First screening in an ongoing festival in our apartment reviewing the 40-some canonical Disney animated features. Roundtable discussion immediately following the screening, liberally transcribed.

ADAM It has certain iconic images that are competitive with anything else Disney produced, but as a story it’s much too slow. It’s archaically paced and boring.

BETH I had thought that the last scene, where she was in the glass case, took fifteen minutes of screen time. My memory of it was that it was much longer than it actually was, and the rest of the movie was much shorter – I guess because I was so upset by it.

ADAM Upset? Or entranced by her on her bier, as a child?

BROOM It’s a fine line between upset and entranced, as a child.

BETH I think mostly upset.

ADAM I don’t think as a kid I knew enough to root for the queen, but I was definitely rooting for the queen this time. She was much more charismatic.

BROOM She’s much more interesting. Ninety percent of the movie is quasi-comic business with the dwarfs that doesn’t completely work.

BETH When the dwarfs were chasing the queen up the mountain, I thought it was very strange that these bumbling, comical dwarfs were intimidating this scary creature.

BROOM I think in the earlier scenes they overshot how much the dwarfs came off as clownish. I don’t think the characters were originally supposed to be that ridiculous, but somehow those scenes got bloated.

ADAM Those scenes just felt like an outgrowth of “Steamboat Willie” – like when he plays on the teats of that pig.

BROOM It’s a “short feature” kind of thinking. There’s a series of gags on the same theme, which is how you construct a short. Here there were a lot of gags about washing.

BETH Well, they had never done a full-length feature.

BROOM But full-length plays and movies had been done before. They chose to construct it in a weird episodic way. Whereas the whole plotted first sequence, with the huntsman, works well.

ADAM It was like eight visual setpieces. There’s the one where they’re washing up, and there’s the one where she’s washing up… I wonder whether that was because they were thinking of them in terms of animation setpieces, rather than as one flowing story. Pinocchio‘s not like that.

BROOM Well, Pinocchio is also episodic, but the story itself is episodic. First he wants to be an actor, and then there’s Pleasure Island, and then he goes searching for Geppetto and goes into the whale…

ADAM I feel like Pinocchio is just much more exciting, though maybe I don’t remember it very clearly. Whereas I fell asleep in the middle of this.

BROOM Did you actually fall asleep, or just drift?

ADAM I wanted to fall asleep but I didn’t allow myself to.

BROOM I looked over when I thought you might be asleep and you didn’t seem to be.

ADAM I opened my eyes when I perceived you turning to look.

BROOM I thought this was very pretty. I liked the backgrounds. I just liked the lush feeling. It seemed like they wanted to make it feel like a children’s storybook had come to life and you could enter into it – I liked that you could get that feeling from it. I even liked the way it feels in their house, where the most boring parts of the movie take place. Even when it was boring, I still liked the way their chairs and doors looked.

ADAM I was really annoyed by her voice. It got upsetting. And her nanny-ish coquette thing was really annoying. “Now, now, now!” “Wash your hands!”

BETH Yes. They were obviously doing just fine before she came into their lives.

ADAM I also don’t like her outfit. I think of the signature Disney princess outfit as being Cinderella’s ballgown, and maybe that’s ruined Snow White’s outfit for me. But the yellow and blue and red thing was much too primary-color for my taste.

BROOM I think it was their idea of what lavish royal garb looked like, except toned down and not actually made of ermine or whatever.

ADAM The queen’s outfit totally holds up.

BROOM What is that skintight wetsuit she wears?

ADAM I’ve seen it on nuns.

BETH Is it just so that you admire how beautiful her face is?

ADAM I assume it’s for concealing her hair out of modesty.

BROOM I think it’s to give her a cold and sterile kind of beauty instead of a sensual one. If she had flowing hair she would be more inviting. It’s still a pretty bold costuming choice. But she does look good.

ADAM She looks great. And as the hag she looks even better.

BROOM I liked when she asked the skeleton if it was thirsty and then kicked the jug at it.

ADAM And then a spider crawled out.

BROOM Just to show you the water was long gone.

ADAM It’s funny, there’s no actual bit of dialogue or interaction that’s particularly memorable. But all the songs are pretty memorable.

BROOM I dare you to sing “The Silly Song.”

ADAM I can sing “Whistle While You Work.” And everyone can sing “Heigh-Ho.” And as Michael Eisner points out on the DVD, most people can sing “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” including the greatest voice of our time, Barbra Streisand.

BROOM But can you sing “One Song,” the prince’s theme? Can you sing “Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum,” the washing song?

ADAM I would call this a promising first effort for Disney. But it’s no Ratatouille.

BROOM But when I think about what movies were like in 1937, and then I compare this…

ADAM Well, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are from 1939.

BETH There were great strides made between 1936 and 1939.

BROOM But let’s even compare this to The Wizard of Oz, which is also a visual spectacular that holds up well. It’s still stagier and blockier than all the crazy kinds of motion you see in Snow White. In Snow White the camera spins all around. The scene where the witch transforms – what else looked like that back then?

ADAM Well, I don’t know. That’s become a visual cliche.

BROOM And when she’s in the scary forest, there are all those zooms. There’s a dynamic quality to what’s on screen that must have been incredible at the time.

BETH That’s because they were completely unlimited.

BROOM I imagine if I had been an audience member then I would have been just blown away by how much of an entertainment it was. And the fact that most of it was vaudeville crap of one kind or another wouldn’t have been noteworthy, because that’s what everything was.

BETH I guess, but some scripts at that time were certainly better than that.

ADAM If my choices were to see this or The Little Tramp, I’d rather see this.

BROOM I’ll bet audiences going to this expected a spectacular, like a kickline show, rather than a truly plotted movie.

