Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #141: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs

Odds are you know the story of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs by heart, and the odds are greater still that the first you became familiar with the story was when you saw the 1937 Walt Disney animated musical, directed by David Hand. The Brothers Grimm were the ones who first popularized fairy tales in the 19^th century, but it was the creator of Mickey Mouse who created the versions we all know in the 20^th and 21^st century. Comparing the work of the Brothers Grimm with the cheerful films of Uncle Walt is like comparing Game of Thrones to Frozen: they both feature princesses and elements of fantasy, but one has a lot more blood and murder.

Of course by removing the more mature parts of the Grim fairy tales and using colourful animation as well catchy tunes to tell the story, Walt Disney pictures managed to reach millions of viewers and cemented their movie as the definitive version of the fairy tale. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was Hollywood’s first full-length animated feature and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, but it is constantly being rediscovered by new generations of children even though it was released 78 years ago. I can’t recall exactly when, but I know I watched it as a kid sometime in the early 90s, most likely in a classroom. Nothing will calm down a group of toddlers like the sight of the seven dwarfs singing “Heigh-Ho, it’s off to work we go.”

Knowing the story is one thing, but for a real pop culture challenge try remembering the names of the seven dwarfs off the top of your head. That’s right up there with knowing the names of Santa’s reindeers or the names of the Magnificent Seven. I can’t do it, but I do remember my favourite dwarf was the mute and bald dwarf Dopey because of how silly he behaved.

Both girls and boys usually love the animated movie, but of course nowadays the idea of a princess cooking and cleaning for seven guys who go work all day in a mine seems somewhat antiquated. Add to that she is eventually placed in a coma and falls in love when the first guy who kisses her while she is asleep, and there is a lot here to anger feminists the world over. This is probably why in 2012 alone there were two new live action versions of the film that featured a much more proactive Snow White. Mirror Mirror has her becoming essentially a stick-up artist with the dwarfs, and Snow White and the Huntsman has her picking up a sword and storming the castle of the evil stepmother for a final showdown. Apparently the studios really wanted to emphasize the “action” part of a live-action version of Snow White.

Although those new versions are definitely more progressive in terms of giving the female protagonist a lot more to do other than cooking and cleaning, it does still feel like something has been lost from the early animated version. The Walt Disney version is a product of its time, when a female character in movies was at best a prize to be rescued, but seen today the movie still has a certain magic. It’s a simple story with lots of cutesy characters and a damsel in distress, yet if it has lasted for close to eight decades Walt Disney must have done something right.

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #147: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a huge influence on John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 , which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together. Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes, which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960 during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than explosions in Notorious , no offense to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly las...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #91: Return of the Jedi

If you want someone to give you death stares, tell a die-hard Star Wars fan the original trilogy is not perfect. I am however going to take a risk and write that if there is one major flaw with Return of the Jedi (1983) is a lack of imagination when it comes to the central plot. After the good guys blow up the Death Star in the first movie, the bad guys are almost done building a brand new one, which of course needs to be destroyed again in more or less the same way. Richard Marquand may be directing this time, but it was still George Lucas writing. Plot hole aside, as a kid you can’t help but have fun as the good guys join forces with a tribe of living teddy bears to get the job done. Like many people in their early 30s, I was introduced to the first Star Wars trilogy by my parents who had recorded the movies, commercials included, when they were showing one night on TV. Upon first viewing, a few things stick out in the mind of a young boy watching Return of the Jedi such as:...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #85: Blue Velvet

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...

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