Eddie Collins

Adapted from the Grimm fairytale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is chillingly dark in places, reflecting its roots in European folklore, but the deft Disney touch ensures that the overall tone remains light and the story develops apace, swept along on the perfect musical score. Any lingering gloom is quickly dispelled by the superbly characterised dwarfs and by the humorous antics of the various irresistible fauna that threaten to steal the show in several scenes. The pioneering animation is breathtaking and songs such as "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work", now firmly embedded in popular culture, are seamlessly interwoven with the action.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs happens to be an interesting technological milestone in cinema history--it is also an enduring masterpiece of family entertainment. To the millions who have fallen under its spell over the years, this magical fairy tale remains one of Disney's most enchanting and best-loved films. Only Grumpy could resist. --Helen Baker
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (2 Disc Platinum Edition) [DVD] [1937], 2010-07-03

It is great to have this digitally remastered DVD of this film for home viewing. I last saw this film many years ago at the cinema when it was the only place you could see it.

If you love Walt Disney films, you'll love this. My 2½ year old granddaughter loved it and was dancing to all the songs.

It is incredible that the film is still current even though released in 1937. Well done to Walt Disney!

Adapted from the Grimm fairytale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is chillingly dark in places, reflecting its roots in European folklore, but the deft Disney touch ensures that the overall tone remains light and the story develops apace, swept along on the perfect musical score. Any lingering gloom is quickly dispelled by the superbly characterised dwarfs and by the humorous antics of the various irresistible fauna that threaten to steal the show in several scenes. The pioneering animation is breathtaking and songs such as "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work", now firmly embedded in popular culture, are seamlessly interwoven with the action.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs happens to be an interesting technological milestone in cinema history--it is also an enduring masterpiece of family entertainment. To the millions who have fallen under its spell over the years, this magical fairy tale remains one of Disney's most enchanting and best-loved films. Only Grumpy could resist. --Helen Baker

On the DVD: the video quality on this DVD is stunningly clear. Though it is noticeable that the film is nearly 65 years old, Disney has done a great job in the cleaning process: the bright colours shine clearly, the blacks are deep and the whites clear. There is little to no visible wearing on the film and the digital transfer has done wonders in restoring Snow White and her seven little pals. The sound is very clear and you get a real sense, in places, of the newly mastered 5.1 Dolby Sound enhancements that have been added, making for enjoyable listening to the well-loved songs.

The extras on disk one are plentiful and give a real insight into the making of Snow White. Little was done in 1937 for the filming of behind-the-scenes documentaries, but what could have been included has been. The audio commentary is strung together from interviews with Walt Disney himself, all of which are fascinating, and to keep the kids happy there is a familiar Disney sing-along and a Dopey game to play.

The disk two extras are packed with information on the movie and Disney, from the 3-D virtual tour of the Snow White kingdom, that also has some documentary information, to an outtakes section showing abandoned footage and ideas that were never included in the final movie. There is also an informative timeline of the creation of the Walt Disney Studios that includes some deleted scenes from the movie. Altogether, great additions to a classic film. --Robert Hyde
Disney Exceeds Everyone's Expectations Again, 2001-10-09
This DVD Collector's Edition is by far the best DVD Disney has released to date. Along with the direct to digital original feature this set also contains a game, an audio commentary of the feature, and everything a 'Disneyphile' wants to know about the film.

Disc 2 is where the magic really begins : behind the scenes look at the creation, scenes that were cut from the final version, a closer look at the animation and character development, a timeline of the Disney story, and loads more.

This DVD set really is value for money. The book that accompanies the discs is also great reading. It's rare to get more than you expected....

Do yourself a favour and buy your children (and yourself) a piece of movie history that will last forever in your hearts.

'Young Mr Lincoln', which has been out of print for sometime and gets a deserved transfer to DVD, now gets to find a wider audience, and is one of the films to which radical Jane Fonda refers to in her recent biography 'My Life So Far' when discussing her conflicts with her father (Henry Fonda's sometime conservative nature is juxtaposed against 'The Grapes of Wrath' & 'Young Mr Lincoln' by Ms. Fonda). 'Young Mr Lincoln', along with films like 'The Big Sleep', 'The Harder They Fall' & 'Johnny Guitar' became a reference point for the early thinking of the critics-turned-auteurs, the French New Wave. It became a case study of that cahiers-du-cinema notion that a particular director's films had an auteurist notion behind them - Ford given the same treatment Alfred Hitchcock was (Francois Truffaut changing the view of Hitch - the shift from entertainer to auteur). Even the sometime caustic critic Pauline Kael described 'Young Mr Lincoln' as "one of John Ford's greatest films." Master Soviet-filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein ('The Battleship Potemkin', 'October')said of it, "Its source is a womb of popular and national spirit. This could account for its unity, its artistry, its genuine beauty." This reminds you that pre-Cold War, pre-McCarthyism, the USA had flirted with communist-socialist ideas found in works like 'Ten Days That Shook the World', 'USA' & 'Waiting for Lefty.' It also reminds you that 'Young Mr Lincoln', like 'The Grapes of Wrath' came out of the Great Depression and the ethos of the New Deal.

'Young Mr Lincoln' is also a key biopic, being made in the late 1930s on the back of such Hollywood-biopics as 'The Story of Louis Pasteur' & 'Juarez' - the famous Warners/Dieterle cycle of biopics that refashioned the genre towards a notion of entertainment over factual/historical accuracy (Daryl Zanuck was also key in this type of thinking)Thus, the biopic as we know it was formed from films like 'Young Mr Lincoln' - beating a path towards such key examples of the genre as 'Night & Day', 'Reach for the Sky', 'Patton', 'Raging Bull', 'Reds', 'Malcolm X', & 'A Beautiful Mind.' Here, Lincoln is placed into a courtroom plot not far from 'Amistad' or 'To Kill a Mockingbird' that may or may not be true (sadly I don't know enough about Abraham Lincoln to confirm!) - clearly seeing Lincoln's early life in event form as symbolic of his later work as a great American president who ended slavery (though of course, it would be close to a century later that the Civil Rights movement would begin to move the US from a South African-style segregation).

'Young Mr Lincoln' comes across as an old-fashioned entertainment, but also sits easily alongside the somewhat subversive nature of such films as 'I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' & 'Sullivan's Travels' (the latter also reissued on DVD recently). I'm sure the content and philosophy of this film would wind up certain right-wing folks in the US, which is perhaps why Jane Fonda referred to it so often in context to her own radical work (e.g. 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?', 'Coming Home'). A welcome issue on DVD and I think a key example of the Hollywood biopic - an important film that still deserves to be seen and has a content sadly lacking from the majority of contemporary American cinema.

As part of the firm’s Diamond Collection, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is crammed to the rafters with terrific and engaging extra features, which somehow find more things to say about a film that’s seven decades old. But it’s the attention that the main feature itself has been given that puts pretty much everyone else to shame.

You could be forgiven for thinking Disney might have been hamstrung by the age of the material here, but there’s little evidence of that with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The transfer here is stunningly good, with the film looking more as if it was made in the last few years rather than back in the 1930s. Consider the number of Blu-ray catalogue titles of just ten years ago that look quite shaky, and it’s all the more impressive an achievement. The audio, too, has been treated to a spruce up, and the whole disc feels like no detail was too much trouble. It’s a superb Blu-ray of a genuine classic film, and further proof as to why Disney is so highly regarded for its high definition discs. --Simon Brew
A pleasure to watch, 2010-05-19
I bought this for my daughter but the whole family, including grandparents, have thoroughly enjoyed watching this dvd. The animation is wonderful as always. Its a pleasure to sit down and watch it again and again.