Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Discussion

[Vlad]

Ooooh Teppy... the blu ray has way better quality/definition than the one on Disney+. You'll see! You won't regret your purchase.

That is a lovely model sheet... but read the corner: it's from 1971 and intended for book illustrations. I DO think SW looks more like she is 16 rather than 14.... but I just listened to the audio commentary for the film a couple of days ago, and Walt Disney himself keeps mentioning that she is supposed to be 14.

I don't think it really matters...

I'm really looking forward to watching it it always brings a smile to my face.

As for the model sheet, I did notice it's from 1971, but I thought that since she was drawn by Marc Davis in there, maybe that was an indication that she was supposed to be that age in the movie too. You're right, it doesn't really matter, I just posted this as a fun fact.

[carolinakid]

Snow White’s age doesn’t matter to me either. I’ve always thought of her as being around the same age as Cinderella and Aurora. I could be wrong on this, but I also think the average teenager in 1937, 1950 and 1959 was more mature than the average teenager in 2023. That’s been my observation from my reading and viewing of media from that time.

[carolinakid]

I read a blog listing the Disney Princesses in chronological order (Jasmine is the oldest tale taking place circa AD 300s)

Sleeping Beauty takes place in the 1300s in France.
Snow White in the 1500’s in Germany.
Cinderella in the 1800s in France.

What I have to keep in mind is that imo, the Princesses behaved according to the social mores and beliefs of their time. I shouldn’t hold them to 21st century standards, which unfortunately I find some people do.

[Sotiris]

Sotiris, again... if you listen to the commentary, there are recordings of Walt himself saying "Snow White is supposed to sound like a 14 year old girl"... he mentions the age of 14 more than once.

Maybe she was supposed to sound younger than she looked to come off more innocent. I just don't believe Marc Davis would have made such a mistake regardless of the year the model sheet was made.

[Marce82]

I do think Marc Davis would have made such a "mistake". He had worked on SW 35 years earlier, I doubt he remembered or bothered to look it up, IF her age was on any official character description. Just cause Walt said it and knew it, doesn't mean he told everyone or wrote it down. And Walt mentions her age more than once in the commentary, not just about her voice.

Again, I personally don't care.

And as much as I love Aurora's design, she looks way older than 16.

[blackcauldron85]

Why are there such discrepancies with the previous releases and this new one (we could ask this about many of the films, though)? Wouldn't they have wanted Snow White (Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, etc.) to have looked its best on the previous release(s)? Or I guess being the first 4K release, there needed to be another new, different restoration...?

[Marce82]

BlackCauldron85,

My thoughts: it's not that they didn't want the film to look it's best before. But it comes down to the criteria of the restorer and the medium. So:

1994 VHS and 2001 dvd were intended and calibrated for tube TVs (non-flatscreens): so the colors would have shown very differently.

The two blu rays don't differ that drastically on the color palette; I suspect the 2009 restorers thought they were using the correct colors, or what made sense to them. Supposedly, for the new one, they went back and looked at production notes to know what the colors were supposed to be.
But I also believe the 2009 restorers wanted it to look like you were looking directly at the cel artwork... whereas the current one is intended to look like a pristine FILM projection. The problem was, when they smoothed it all out in 2009, they ended up scrubbing away some of the detail.

With Cinderella, the restoration was even older, from 2005... and then just put on blu ray. And the grain removal had been ridiculously severe, to the point they scrubbed away crazy amounts of linework.

As for BATB...that is a whole 'nother story!

[UmbrellaFish]

Marce82, thank you for explaining that. I also sometimes scratch my head at these discrepancies.

I have to say the Snow White restoration didn’t blow me away like Cinderella (Cinderella 4K is honestly a revelation, almost a different movie). But I am glad certain things were fixed.

[Marce82]

Very welcome, Umbrellafish. And I agree with you that the SW correction is not nearly as drastic as Cinderella's... the latter probably had the worst track record of visual quality of any Disney movie. Watching the new blu ray was like watching the film for the first time (unless some were lucky to see it from an old film print...)

[blackcauldron85]

Thank you, Marce! Stuff like Cinderella or TSitS boggles the mind but it's interesting.

[Disney Duster]

We can assume Disney wanted to make Cinderella look "new" and modern to children in 2005, so that's why they scrubbed it of grain and made the colors so bright (and the dress blue in some scenes where it was supposed to be silver). I had read that other people heard that's what the heads at Disney wanted, and even Eric Goldberg said it was the case when he talked about restoring the film for 4K, where they kept the film grain and made the colors faithful again.

I think The Sword in the Stone's case was the heads at Disney thinking "This is a less popular film, people won't care if we do a crap job restoring it", so they were lazy and gave it the worst, DNR heavy, scrubbed, crap job restoration ever, even worse than Cinderella. Then when people rightfully complained, they fixed it for Disney+, but that fixed transfer is inexplicably still unavailable to own on physical media. What are they waiting for?! Maybe the 4K?

