Snow White

The 1916 film of "Snow White" is a screen adaptation of the 1912 Broadway play, written by Jessie Braham White. It tells the familiar tale of the "Stepmother from Hell" and the princess with "skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as night". It was thought to have been lost, until the George Eastman House located a print in a Danish film vault.....and the film world is so lucky they did!

Marguerite Clark recreates her Broadway role as "Snow White", and must have been born to play this faerie tale heroine!!! She is the epitome of this character!!!! I only wish that I was alive in 1912 to see her do the role live on stage.

Creighton Hale (The Cat and the Canary) is dashing as Prince Florimond, Snow White's love interest. It is a thankless role, but he manages to shine.

Dorothy Cumming is the vain "Queen Brangomar", Snow White's nemisis. It's ironic that years later she would play the "Virgin Mary" in "King of Kings".....quite a turn around!!!

The rest of the cast handles their roles equally as well as the above mentioned......including Lionel Braham (A Christmas Carol) as "Berthold the Huntsman", and Alice Washburn as "Witch Hex".

Hollywood folklore says that this is the film that inspired Walt Disney to create his animated classic. The similarities between the two are amazing! In the opening of the 1916 film, Snow White is a kitchen maid, going about her daily duties.....very much like Disney's heroine scrubbing the castle steps and crooning to doves. A little brown bird shows Snow White the way to the dwarfs' cottage....just like the animated animals did for her in the cartoon. She also cleans up the cottage, in both versions, before the dwarfs come home, and then falls asleep.

I highly recommend seeking out a copy of this film!!!!

The highlight of this version of "Snow White" is the lively performance by Marguerite Clark, who fits into the role very well and shows why she was so popular in her time. Overall, the movie is a pleasant, old-fashioned telling of the story, with a stage-like technique but some pretty good production values for the mid-1910s.

At one time, Clark was as popular as any other actress of her day, but almost all of her movies have since been lost. Even this movie is still missing some material at various points, although the reconstruction in the Treasures From American Film Archives collection is very nicely done, and makes it fit together as well as it possibly could have.

Even when compared with the other great actresses of her day, Clark works very well in the role of a young girl. Her small stature certainly helps, but her actions and mannerisms are also very believable. For the story to work, "Snow White" has to be extremely sympathetic and engaging, and Clark is able to do that quite well.

The story stays fairly close to the Grimm Brothers' original, though downplaying or eliminating some of its more violent aspects. Most of the supporting characters are one- dimensional, but the cast members do a solid job with them. Without Clark, it would have been a decent movie anyway, though probably of interest only to those who are devoted fans of silent movies. Clark's performance makes it pretty good, and well worth seeing.

Supposedly this what got Disney's mind oriented toward cartoon versions of well known "fairy tales."

But we can hardly blame it for the patronizing travesty he has performed on children's literature. The story here is a bit Bolwderized (some sex, and much cruelty have been removed from the traditional version). But it is still complex and has lots of side stories, like how she disguises herself as one of her maids in waiting. And how the stepmother tried a comb first, before the apple.

The structure of the play on which this is based is supposedly influenced by the revival of Macbeth then current in London, where the Shakespeare story is explained as controlled by the three witches. Here it is almost as if the witch were responsible for the Faustian deal the ugly stepmother makes.

This film was conceived as a direct result of the amazing popularity of "Birth of a Nation," perhaps the most influential film in history. That's because Birth cemented the notion that movies are like plays — not an entirely predetermined outcome. This was the first big budget play to be movie-ized afterward.

The film is in bad condition, so you have to imagine which cuts were original and which are because of missing segments. I prefer to imagine most of the jumps as missing material because the thing moves so languorously in what we see. For instance, there's a clearly drawn Queen's Toady who we spend many minutes watching in pompous walk.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Snow White (1916)

*** (out of 4)

Early version of the classic Grimm fairytale has the wicked Queen (Dorothy Cumming) ordering Berthold (Lionel Braham) to kill Snow White (Marguerite Clark) but he lets the future Princess in on the plan. He orders her to stay away and she finds shelter with the seven dwarfs but when the Queen finds out what has happened she goes out for revenge. According to legend, Walt Disney remembered seeing this film when it played his hometown and it left such an impression on him that he decided to make it his first feature. Seeing this film today it's easy to see why it was such a hit back in the day even though it's doubtful many kids of today would bother sitting through it. It's also interesting to note that the now forgotten Clark was 33-years-old when she played this role, which meant she was doing the same type of thing that Mary Pickford was doing, which was an adult playing children. I must admit that this was the first time I had seen anything from Clark and she was quite impressive. I didn't even realize she was as old as she was until I read the liner notes for the film and I was shocked to see the age. She did a remarkable job at pulling off this child role and not for a second did you not believe anything she was doing. I thought she did a fine job at capturing the spirit of the role, which was certainly the most important thing. Cumming was also very good in the role of the Queen and Braham also stood out as a likable character and performance. I think most people will be put off by the first ten or so minutes as these are clearly the weakest in the film. I thought it took a bit too long for things to really get going but once they hit the dwarfs house things really started to fly. The "look" they gave the dwarfs was another interesting thing. Elements of the Cinderella tale are thrown in and those just familiar with the Disney version are certainly going to notice a few differences. It's doubtful modern audiences will enjoy this but those who enjoy silent cinema should get a kicked out of it. It's certainly far from perfect but the 63-minute running time goes by quite fast and makes for some good entertainment.

"Snow White", directed in the far away year 1916 by Herr J. Searle Dawley, is a beautiful film adaptation of the classic Grimm fairy tale.This film was considered long lost but fortunately a copy was found in the"Filmmuseum", a kind of Dutch film archives where the nitrates are not very well arranged, certainly nothing like this German aristocrat's film archives where the films are perfectly organized and classified in a German way, so in this way no film is lost, including Herr Stroheim's "Greed" (in its 9 hours complete version… ). Anyway, thanks to the good luck of finding this lost silent film, every silent film fan can now appreciate Herr Searle's talent.

"Snow White" ( this German count doesn't think it necessary to relate this well-know story about beauty competitions in the Middle Ages ), as this aristocrat said before, is a visually lovely film in which the art direction and the sets are absolutely outstanding, not to mention the make-up, some charming special effects and even a little animated sequence. As it happens with some remarkable early silent film versions of fairy tales, there is a remarkable concern to depict and recreate in detail the magical atmosphere of those original stories on the screen and this one is a perfect recreation of the tale. It must said though that in those classic film productions, there is not usually a trace of transgression or boldness ( which is scarcely necessary most of the time since the original stories are full of cruelty ),and they are conservative and polite adaptations intended to be harmless and wholesome entertainment for families around the world. "Snow White" starred Dame Marguerite Clark, an important film star in the teens, and she plays her pure and chaste role very well, and the rest of the cast is equally good, all perfect for an early film that doesn't suffer with the passage of time.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count has an appointment with the evil Queen.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/