The Nine Disney Animated Masterpieces
Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty
“The greatest film ever made” declared Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) the revered Russian pioneer film-maker, auteur of Battleship Potemkin. None other than the renowned silent filmstar and comedian Charlie Chaplain pronounced Dopey to be “one of the greatest comedians of all...
So far the film’s entire narrative has happened in only a day-and-a-half. In order to bridge the gap of time between this funereal scene and the following springtime three title cards now intervene narrating the story in text over a...
Gradually candlelight dispels the darkness and reveals Snow White lying serenely beautiful – victim of the Sleeping Death – on a bier inside the dwarf’s cottage, her head resting on a pillow, her lower body covered beneath a sheet. The...
It starts with the dwarfs’ arrival at the mine still singing then whistling “Heigh-ho Heigh-ho” as they get down to work – loading the mine cart with their tools and dragging it toward the tunnel. Doc as usual at the...
Another cross-cut back to the old Peddler Woman now advancing through the daylit forest, mumbling to herself still reviewing the niceties of her scheme. She passes beneath a tree in which two vultures perch, watching her. They exchange a knowing...
Bright morning sunrise on the dwarfs’ cottage. The animals sleeping outside the front door, including a deer snoozing on the stoop, are startled awake at the click of the doorhandle’s turn. They scatter. Doc emerges followed by Snow White. He...
Cross-cut back to the simultaneous action occurring now in the setting of the scene before this extended “Entertainment Sequence”, that laboratory in the depths of the Queen’s palace where she has just transformed herself into an old Peddler Woman. Gradually...
Happy now suggests that the princess “do something” and when she wants to know what, Sleepy suggests she tell them a story. Happy specifies a true story and Bashful wants it to be a love story. As Snow White obliging...
The yodeling intro precedes the song proper. Happy sings the first verse of clever meaningless lyrics followed by a group chorus during which he tap-dances (though silently). The chorus is a model of self-deprecation: “Ho-hum, the tune is dumb; the...
Cross cut back to some festivity at the dwarfs’ cottage where a jolly evening of entertainment contrasts dramatically with the dark evil of the preceding sequence. The camera trucks out of the forest toward a brightly lighted window of the...