[Marce82]

Yeah, Duster. I agree with everything you just said. It's a stupid way of thinking, but it seems to be what the big-wigs at Disney were thinking at the time of the first Cinderella restoration. Thank God it has been fixed.

I suspect you are right about tSitS.... like they just batch-processed the whole film without paying close attention to the final disastrous results. I don't get why Disney hasn't re-released it with the fixed transfer... or at least offer a replacement program for people who bought it!

At least tSitS had a good dvd release! So I was able to watch that at least. Cinderella never had THAT! Ugh.

[Disney Duster]

I COMPLETELY agree with EVERYTHING you said, Marce!

[Farerb]

The 4K of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has finally arrived after a very long month:



The slipcover seems to be made from a cheaper material than what Disney used to make in their previous releases.

[UmbrellaFish]

It’s definitely different. It seemed like it had an extra finish? The touch feel is very different. Similar to the Walmart 4K exclusive for the TLM remake.

I also noticed that they appear to be changing the way they show the character on the spine. Instead of a little inset box, the image of the character takes up maybe a fourth of the spine. I thought it might be special for Snow White, but I realized the spine for my DMC 4K copy of Elemental does the same. My copy of Snow White is not the DMC copy btw, it’s the standard cover ordered from Best Buy.

[carolinakid]

After the 4k releases of Snow White and Cinderella, I’m so anxious to see what’s coming next!
I haven’t been this excited about home media releases in probably 20 years!

I’d love to have all the Walt era releases restored in 4k and Blu-ray!

[Farerb]

It’s definitely different. It seemed like it had an extra finish? The touch feel is very different. Similar to the Walmart 4K exclusive for the TLM remake.

The previous slipcovers were glossy. Snow White's (and I'm guessing Little Mermaid's and Elemental's) is matte.

[CielSomnus]

Snow White’s age doesn’t matter to me either. I’ve always thought of her as being around the same age as Cinderella and Aurora. I could be wrong on this, but I also think the average teenager in 1937, 1950 and 1959 was more mature than the average teenager in 2023. That’s been my observation from my reading and viewing of media from that time.

The way I see it, is that Snow White could pretty much be 16 as the Marc Davis model sheet stated because it´s like the "standard Disney Princess age", it´s true that the closest we have to a canon Snow White age is 14 but those scripts are from when she still was blonde with long hair, much more cartoony and was based on Mary Pickford.
Also the thing is that Snow White was always a very divisive character because some animators such as Ham Luske saw her younger and others like Grim Natwick saw her older, Marc Davis was in charge of the clean up drawings of Grim so he made her a mix between the young and the old Snow White, you can find more info here:
https://50mostinfluentialdisneyanimator ... arc-davis/ https://50mostinfluentialdisneyanimator ... ton-luske/

[CielSomnus]

Snow White’s age doesn’t matter to me either. I’ve always thought of her as being around the same age as Cinderella and Aurora. I could be wrong on this, but I also think the average teenager in 1937, 1950 and 1959 was more mature than the average teenager in 2023. That’s been my observation from my reading and viewing of media from that time.

For me she could still be 14 in the sense that people from decades ago used to mature earlier than nowadays so basically a 14 year old would be like a 16 year old now, a 16 year old would be a 18 year old now etc. But the thing that people also forget is that Snow White, being the first protagonist in an animated movie plus a female character, the only other import female character she could look up to was basically Betty Boop, and Betty while and adult was very cartoony, they purposely made Snow White look more cartoon in some scenes with the dwarfs so they looked more natural together, so this makes me think that in the end the "adult" Snow White is still the most representative imo, because they didn´t have to adapt her to anything, if the Dwarfs appeared less in the movie, and the Prince more like in the early scripts, we would´ve gotten more of "older" Snow White, the one that looks like a slightly younger version of the Blue Fairy ;w;
https://www.picuki.com/media/3005567121911673572
So yeah in the end I just think in the scenes were Snow looks younger is more that she purposefully looks more cartoony, her voice gives Betty Boop vibes, even her face too, while when she´s older her voice is still high pitched but much more relaxed and calm. I just think the animators took the character less seriously when she was more cartoon because they just wanted a cute little princess but for me Snow White should´ve looked like her adult version throughout the movie, she´s vintage and she´s gorgeous, her 2000s Disney Princess franchise design was based of her "adult design" of the movie while her current Disney Princess design is more based on her "young movie design"

[CielSomnus]

Her movie designs compared
https://www.picuki.com/media/3110745448317700047
And some model sheets
https://ar.pinterest.com/pin/450360031477359760/
https://vegalleries.com/art/walt-disney ... l-sheet-id
https://vegalleries.com/art/walt-disney ... odel-sheet
https://www.pinterest.jp/pin/733383120558083961/

In the first 2 model sheets they use her adult design and in the 2 last ones her "child" design