What A Cartoon Movie! - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Added 2025-01-27 05:00:04 +0000 UTCWhen Walt Disney announced he planned on making a full-length animated feature, the most common response was "What are YOU smoking?" And since this happened in the mid-30s, the answer was cigarettes. (Lots of them!) But, over the course of four years, he and his team of hardworking animators pulled off this stupendous feat, making animation more than just a short diversion before the main attraction. This month on What A Cartoon Movie, join us as we explore Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: the groundbreaking film that increased apple poisoning awareness by 300 percent.
Comments
Hey Bob, drop that vegetable soup recipe
SlothIsLegend
2025-02-02 23:00:05 +0000 UTCI think this is an important movie that I respect more than I like, which I do like, but if I had to choose between this, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty as my favorite old school Disney favorite, it's Sleeping Beauty, which I hope you two cover in the future.
Giovanni
2025-02-01 05:54:53 +0000 UTCYou've probably pointed this out in other episodes, but the reason that fairy tales often feature evil stepmothers (and to a lesser extent absent fathers) is that for thousands of years, fairy tales were exclusively a genre written by women. Fairy tales were passed from mother to daughter since time immemorial as oral tradition. In European folklore, it wasn't until The Brothers Grimm collected and published fairy tales that they became separated from this tradition. So a lot of the tropes that have come under scrutiny in recent years can be traced back to these stories being instructive lessons from preindustrial moms: do not trust the stepmom trying to replace me, the path to upward mobility is through marrying up, a good daughter cooks and cleans and doesn't talk back to mom, watch out for other girls and women trying to undermine you etc
ExciteMike64
2025-01-31 17:14:07 +0000 UTCThe "crone" version of the Queen appears during the closing credits montage of "Agatha All Along", so I suppose Disney considers her to be a witch too. š
To Boldy Joe... Moore - the Michael Crichton of the comments section
2025-01-31 11:34:11 +0000 UTCI wouldn't necessarily say I'm a fan of this movie, but I do love aspects of it and chiefly the visuals. There's just no way to make movies like this anymore and it bums me out. That backgrounds are so good that I want to sneeze every time I see Snow White enter that cottage for the first time. I do get the sense, with this being Disney's first feature length animated film, that there was a lack on confidence in how heavy they could be with the narrative. We get a little setup for the first act, meet the dwarfs, then it's like an extended Silly Symphonies feature until the evil queen shows up. And I think a lot of the films that follow are better for having Snow White be the first. And Bob, never seen Sleeping Beauty? You gotta get on that. It's plot isn't much denser than what's presented here, but that's another visual delight for different reasons. And it stands out among the other works of that era because of it. And I applaud Henry for not having his castle flop edited out. Sleeping Beauty in Disneyland, Cinderella in Disney World, though neither castle really resembles the ones from their respective films.
Joe Hodgson
2025-01-30 21:42:04 +0000 UTCI was in high school when this was released on VHS. I was just getting into my movie snob phase and refused to see this movie on tape. I knew back then the much lower quality of picture of a television compared to a cinema screen and had gotten used to Disney's regular theatrical rereleases of their classical animated films. I thus declared to my peers (like an asshole) that I shall never watch that movie by any other means than in a theater, as it was intended. Decades later, I have a much larger and nicer TV and decided to pick up the blu ray. I wish I could tell my teenage self that it was worth the wait...and not be such an asshole. However, I'll also be the guy to throw down the Thanos card on the queen's plan. Why didn't she just use her magic to make herself prettier? I want to assume she was already gonna do that to undo the crone spell once Snow White was dead.
Sean Ryan
2025-01-30 18:02:55 +0000 UTC1. As a sneezy person I have to say touching the underside of your nose DOES work to suppress a sneeze; I use this trick often. If it doesn't work for you, you may not be pressing hard enough, or pulling away too soon. It's not just a cartoon thing; there's a science behind it (something about nerve endings). 2. To be pedantic, there's no mention of "true" love in this at all, or the concept of one love. The antidote is listed as "love's first kiss." So the kiss working doesn't necessarily mean the prince is her "one true love" -- it just means he loves her and it's their first kiss, or it's the first kiss she's received from someone she's in love with? In any case, there's no implication that they're destined to be together. "First" seems to be an important qualifier here (if Snow White and Prince Charming had kissed when they met earlier, he may not have been able to revive her later). I think the antidote's been misquoted to the point where people don't remember this
nina matsumoto
2025-01-29 23:13:39 +0000 UTCI actually enjoyed this movie A LOT, not even despite its simplicity, but almost *because* of it. Yes, the titular hero is extremely bland and calling the prince a character is a big stretch, but the stuff with the Dwarfs and the Queen's cool old witch design (even though YES it is inferior to Maleficient's design, 100%) were genuinely really enjoyable to me. I'd honestly probably rank this above Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Bambi. -- That being said, I will also use this space to express my utter contempt for Dopey. That smug looking, adult-baby ass MF creeps me the fuck out and I hate looking at him. His multiple attempt at stealing kisses from Snow White didn't help matters either. I can only imagine how rancid that freak is going to look in the live-action adaptation. Speaking of which, I really appreciate the brief discussion of how heinous that movie looks and how AWFUL Gal Gadot looks in it, because I've been subjected to that trailer before 2 movies in the past month and I can't believe it might turn out worse than the rest of the glut of their remakes. AT LEAST with its many delays, Rachel Zegler already has a pretty good career going for herself, so she shouldn't suffer too much from it unlike Naomi Scott & Mena Massoud (Jasmine & Aladdin) and Halle Bailey (Ariel) seem to have, despite those movies making money hand over fist.
