PEE-IN-PANTS SCAREY

Without a moment’s relief from this attempted murder, the film proceeds into another spectacular sequence of terror, a kaleidoscope of ever more frightening images brilliantly illustrating how the young girl’s panicking mind transforms all surrounding forestry into tormenting demons – a graphic metaphor for her emotional reaction after her childhood innocence has been confronted for the first time with an evil so profound as to attempt her murder. The arrangement and accelerating brevity of each clip in this montage – in total only one minute and twelve seconds long – accompanied by dramatic music and embellished with special effects emphatically confirms that Walt’s study of existing live action features for pointers on cinematography and his sharing them with staff paid off big-time.

During the film’s initial showing at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, many of the seats had to be replaced because children in the audience would wet themselves in fear at the scene.[1]

Snow White gets caught in a tangle of vines. An owl buzzes her. Bats pursue her. Spindly branches snag her dress and transform into boney grasping hands. The knots of a huge tree become searing eyes, frightening her backwards so that she falls down a chasm resembling the gaping mouth of a monster. Panning downward the camera catches her midair desperately clinging to a vine. The pace slackens for a brief moment until she slips and falls into the quagmire below. The ripples of her splash bob floating logs which morph into a semblance of alligators with widening jaws. Now drenched she struggles to escape them and stumbling emerges out of the water. She runs up against another large tree which becomes a phantom with immense frightful eyes and branching arms flailing. This scares her forward down a windy hollow amongst a blast of dry leaves. Here she rouses another covey of bats. Demonic eyes surround her, bigger, closer, sending her spinning terror-stricken until she collapses sobbing onto the ground.

What is important here is that Snow White is not running on a straight path, parallel to our eye view, but on a wildly twisting path that takes her back and forth at varying distances from the camera, with material passing in front of her as well as behind her. The feeling of depth is astounding.[2]

[1] From tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs

[2] Maltin, Leonard: op. cit., p. 30.