BCDB: Cartoon Reviews: Snow-White

One of the most overlooked aspects of this cartoon is the backgrounds behind the dancing Koko. Example: The skeleton card game in the background. Owing to the morbid economic times in the early 1930's, cartoons like these, because of the musical content and visuals were very successful. The images that illuminated songs like St. James Infirmary
Blues were a mirror reflection of those economic times. Surprisingly, these concepts have not returned today. Does anyone have the guts to use rotoscopes today? I think not. This society is so married to computers, I sometimes wonder if people were aware films with imagination were made before their advent!

This is probably one of the most astonishing cartoons on all history. The beginning and the end are typical of the animation of the time, with the wacky touch of the cartoons of the period, but the scene where Koko the clown is transformed into a ghost by the witch and dances as he sings on a scrolling background is an astonishing, spooky, eerie, and uneasy experience, coming from a time when cartoons were not only for kids.

I remember this cartoon from my childhood. It is by far the best cartoon story I have ever experienced. Seeing is believing.

This must stand above all cartoons for its portrayal of the sheer horror that hides in our subconscious. Roland C. (Doc) Crandel animated this cartoon alone...over a six month period. The huge panoramic background is so full of eerie tablaux that one must view the cartoon many times to take it all in. I have seen this cartoon at least 100 times and am still amazed at what the Fleischer Studios could do. Cab Calloway as the ghost is unique in the annals of cartoonland thanks to his famous dancing movements...(wonderfully captured by Max's famous ROTOSCOPE device). This is absolutly an excersise in the sublime and macabre...and should not be missed!!

Snow White is the Boop cartoon that actually made the Library of Congress National Registry of most important American films - yep, it's that good! The basic Snow White story - bad queen, poor little princess, hiding out in the woods - only when Betty/Snow White 'dies', she's carried into a mystery cave where one of the most surreal scenes ever in a cartoon takes place: Koko the Clown sings Cab Calloway's "St. James Infirmary Blues" while dancing and changing shapes. Hard to describe, but the music is wonderful and the animation is, as I said, really surreal! A great one!"