MOURNING AFTERMATH
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 first real example of an entire sequence based on pure emotion showed the dwarfs crying besides Snow White’s bier; it was a critical decision even to attempt this type of sequence… It was important that the viewers be involved completely in the feelings of the dwarfs, and no one knew how this could be done with moving drawings…[1]
Here’s how it was done: gradually coming into focus the shadowy figures – six around the foot of the bier, one off to the side – are revealed to be the grieving little men. Churchill’s quiet organ music “Chorale for Snow White” accompanies…
The whole section of Snow White that showed the heroine lying on her bier while her friends mourned was planned to a prescored organ track that set the length and the mood of anything that would be done visually.… The animator had to play this track over and over to maintain the right feeling in his drawings and his actions.[2]
Apparently the major challenge for the animator of this sequence Frank Thomas was the stillness that must be maintained among the figures in thorough contrast to all the violent action of the preceding sequence. It had been discovered that a single held drawing was lifeless on the screen. Some movement was necessary, even if merely the slow blink of an eye, the shift of an eyebrow or the lowering of a head. Thomas used all these minor motions as the camera slowly pans mid-close-up across the grieving faces, their eyes welling up with tears which then flow down their cheeks. Broader motion is restrained, which made life difficult for the inbetweeners who fill in the drawings between the key animator’s extremes, as in this case these “extremes” were nearly identical. The only two characters who really change body attitude are Grumpy who sobs and turns away forlornly to privatize his grief…
…and Dopey who whimpers and folds himself into Doc’s comforting embrace. Most of the movement in fact is those teardrops but even they became problematical as Thomas explains…
Unfortunately, my first tears were so well liked that more tears were asked for, and then even some on all the characters. Soon it looked like the worst hayfever epidemic of the century, which was not helped much by the eager Effects Department adding highlights and reflections and glistening effects, until each drop looked more like a marble than a tear. At this point, we backed up and eliminated a few…[3]
The animals are grieving as well, gazing into the cottage through the window. They are shown gathered in the pouring rain, motionless, their heads bowed in sorrow as the camera trucks back away slowly leaving them in the distance and the scene fades into impenetrable darkness. Thomas’ brief sequence is totally successful – solemn, mesmerizing and heart-wrenching. As the animator himself noted…
The audience cried for the first time over an animated cartoon.[4]
[1] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: op. cit., p. 475-476.
[2] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: op. cit., p. 293.
[3] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: op. cit., p. 477.
[4] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: op. cit., p. 478.
