The Nine Disney Animated Masterpieces
DESIGNING THE HEROINE
Walt realized that for winning the hearts and minds of his audience to sympathize with his heroine a fairly realistic human design and movement was absolutely necessary – not to mention for the credibility of the Prince, the Evil Queen...
STANDARD PRINCESS FILM OPENING
The film’s opening titles in stark white and teal are cross-faded against a single background of patterned gold. A full orchestra and chorus accompany these with a bombastic version of Frank Churchill’s (1901-1942) melody for the film’s first song, “One...
SHAPING THE STORY
The story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a Bavarian fairytale collected by the brothers Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Karl (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Carl (1786–1859), in their 1812 publication Children’s and Household Tales, now familiarly known as simply Grimm’s...
LAUNCHING SNOW WHITE
Development on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began in early 1934, and in June 1934, Walt Disney announced the production of his first feature… One evening that same year, Disney acted out the entire story of Snow White and...
FIRST FULL-LENGTH FEATURE
Would audiences hold still to watch eighty minutes of drawings on a screen? Nobody knew.[1] Rumor has it that among Hollywood big-wigs and movie critics Walt’s ground-breaking new project became known as “Disney’s Folly”. If this derogative was indeed bruited...
“GOLDEN AGE” INTRO
This period was the high point of Walt’s involvement with animation. He was healthy, eager, endlessly creative and completely consumed. This was far more than a job. He lived these pictures every minute of the day, thinking deeply into every...
TOWARD THE ULTIMATE IMMERSION
After the decade-long hiatus in feature-length animation during World War II and its aftermath the three films that kicked off the ’Fifties – Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan – capitalized on technologies already in use previously but with...
ADDING LENGTH & DEPTH
Next in 1937 Disney evolved the feature-length animated movie during which audiences could explore and savor for nearly an hour-and-a-half a completely fabricated environment as background for an elaborate story: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A significant part of...
