Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs and Beauty and the Beast: Milestones in Genre

Animation is undeniably the fastest evolving art-form today. It started with the Phenakistoscope in 1832 and has evolved so far as to us being able to step into man-made worlds with Virtual Reality. Walt Disney released the first fully animated feature film in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film led the way for new artists to express themselves, create extraordinary worlds and connect with a wider audience than any film genre before. It should come as no surprise that Snow White being the first has had such a big influence on the genre. It’s still regarded as one of the best animated films to this day. In this essay I want to compare the mise-en-scene elements of Disney’s animated films. Namely Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Mise-en-scene plays a significant role in how animation can tell a story. One could argue, animation in of itself is mise-en-scene. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney Productions had to draw virtually every aspect of the film. Though this was second nature to these animators due to previous shorts (Mickey Mouse, Silly Symphonies), the idea of expanding such techniques to 90 minutes was unheard of. Nobody knew whether or not an audience could sit and watch 90 minutes of ‘cartoons’. One of the earliest conundrums Walt and his team faced was how do you make an animated film seem real. Of course, it is animation — it should not seem realistic. Walt notably told his animators, “I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real unless we first know the real” (Disney, 1935). Hayes and Webster (2013) call this Naturalism and Reality. “What we are talking about when we talk of naturalism or reality in animation are two things, one being the attention paid to the physical reality of the performer and setting and the other being the psychological truth of the performances.” (Hayes, Webster, 2013). One can, however, read this as either creating an aesthetic that replicates reality, or one that feels natural. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a good example of a film that uses both. The sequence where Snow White and the Dwarfs are dancing and yodelling just after the Evil Queen discovers Snow White is still alive (00:52:00) shows this idea quite vividly. When paying attention to the performance of the characters, there’s distinct differences in the way Snow White is animated, and the way the Dwarfs are. The former is staggeringly real. We know that in this instance, Snow White was animated using a reference model, Marge Champion.

Virtually all of her mannerisms and habits were copied from film to paper. This sequence is particularly important in this regard purely because of how contrasting the performances are. The colour and artificial lighting aim to assert the gaze of the viewer on Snow White. Laura Mulvey discusses the “male gaze” in her essay Visual Pleasure and Natural Cinema. It explores the notion that we as film spectators are looking at “[the] woman as an icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men.” It becomes a larger debate when discussing Mulvey in any case. However, in relation to the sequence in Snow White it is possible to read the sequence in question in relation to Mulvey’s arguments. There’s a clear focus on Snow White as she stands out distinctly through the mise-en-scene, with character performance and colour. However, many may disagree. Our gaze could be focused on Snow White to bring a sense of escapism — of a human living in a fantasy. Perhaps audiences could identify or relate with Snow White for having that distinct performance.

Comparatively, Disney’s later films are vastly different in later 2D animated features such as Beauty and the Beast (1991). In stark contrast to the aforementioned film, Beauty and the Beast uses a far more fluid performance. Belle, the Snow White equivalent in this film, is animated with less realistic qualities and is more immersive in her performance. It becomes far more ‘natural’ as oppose to realistic. Many also see this as an improvement over previous princesses. As Cassandra Stover notes in her article Damsels and Heroines: The Conundrum of the Post-Feminist Disney Princess. “If Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella exemplified the traditional Disney female as docile, beautiful objects waiting for their prince to come, then Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Meg, Mulan, and Tiana are exactly the opposite: focused, ambitious, and in the case of Pocahontas and Mulan, literally heroic as they perform the traditional prince role and save the day” (Stover, 2013).

Character design plays a significant role in this. Belle is unlike Snow White in the sense that she isn’t designed around a pre-existing person. It’s clear that she’s based on a culmination of performances from the Disney princesses before her. She fits naturally in the world of the other characters.

But it still needs to be explored whether Mulvey’s approach can be applied in this instance. In the opening musical number for Beauty and the Beast (‘Belle’, 00:03:31), we learn more about Belle. Her performance shows a woman who is dainty, but rather inquisitive. She’s thin in build, with bright blue eyes, features usually linked with beauty. As the musical number progresses, we start learning of her qualities. She’s unlike the other females in her community because she likes to read instead of finding a husband and settling down. It’s an idea which resonated more with women at the time instead of waiting for a ‘Prince Charming’. Mulvey’s argument can definitely still be applied for her appearance, for she conforms to the standards of beauty. As Mulvey notes, “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact.” Belle is almost certainly coded, she is after all the ‘beauty’ in this film. However, one could say that the idea of this character being ‘erotic’ is unnecessary. Belle’s character is someone of great beauty, but her ‘unfeminine’ qualities are the focus in both the mentioned sequence and the film in general.

