Right lads, let's get into this. "Disney+David" Episode 1: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" from 1937 (fun fact, I was not aware that "Dwarfs" is the correct spelling)...

It's easy to forget the historical context for this film's groundbreaking success. Nobody believed anyone would shell out cash to go see a feature length cartoon, the medium itself considered at the time to be low art. The papers branded it "Disney's folly" if you can believe it.

At one point they even ran out of money and Roy Disney had to convince his brother to screen a rough cut of unfinished animation to a guy from the Bank of America. He watched it in complete silence, then when he got to his car turned and said "that's gonna make a pile of money."

So, let's dive in. I'm gonna try and assess this from a Story guy perspective, but my first thought on a tangent was that the book that sucks the viewer in after the title card is actually live action, which TECHNICALLY makes this Disney's first live-action/animation feature!

The second thing you notice right away is the mind-altering majesty of Disney's multi-plane camera. It's gorgeous even now, but try to imagine being an audience member who had never experienced depth and movement in an animation before. This truly WAS their "Toy Story". Sublime.

Holding up equally well is the exquisite attention to detail when it came to atmospheric effects. Flames, smoke, ripples, and all brought to vibrant, textural life by the incredible women of Disney's "Ink and Paint Club". Walt wanted to make a "living cartoon", and they sold it.

Stylistically, a lot is to be said for the influence of European illustrators on the production. In choosing to focus on classic fairytales and books, they infused the world with a timeless style, whilst grounding it in a thoroughly American musical landscape. A potent combo....

Consequently every frame could be the cover of a tabletop book. This image of White singing while the hunter we know has been ordered to kill her watches in the background is pure picture book storytelling. It's a statement of ambition for the audience, this ain't no Goofy toon.

Unnecessary observation tangent: Even though it makes no temporal or literal sense, this hunter is played by Alfred Molina and that is a fact.

Then there's the lighting. Not content with populating the story with countless individual critters, the discipline of hand-painting every shadow they cast, from the way they stretch with movement and distance across each surface, is just flawless. This was the dream of a madman.

Story tangent: This movie is crammed with endless visual gags, two for every animal that follows Snow White into the house, but I think my fave has to be the simplicity of the turtle who keeps having to turn back round whenever anyone changes direction. Funny is funny, guys...

That brings me to the dwar(f)s, and this is where my Story hat comes on. Despite the feature runtime, the story is insanely slight, and once the action gets to the house it unfolds almost in real time. No modern animation braintrust would be able to get away with that today.

This is largely due to the fact that Walt's background was shorter, gag-driven cartoons. Nobody had ever attempted this kind of thing before, so he leaned heavily on a relentless flood of gag sessions, passing out money for every solid idea thrown on the pile...

Due to this, there is a lot of repetition of gags when it comes to the dwarf's identifying characteristics. For instance, Sneezy "almost" sneezing is a beat they hit over and over again. I was amazed that I had never noticed this before, but now it sticks out like a dwarf's nose.

It's therefore a testament to the sheer joy of this film that the movie gets away with it and then some. In modern animation, when a plot is more a collection of gags strung together, it's usually a sign the Story is lacking. But when the beads are as shiny as this, who notices?

And really, by modern standards, the plot simply isn't there. The inciting incident and the finale are separated by almost an hour of chortling chuffah. The closest thing any character has to an arc is Grumpy's resistance to Snow White. And even that beat is repetitive.

It also touches on an irritating storytelling trope of this era, especially through today's lens. Male characters vaciliate between being all "Girls, ewww!" and "Girls, aw shucks". And the girls remain fixes points of virtue. Only a room full of men could have dreamed it up.

Musical tangent: This soundtrack predates the advent of "on book" musicals, making the first musical film to feature songs that pertained to the story's action. If you thought "Let it Go" was getting unbearable, imagine your kids wearing out "Whistle While You Work" on vinyl.

Artwork tangent incepted into the music tangent: My favourite piece of background art is the beautifully carved piano that Grumpy plays. Just a taster of the kind of insane detail that would define Jepetto's unhealthy clock obsession in "Pinocchio" ( @ajheretic666)...

But the plot does eventually have to catch up with us. Speaking of, this shot is probably my favourite use of the multi-plane camera to sell that track around the Queen as she transforms. I may have to pick a favourite multitrack for every one of these flicks, see if I don't!

By the time Walt and his gag-writers catch back up to the Queen and her plot to poison Snow White it feels like they almost forgot about her. Suddenly the movie kicks up a notch in the final fifteen minutes. But you have to remember these guys were making a new medium....

How gorgeous is the mist in this scene??? I mean, MAN. From the use of filmed reference for the character's dancing and mannerisms to the use of values from warm to cool, this movie is just firing on every cylinder, save for, erm, the the Queen being the only women with agency.

Avian-related tangent: I'm so happy that Snow White died and Grumpy didn't eat this pie she made for him, because those birds doing the decorative crust are probably swimming with disease.

Now great Story is editing like great editing is Story. And this fantastic hard cut from Snow looking straight into camera to her POV of the Evil Queen beaming at her with crazy eyes is terrifying. Kids at the time must have burst into tears, because it shit THIS adult right up.

Greatest frame in the whole movie ("Ink and Paint Club" working overtime! on that lightning glow), and sets the tone for every scary Disney villain ever. It's astonishing, considering how green these storytellers were, that this ending is as effective as it is. Perfectly pitched.

And, like many Disney villains who would follow her, she causes her own demise, an action/reaction that cuts to Disney's moral core. And the vultures, who we thought were harbingers of White's death, glide gracefully down after her. Haunting without being gratuitous, pure Disney.

Now for the ending. Any Story guy worth his salt will say that this ending wraps itself up pretty darn fast. The Prince brings Snow back to life, they get married and saunter off, rendering her character inactive to the point that she might as well have stayed asleep...

In fact, in many ways this film can be considered very archaic on a storytelling level, and certainly reductive on a feminist one. Even Disney's modern film-makers now poke fun at the limiting princess mould that this one film would forge for the remainder of the century...

As a modern, cine-literate audience (where even the word "Braintrust" is relatively known in pop culture), we're spoilt for storytelling complexity in our animation. Our characters' arcs are full, plots sophisticated, emotions complex. We are the generation of Pixar, after all.

So, I do concede that it is easy to write "Snow White" off for being a vestige of a simpler time, an antiquated novelty. But, in my opinion, to do so would be to fail to understand how truly groundbreaking this film was....

The dwarf's crying over Snow's coffin was the first moment an audience in a cinema had ever been brought to tears by a cartoon. It was the first time any cartoon had even tried. That ambition to be more than simply throwaway funny was as revolutionary as any technique or effect.

Put simply, without THIS we would never get to THIS:

So...that concludes my first Disney review. A big old emotional experience for sure, rich in historical reverenc, warmed by the light of a multiplane camera through a thousand painted cells. It was Disney's folly...until it wasn't, which is the only way anything new can be born.

As far as rating goes, this film is obviously a High Five. That said, my reviews will be two-fold, my basic audience review followed by a Problematic Score. This I will generously give a high 2 (out of five), for its reductive and limiting use of female and male stereotypes.

That said, it could have been, and in will be in later movies, WAY worse. I love this movie. It's not my favourite Disney film, but it is the codex of the modern animated feature. Every animated film lives within it, to all our gain. Time to close the book, thanks for reading!