Film
It was not only the first Disney's long-length film, but the first in history in general to be made entirely in traditional animation. When Walt Disney made his project public to the New York Times in 1934, everyone labelled this film as the 'Disney's folly'. However, upon its release in 1937 it was hailed as an undisputed masterpiece and is still one of the best-loved titles in the entire Disney production (despite the recent controversy over the prince's kiss). With that beautiful illustrative style typical of European fairy tale books that had already taken hold in the Silly Symphonies of a few years earlier, this version of the Snow White fairy tale quickly managed to establish itself in the collective imagination and is still perceived as the 'official' one today. The plot does not diverge much from the original (a princess persecuted by her stepmother flees into the woods and finds refuge in a little house inhabited by seven dwarfs willing to help her), but some elements are set aside in favour of the narrative principles that Disney would follow for the rest of his career. Among these is the use of music for narrative purposes.
Art
There is a statue, in Naumburg Cathedral, of a woman fierce and regal, whose long, tapering hands bring the flaps of her robes to her face to cover herself in a gesture of aristocratic reluctance. She is the beautiful Uta of Ballenstedt, Margravine of Meissen, who escaped the stake after being tried for witchcraft. Yet she was only a small and beautiful princess, born around the year 1000 into an aristocratic family of Polish origin, the Askani of Ballenstedt. In 1026 she married Meissen's 41-year-old margrave, Edward II, and moved to his castle in Albrechtsburg to live happily ever after like in a fairy tale. Very little is known of her life, except that in her married years she was a devoted and obedient wife. When she found herself on trial for witchcraft, she emerged victorious, although that infamy caused her austere husband a shameful and embarrassing wound in his soul, reinforced by the disappointment of not having had children during their life together. So Edward, the last of the Ekkehardingers, reluctantly left the margraviate to Wilhelm III of Weimar with their death in Meissen in 1046.
The couple were buried together in Naumburg Cathedral next to his ancestors, represented by wonderful sculptures. Uta's is placed in the apsidal chapel next to that of her husband Excard II and, in the Romantic era, was hailed as nothing less than a symbol of Germanic beauty and an icon of feminine virtue. In the 20th century, under Nazism, she became the prototype of the Aryan woman depicted even on German postage stamps. Perhaps this is why Walt Disney and his animators chose her to personify the Queen Grimilde, Snow White's antagonist. Indeed, if for the young protagonist they drew inspiration from the well-known American comic strip character Betty Boop, for the evil queen they based themselves on the image of Uta, a beautiful woman who then became a symbol of the greatest evil of the last century (aryanism and nazism). To make her even more believable and familiar, the animators decided to sharpen her features by slightly retouching the line of her lips and eyebrows, now taking as a model the beautiful and perturbing Joan Crawford, then at the height of her success.
However, even the most beautiful woman in the kingdom cannot help but wither under the weight of envy. When Grimilde decides to kill the rival who had surpassed her in beauty in order to regain her supremacy, she loses her apparences and becomes the very picture of poverty. A poverty of spirit that makes her abandon her regal appearance to take on the guise of an old, grotesque woman, like the character portrayed in Two Old Men Eating (1820-23) by Francisco Goya, now in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. Both figures are flanked by a skull, symbolising their inevitable fate. The film's tones become increasingly dark, as already anticipated by the trees that so terrified the princess in the forest (and all the child viewers, who after years still retain that memory) and already used by Disney animators in a 1932 Silly Symphony (Flowers and Trees), in turn based on illustrations by Arthur Rakham.
External Links
Watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on Disney +
Statue:
minutes from the film: 00.03.15 – 00.03.20
The sculptural group of Naumburg Cathedral
Painting:
minutes from the film: 00.51.15 – 00.52.58
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