WALT DISNEY'S MASTERPIECE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23689, 22 December 1938, Page 5

WALT DISNEY'S MASTERPIECE

FIRST FULL LENGTH FEATURE Walt Disney's first full-length technicolour feature, " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" will have.its first Dunedin screening at the Octagon Theatre at a special session after the conclusion of the showing.of the current programme. The colour is said to be exquisite, the backgrounds ■ breath4akingly beautiful, ;and the accompaniment of speech, sound, and music always complementary to the action. The camera sweeps across scenes and into close-ups as though it were recording real figures against real backgrounds. The making of the film has obviously been a staggering task, writes one reviewer. Statistics can, at best, give paltry tribute to the inspired conception and painstaking execution which it involved. JEver since 1933 Mr Disney and his hundreds of associates have worked on the animated tapestry, fashioning some 2,500,000 separate drawings, a tenth of which were finally used. A multiplane camera was devised to give third-dimensional quality to the scenes, and, as Mr Disney himself has pointed out, "most of our decisions were arrived at by the long and frequently discouraging trial-and-error method." However it was composed, it emerges on the screen as a perfect thing of its kind—a film which should delight adults as much as, or more than, children, and should demand being seen time and again.