Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Jealous of Snow White’s beauty, the evil queen relegates her stepdaughter to the scullery. But when a prince comes courting, the queen orders a huntsman to take Snow White to the woods and murder her. The huntsman doesn’t have the heart to kill her, leaving her in the forest. With the help of some animals, she finds the cottage of the seven dwarfs. When the queen’s magic mirror tells her Snow White is still alive, she turns herself into an old hag and sets off to finish the task with a poisoned apple … In Disney’s first animated feature-length film in Technicolor, the colours are much softer than in the company’s short cartoons. The result is to make the few garish effects, such as the spell turning the queen into a hag, or the red apple, that much more eye-popping. More than 1500 tints were used for colouring the cels. Snow White is at first surrounded by pastel pinks and mauves. Later the primary colours of her clothing harmonize with the naiveté of her character. The queen is rendered in mixed, dark shades until the black abyss swallows her. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs won an Oscar in 1939 and tops the American Film Institute’s list of greatest animated films of all time.