I abandoned this blog for quite a while, I really did not had any consistent theme to have posting here in regularly. But in a stroke of luck, and faith, I recently read The Alchemy of Animation by Don Hahn; it really inspired me to re-watch the Disney feature films. After watching the latest Disney film, I thought, why not just watch all 56? So as of today, I will watch all of them, plus 14 pixar movies, in chronological order. Tall order, but should be an interesting one.
Note: this will be my thoughts of the films, not a review. And I will try my best to cast a light on the aspects I know about color, composition, mood, and cultural reflection of the time. again, to the best of my knowledge.
Starting with Snow White, released in 1937, it was the first feature film of Disney, and the first animation to win an oscar. Right from the start, Snow white introduces the viewer to the idea that this cartoon should be watched as a live action film. The first minutes of snow white is no animated, rather a real book, which welcomes us into the fantastical world.
I love the tridimensional effect of the moving camera, achieved I believe by placing glass panels at different levels and pointing the camera at them. After being introduced quickly to the plot , wich I find interesting that the first character we see is the evil witch (by means of the mirror), rendered in a complementary yellow-green/red-violet scheme, we then get quickly the love story and the reason of why Snow White needs to leave the castle (which seems to be populated only by three people and the wondering prince).
We see here the first attempt to have a more realistic and les Anthropomorphic quality to the world. It is only in the delusion and panic in the escape of Snow White that the plants take on a human form.
After Snow White realizes that she was surrounded by "friends" and got ashamed of being scared; which I don't blame her, after all, she just found out the queen wanted her killed (at this point, we don't know her relationship with snow white just yet). She then finds the house of the "little bachelor's men"she of course does what every woman (or mom) should, and cleans the house.
We are then introduced to the dwarfs, which are dressed in earth tones, and for the most part complementary. We get the whole bit of the confrontation and introduction between them and Snow White. At first the dwarfs seem smitten by Snow White, but she then quickly becomes a maternal figure (maybe the dwarfs are more like a different species like in Tolken's books). But in any case the dwarfs then ask her to tell a story and she tells them her encounter with the prince. She describes him and he basically is the opposite of the dwarfs, with the exception of them all being good. The dwarf even seem eager to learn that the prince is what they are not, but again, maybe they aren't really human.
I saw that the movie is more concerned with entertainment and simple basic lessons like be clean, don't talk to strangers, be kind, and vanity is wrong, and less with being politically correct. Which nobody was concerned about at the time.
After the queen learns the location of Snow White, and presumably imprisons and kills the hunter (I think the skeleton is the hunter) she goes and does her evil thing with Snow White. We get the confrontation with the witch, using weather as a visual and audio cue of violence, instead of actually showing any. The prince, absent for most of the film, comes and kisses Snow White to life. Incidentally, the only thing that the prince did was being really handsome, and singing very good. The prince and Snow White leave the dwarfs (who looked after her and were then abandoned) and live happily ever after.
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