the various irresistible fauna that threaten to steal the show in several scenes. The pioneering animation is breathtaking and songs such as "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work", now firmly embedded in popular culture, are seamlessly interwoven with the action.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs happens to be an interesting technological milestone in cinema history--it is also an enduring masterpiece of family entertainment. To the millions who have fallen under its spell over the years, this magical fairy tale remains one of Disney's most enchanting and best-loved films. Only Grumpy could resist. --Helen Baker

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Newly Animated Magic Mirror Host
Barbra Streisand's recording of "Some Day My Prince Will Come"
The Making of "Snow White" featurette
"Dopey's Wild Mine Ride" set-top game
Heigh-Ho Sing-a-long

Languages: Dolby Digital 5.1 English, Portuguese
Subtitles: English, English for the hearing impaired, Portuguese
Widescreen 1.33:1 format

Synopsis
Disney's first full-length animated masterpiece features all the elements of a classic fairy tale--a beautiful heroine, an evil queen, Prince Charming...and a septet of whistling dwarfs. In hiding from her jealous and wicked stepmother, the fair Snow White takes refuge with a band of kind-hearted, hard-working dwarves: Bashful, Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy, Grumpy, Dopey and Doc. Eventually the vain queen finds Snow White and tricks her into eating a poisoned apple. Luckily, a wandering prince comes to her rescue, but can he break the evil queen's spell

Customer Reviews

Snow White
Very impressed with the speed and effeciency of delivery. Watched it this afternoon, it has not lost any of its magic - well worth the money.

The best Disney movie of all time
This is the movie that established Walt Disney's reputation as the master of children's cartoons. Even by today's exacting standards, the animation is top notch.

Perhaps the best test of Snow White's enduring charm and beauty is to sit a variety of children between the ages of 5 and 10 in front of it and watch how they become spellbound by it. Visually there is so much to see and enjoy. The detail is stunning. A collection of hugely talented and imaginiative people have vividly brought a stunning array of characters to life in a magical way - magical is truly the perfect word to describe this work of genius.

Of course, adults can enjoy Snow White again and again too. One of the joys of this movie is seeing your sons and daughters enjoy it as much as you did, when you first saw it. And, when you see it again after a gap of 25 years, its power still amazes you.

You could describe this movie as a rite of passage, something that every child should see, and why not - we all love a well-told story, which this unquestionably is. This is film that connects one generation to the next. Perhaps the only other movie that does this is "The Sound of Music".

My only gripe is that Disney releases it so rarely to preserve its value. So next time it comes out, I recommend you buy two copies because younger children will quickly damage the DVD in their eagerness to watch the film umpteen times.

What else can I say but thank you, Walt. It is a masterpiece.

The start of Disneyfication
It's quite funny that today, as I trudged into University, the module we would be studying in the lecture was Animation, and the history behind it. As a young kid, I had seen Snow White many times, with varying experiences (mostly scared!) and so it was great to bring it all back this morning in what would normally be a few hours of boredom.
Snow White, released amazingly way back in 1938, could easily be one of the most important films ever created. That might sound ambitious, considering the other advances in life at the time, but to even dare and ask the audience to sit back and watch over an hour of animation was a gamble itself. In the early 1930's, a 'cartoon' was up to 6 minutes of black and drawings that could take months and months to make.
The reason this film actually was a milestone is because of Walt Disney's quick thinking....
1. Copyrighting Technicolour - The ability to master videos in full colour, which no other company could use)

2. Rota-scope - The ability to create life-like animations of people by tracing an original video of an actor. This was filmed with 2 actors and then drawn! This is how such life-like movements could be drawn by Snow White (just a young actor) and of course the evil queen.

3. "Disneyfication" begins - The original Snow White story was a grim and dark tale that had a clear moral. Walt Disney wanted this film to appear to an audience that could be entertained, hence for the first time, we get the 'happy ever after' ending. Note also how the whit, glamour, and humour normally associated with animations at the time was lost.

4. Technological advances - Disney had made a special machine (almost as high as a house) that generated the 3-D effects in the movie, and enhanced such features as wind, rain, and room-spiral actions. A massive machine separated the cells, and then could allow for precise arrangement to make shakey pictures and movements a thing of the past. Every movement, as you'll see, is 100% precice thanks to this clumbersome contraption.

Of course, we should all know the tale of Disney's Snow White by now, and even if you don't it'd be a shame to spoil the film. While in typical Disney fashion, its fun and suitable for the family, with plenty of 'simple' gags and funny moments from the 7 dwarfs, it does have its scary moments. I'm not trying to sound like a wet-blanket - it's just a fact, and even now looking back I can understand why I hid by the couch cushions at certain scenes. But this surely proves how animation has changed - what was once an attempt to bring a watcher into the film and let them experience a moral, now is just a cheap attempt at making money at School Half Terms, when Mr and Mrs Average clogg up the roads with 4x4's, and head down the cinema's!
It reeks of elements from it's time, whether it be the Mask that speaks in the Queens mirror (its actually a voodoo style mask, as people at the time was fascinated by cultures abroad, especially Egyptology), or the character of the Evil Queen that was actually a spiff off a celeb at the time, Better Davis, who herself played evil characters.
Snow White is a milestone in animation history with beautiful artwork, and though its later counterparts may have easily exceeded it in terms of entertainment (the 40's/50's were a good era) they all still kept the roots of teaching morals up until the funny but lame 60's (The Jungle Book, with its laughably bad spiff of The Beatles. Still a great film!). If you've seen all the other Disney films and think they can't be topped, this should be watched anyway for the education of how perfect animation can be, and what we miss today.