25
Nov
21

100 Movie Musicals #12: Snow White (1937)

A weird movie, this one, because it’s doing a bunch of stuff that is absolutely definitional to what musicals become, and also very little happens and most of the movie is an animator’s showcase. Come for the dwarves, but *stay* for the witch.

bringing the heat

This has been an interesting project, because the movies we’ve seen so far have mostly been working in a musical format that is nearly unrecognizable to modern audiences — the songs have all been diagetic, and mostly or entirely unconnected to the plot. They’re stories that break for musical numbers, usually using a theatrical setting or background to justify the songs, rather than stories that revolve around the numbers as a way to express an internal or emotional truth. That all changes with Snow White, which is absolutely in the modern mold where songs are dramatic monologues that only half-exist within the reality of the story. It’s almost shocking how modern Snow White still feels structurally, 90 years later.

Color too is a major innovation that wouldn’t spread out to wider movies for decades, but it’s been a feature of musicals since Rio Rita in 1929. 1929! Then you’ve got Snow White in 1937 and the Wizard of Oz in 1939 exploding off the screen; there isn’t a musical on this list past 1943 that isn’t in color, and that didn’t happen for horror movies until 1960. Musicals were special effects smorgasbords for the first several decades of sound film, and doing this project has really driven that home for me.


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