Tuesday, January 29, 2019

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1955)

aka Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge

I don't guess anyone needs a summary of the Snow White story. This German version plays out much like the famous Disney cartoon of 1937, except this is live action, with children wearing beards playing the dwarfs. Where the action differs from the Disney film, it does so in a way that makes it hew more closely to the original Grimm Brothers version. The Queen visits Snow White at the dwarfs' home three times. The first time, she appears as a peddler and when she talks Snow White into trying on a belt, the Queen tightens it so much that Snow White collapses. When the dwarfs return home, they cut the belt off and she recovers. The next day, the Queen returns selling decorative combs and when she plunges a poisoned one into Snow White's hair, Snow White collapses. Again, the dwarfs save her by simply removing the comb. Finally, the Queen disguises herself as an older peddler and manages to talk a reluctant Snow White into eating a poisoned apple which causes her (temporary) death and her placement in a glass coffin. The prince is a somewhat problematic character here. In the cartoon, he meets her early on and they fall for each other. Here, he comes to the castle, glimpses her from a tower window, becomes enraptured, and sends her a necklace and a promise to help her if she ever needs it. Later, he exclaims, "I love Snow White and I cannot live without her"—even though he's never even met her! The Hunter goes to him for help to save her, but they are rather ineffective—it takes them several months to find her, which we know because we see the seasons change with leaves and then snow falling on her coffin. And (spoiler) what saves her isn't the prince, but the dwarfs dropping the coffin which revives Snow White.

The 1960s was the golden age of the Kiddie Matinee, when suburban theaters would routinely show movies based on fairy tales on Saturday and Sunday mornings, sometimes accompanied by cartoons or a second film. But typically, these weren't big Hollywood movies or even old Hollywood movies, but B-budget films made in Mexico or Spain or Germany and dubbed (rather badly) into English. Sometimes the results were practically surreal, as with K. Gordon Murray's infamous Santa Claus, a Mexican import which features Santa teaming up with Merlin to battle the Devil. This dubbed German film was made in 1955 but didn't hit the American kiddie show trail until 1965. I'm not 100% sure I saw this in a theater, but I think I saw it on TV a couple of years later.

The sets are artificial and the costumes somewhat threadbare, but for me as a kid, that added to the appeal of the movie: it seemed like something my friends and I could have put together in someone's basement. Oddly, the occasional outdoor Bavarian location shot (including Neuschwanstein Castle) actually works against the movie, breaking the spell of the artificial fantasy. The actors are, well, present and accounted for, if not much else. Snow White is pretty but not beautiful; the Prince looks like a worn-out blond Nelson Eddy; the Queen (pictured above left) doesn't look as menacing (or as attractive) as she should. The child dwarfs are fine, and the Hunter is the best actor of all. I realize that some of my plot critiques above are probably more critiques of the original story, but still, those plotholes should have been at least papered over. There are a few songs, the most memorable being a "Whistle While You Work" sort of thing that goes, "Think la-la-la, sing la-la-la," and got stuck in my head for a couple of hours. For nostalgia lovers only. [YouTube]

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