BETH How would they know what to expect, since it was the first ever of the form?

ADAM This movie was entitled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, correct? So they knew there were dwarfs coming. Nobody actually thinks the beds belong to children and then is surprised when dwarfs show up, correct?

BROOM That’s right.

ADAM Just asking.

BROOM I think audiences knew they were going to see a spectacular feature-length animated movie, and that was probably a lot like going to see an Imax movie of Mount Everest. You know it’s not going to have a plot – or if it does have a plot, it’s going to be something like: “Oh no, how do we get to the mountain?” And then you see the incredible mountain! In Snow White they say “Oh no, how are we going to wash our faces?” And then animated water splashes all over the screen!

ADAM Maybe we should ask our grandparents what it was like to see Snow White when it was new.

BROOM Their expectations probably weren’t quite so specific as that, but I do think people were probably very ready for the movie to be whatever justified looking at the visuals.

ADAM 1937 was not that long ago.

BROOM I think my grandmother remembers seeing it.

BETH My dad’s mom was eleven. Or maybe thirteen.

ADAM When was Dumbo?

BROOM 1941.

ADAM Because Dumbo is a riot.

BETH I’ve always thought it was a real masterpiece.

BROOM Dumbo holds up a lot better, although in parts of it, the visuals cut corners more than in Snow White.

ADAM You’re right, even the pink elephants scene in Dumbo is a little bit schlocky in certain ways.

BROOM I think that’s one of the better parts. There are just some other parts of Dumbo that look a little chintzy. But you’re right, Beth, the aesthetic changed so much over those few years. Dumbo feels very like the 40s, like the war years.

ADAM It feels jazzy.

BROOM But Snow White was designed to feel like something from the old Brothers Grimm tales. There are hints of the actual period a few times, like that musical interlude when she’s being brought to the cottage. She sings “With a Smile and a Song,” and then you hear a sort of 30’s dance version of it. What’s another movie from 1937?

ADAM Let me look it up. I’ll tell you what won the Oscar in 1937.

BROOM I’ll tell you that Snow White won the special “seven little baby Oscars” Oscar. And I’m sure you can see footage of Shirley Temple giving it to Mr. Disney on this DVD.

ADAM The 1937 Best Picture was The Life of Emile Zola. In 1936 the winner was The Great Ziegfeld and in 1938 the winner was You Can’t Take It With You. Here is the trailer for The Life of Emile Zola.

BROOM I feel like that shows a world in which Snow White would have been a huge splash of life. When we were watching it now and saying things like “that water looks pretty good,” do think that we were trying to find something worth noticing about a movie that we were bored of, or that we were watching in exactly the same spirit that the original audience would have watched it?

ADAM Isn’t that the same spirit in which you watch Beowulf 3D?

BROOM Yes, I think that’s exactly what it was then. Even though now it may feel now like going digging for something, to admire those sorts of details.

BETH But the water in that shot is what they wanted you to look at. Just like the curtains falling realistically when the queen swished them. The quality – the lushness, as you said – is what Disney wanted you to notice.

BROOM The movie offers a lot of that. And I can still enjoy that. What do you think about the fact that kids today are still given Snow White to watch? I personally don’t remember watching it that many times when I was a kid. It’s kind of boring.

ADAM I think I only saw it once. Whereas there are some that I watched a lot.

BETH I think girls probably like it more, because they want to be Snow White.

BROOM But the parts that bored us wouldn’t be particularly appealing to girls or boys.

ADAM How much of the fact that all Disney movies are about princesses stems from the fact that they happened to pick this story for their first movie and it happened to be very successful? What if their first movie had been about Mickey Mouse?

BETH Well, they also made a lot of mouse movies.

BROOM I feel like an undercurrent to his first few movies – especially Fantasia – is that Disney wants to show that what he’s doing is artistic, so he picks something with class, something with an old-world, European kind of legitimacy, and puts all the trimmings on it. I think the book that opens at the beginning of Snow White is a completely sincere signal indicating that “You are now going to see something classic and dignified.”

ADAM What if he had picked Red Riding Hood instead? How would our culture be different?

BROOM I think they intentionally picked something with a royal setting.

ADAM Not that many of the 40-some Disney movies are actually about princesses. It’s only sort of laterally, in the last fifteen years, that Disney has decided that “princesses” is a killer concept. Beth, when you were a girl, do you remember thinking of the Disney princesses that way?

BETH I was a princess for Halloween when I was nine.

ADAM But were you obsessed with princesses?

BETH No. I know people are really obsessed with princesses now. We had My Little Pony.

BROOM I don’t think that’s necessarily just because of Disney. That’s been around for longer. In “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” there’s a whole routine where Lucy talks about her fantasy.

ADAM But Lucy wants to be the queen. She’s going to have a queendom. I don’t think that’s about frilly femininity. That’s something very different; that’s just about imperiousness.

BROOM I don’t think this movie was about frilly femininity, either.

ADAM No, but now all the Disney princess stuff is about, you know, “When You Wish Upon A Star…”

BROOM A cricket sings that to a marionette.

ADAM Yes, but now it’s about princessdom. My little cousin is obsessed with princesses. She goes to Disneyland solely to be photographed with all the princesses.

BROOM I don’t think that Disney realized at some point that they should make more movies about princesses. That’s a marketing thing from the last twenty years.

ADAM Yes. It was a conscious branding decision about 15 years ago that they were going to incorporate all their princess movies into one line of Disney royal princesses, and co-market them.

BROOM I don’t think that really happened until after The Little Mermaid, which was a very intentional, calculated effort to recapture something that would seem like “classic” Disney.