“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 January 1939, Page 5

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”

WALT riSNEY’S FIRST FULL LENGTH FEATURE AT THE STATE.

Box Plan at F. J. Adcock’s, ’Phone 1275.

Walt Disney’s first fulllength production, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’’ opens at the State Theatre today and continues until Friday. This famous picture is in no sense an elongated cartoon, but a classic musical feature done in soft tqpes of colour and not in the bright hues of Disney’s usual cartoon shorts. Every scene in “Snow White’’ is an exquisite composition of colour and shading. Every frame of the film could stand alone comparable in its beauty to the most ambitious painting.

The film runs for more than an hour. It is composed of 250,000 drawings, more, in fact, and the musical background is provided by an orchestra of 80 musicians. As many as 750 artists worked on the production, which has been in the making since 1934. These consisted of 32 animators, 102 assistants, 167 inbetweeners (at filling in bits of action), 20 lay-out artists, 25 artists doing water colour backgrounds, 65 effects animators (those who draw smoke, water, clouds, etc.), and 158 young women adept at inking and painting the Disney figures on transparent celluloid sheets. Counting all of the preliminary sketches, and figuring that each was re-drawn three or four times, it has been estimated that at least two million drawings were turned out during the making of “Snow White.” It is estimated that the production has entailed a cost of £300,000.

Whereas the Disney short subjects are one continuous laugh from start to finish, his first feature presents all the elements of great entertainment, romance, pathos, suspense and humour.