This landmark in cinema history premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles
It
was the first full-length cel-animated feature film, and the process
of bringing the classic story to the screen involved some 750 artists. Disney's
multiplane camera, used up to seven layers of artwork (painted
in oils on glass) shot under a vertical and moveable camera, to give
a three-dimensional feeling in many sequences and it was also used to give a
rotating effect in the scene where the Queen transforms into a witch.
The undertaking was dubbed “Disney’s folly” by the Hollywood harbingers, many of whom were convinced that
the film would bankrupt the studio.
However, the well-over-budget $1.5 million production costs
were more than covered by the $8 million gross box office receipts from its initial
worldwide release. The rest… as they say… is history!
Currently, the film’s lifetime gross is around $418 million.
When this figure is adjusted for inflation that places it in the top-10
American film money-makers of all time.
From a pantomime point of view I came across this 1935 quote
from Walter Elias Disney…
“The first duty of the
cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually
happen - but to give a caricature of life and action - to picture on the
screen things that have run thru the imagination of the audience to bring to
life dream-fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought of during
our lives or have had pictured to us in various forms during our lives… I
definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real,
unless we first know the real. This point should be brought out very clearly to
all new men, and even the older men.”
I reckon this applies to a stage production as well as one destined for the silver screen.