Setting and background in Animated feature films are fundamental in creating a world that is realistic or natural. Both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Beauty and the Beast were released during times of major technical innovation. Both benefit from advances in background and setting.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first feature film to use the multiplane camera, a camera that is mounted above several layers of cels including the background layers. This allows the camera operators to move the layers individually to create a realistic sense of movement between the foreground and the background. Innovations, however, are not obvious to the average film-goer. What matters in this instance is the effect it has on them.

Ultimately, the invention of the multiplane camera sought to immerse the audience in the film more so than before. Marc Levoy describes the dilemma, “it became necessary to depict settings wherein the characters were separated by vast distances from their backdrops.” (Levoy, 1977).

The opening shot from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs shows just how important the multiplane camera is to the film. As we track in towards the castle, the trees pass by the camera and the castle grows larger. The sky on the other hand remains the same. This imitates a real environment, as elements of the foreground move past the camera, the area of focus grows larger, but the sky at the very back remains the same. This immerses the audience into the world without them necessarily realising it. Subtleties such as this is what this film is most notable for. Many may even say that this film would not been as successful if it weren’t for the innovations it utilised.

The opening to Beauty and the Beast uses is very similar style of shot, albeit with more action. The difference between the construction of this sequence and the sequence from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is the use of the CAPs (Computer Animation Program) system. The system, which was developed by Disney and Pixar in the late 1980s, allowed animators to virtually animate entirely through a computer. The system was primarily used as a substitute for the ink and paint process, but was later used to animate entire sequences. One of the biggest uses of this system was to simulate a multiplane camera. Because this saved more time and money, shots could become more complex. Beauty and the Beast is a prime example of this.

The establishing shot of the film shows more than just trees, the castle and sky. It also shows live animals and a rushing waterfall. This again immerses the audience more in the film and its environments.

Beauty and the Beast uses CAPs to create shots never been done before in animation, the ballroom sequence in Beauty and the Beast is the most notable. The sequence, which is set to the song that bares the same title as the film, follows Belle and the Beast as they dance to a musical number in a large 3D created ballroom. The environment, which was created entirely using the CAPs system, allows the camera to sweep the entire room and immerse the audience in the sequence so much as it would have an emotional effect that no animation has ever managed to do.

Innovations such as these led the way for the future of animation. Beauty and the Beast received a 15min standing ovation at the 1990 New York Film Festival not just because of how outstanding the narrative and music was, but also for how innovative the animation was for it’s time.

Animation can be something that isn’t real but can still immerse an audience into making it feel natural. While there have been some examples of animated films that have gone the extra mile to seem realistic (The Polar Express (2004), The Jungle Book (2016)), some of the most moving and poignant animated feature films have been the ones that have deviated from the idea of reality, rather, focusing on the idea of natural. Mise-en-scene is perhaps the biggest component in making these films feel natural. Everything we see on screen is created by hand, or by mouse and keyboard. We as viewers, can relate to characters through their performances, which can sometimes be very realistic, other times, very natural for the worlds they are set in. The environments of these films are animated in a way that is so subtly real that it feels natural to us. Animation continues to be one of the fastest evolving art forms, it’s almost certain that more innovations will arise to bring audiences closer to these sometimes very abstract worlds.

Bibliography

• DISNEY, W., 1935. How to Train an Animator. Walt Disney Productions.
• HAND, D., 1937. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. RKO Radio Pictures, Walt Disney Productions.
• HAYES, D. and WEBSTER, C.,1954- author., 2013. Acting and performance for animation. New York: Focal Press.
• LEVOY, M., 1977. A Color Animation System: Based on the Multiplane Technique, Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques 1977, ACM, pp. 65–71.
• MULVEY, L., 2006. Visual Please and Narrative Cinema IN] Media and cultural studies: keyworks. In: M.G. DURHAM and D. KELLNER, eds, Media and cultural studies: keyworks. Rev. ed edn. Malden, Mass; Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 342–352.
• STOVER, C., 2013. Damsels and Heroines: The Conundrum of the Post-Feminist Disney Princess. LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University, Volume 2 | Issue 1 Article 29.
• TROUSDALE, G. and WISE, K., 1991. Beauty and the Beast. Burbank, CA: Disney Feature Animation.