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2025-01-29 22:54:10 +0000 UTCTonight I finally finished listening to this episode, and as a result, I am now fully caught up on listening to this podcast. I was a former patron who listened to episodes as they came out, but had to unsubscribe in December 2020 for financial reasons. December 2020 was also when I graduated college. I'll spare you the details but, like most college graduates, finding a job in my field was soul crushingly difficult, with several rejections for people without work experience and many opportunities that closed before I could take advantage, but I finally landed a job in 2023, and by December 2023 I was able to afford to resubscribe since it was also my first job that paid higher than minimum wage. As a result, in order to catch up, I listened to an entire month's worth of Talking Simpsons / What A Cartoon every week, aaaaall the way up until now, with weekends being for WAC movies. Were it not for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the DLC for Elden Ring, both of which I spent about a month on each, I would have been caught up earlier. But now I can finally relax with this podcast and enjoy episodes as they come out live, just like back then. As for Snow White, it was one of the earliest movies I remember being shown on VHS as a toddler, along with The Lion King, and while I don't often revisit this movie, whenever I do I'm reminded by how much of this movie is deeply imprinted into my psyche. I spent the entire past couple of days humming the wishing well song, and while the plot of the movie is pretty thin, I still enjoy the time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs spend together in the middle of the film, especially the face washing scene and the lovely party at night. Something about Adriana Caselotti's singing as Snow White still enchants me like when I was really little, and listening closely this time I was extra impressed with the voice acting when she bites the appleāall of those little breaths and her lightly worried tone we hear before we see her arm flopping onto the floor must have been very difficult to pick up with 1930s audio equipment.
DoorCurtain
2025-01-29 05:47:07 +0000 UTCEvery time Bob and Henry talk about their cartoon-loving childhoods I think about how impossible it was for me to avoid the stern watchful eyes of my family members (older brother, dad) and their ruthless judgment of most things being either Gay or For Girls or For Babies and how that created a sense of being in a panopticon that never really went away for me (and, I would imagine, others with older brothers and fathers)
Lambda
2025-01-28 00:51:34 +0000 UTCCS Lewis' review of the movie (which he saw with his buddy Tolkien) always makes me laugh. Quoted here: āDwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way. And the dwarfsā jazz party was pretty bad. I suppose it never occurred to the poor boob [Walt Disney] that you could give them any other kind of music. But all the terrifying bits were good, and the animals really most moving. . . . What might not have come of it if this man had been educatedāor even brought up in a decent society?ā
Blake R.
2025-01-27 21:19:40 +0000 UTCThe scene of Snow White reading the names on the beds reminds me of a scene from the live action Casper the Friendly Ghost movie. In a scene Christina Ricci enters the ghostly trios room and sees their beds; she reads off the names, āStretch, Fatso, Stinkieāshe then says āwonder where Doc and Dopey sleepā P.S. The live action Casper movie would be a great choice to do for the April What a Cartoon movie.
Seth
2025-01-27 19:44:49 +0000 UTCChiming in regarding The Adventures of Robin Hood. To Bob's point, yes, it has been referenced countless times to the point where if you've seen Men in Tights, you've got a pretty good idea of Adventure of Robin Hood. However, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it because it really is a masterclass in filmmaking. Some of the stunts in the movie are incredibly impressive (not to mention unbelievably dangerous). And if you're lucky enough to get the Blu ray release, there's a fantastic commentary with a film historian that's really good.
Jonathon
2025-01-27 18:09:47 +0000 UTCA Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs podcast on my birthday? Well, that's just Loverly
Adam Azzalino
2025-01-27 15:12:10 +0000 UTC
