Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full color, the first to be produced by Walt Disney Productions, and the first in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film's individual sequences. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, followed by a nationwide release on February 4, 1938. It went on to gross a total of $8 million in international receipts in its opening release. The film was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 1989. It was one of two animated films to rank in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time in 1997 (the other being Disney's Fantasia), ranking number 49. It reached number 34 in the list's 2007 revision, this time being the only traditionally-animated film on the list. The AFI named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 1998. Through a textual prologue told via a storybook, the audience is told that Snow White is a princess living with her stepmother, a vain and wicked Queen who is assumed to have taken over the kingdom after the death of Snow White's father. Fearing Snow White's beauty surpassing her own, the Queen forced her to work as a scullery maid and asked her Magic Mirror daily "who is the fairest one of all". For many years the mirror always answered that the Queen was, pleasing her. At the film's opening, the Magic Mirror informs the Queen that Snow White is now the fairest in the land. The jealous Queen orders a reluctant huntsman to take Snow White into the woods and kill her. She further demands that the huntsman return with Snow White's heart in a jeweled box as proof of the deed. The huntsman encounters Snow White but decides not to harm her. He tearfully begs for her forgiveness, revealing the Queen wants her dead, and urges her to flee into the woods and never come back, bringing back a pig's heart instead. Lost and frightened, the princess is befriended by woodland creatures who lead her to a cottage deep in the woods. Finding seven small chairs in the cottage's dining room, Snow White assumes the cottage is the untidy home of seven orphaned children. It soon becomes apparent that the cottage belongs instead to seven adult dwarfs, Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey, who work in a nearby mine. Returning home, they are alarmed to find their cottage clean and surmise that an intruder has invaded their home. The dwarfs find Snow White upstairs, asleep across three of their beds. Snow White awakes to find the Dwarfs at her bedside and introduces herself, and all of the dwarfs eventually welcome her into their home after they learn she can cook and clean beautifully. Snow White begins a new life cooking, cleaning, and keeping house for the dwarfs while they mine for jewels and at night sing, play music and dance. Meanwhile, the Queen discovers that Snow White is still alive when the mirror again answers that Snow White is the fairest in the land. Using magic to disguise herself as an old hag, the Queen creates a poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into the "Sleeping Death". The Evil Queen explains that Snow White would collapse into a magical sleep if she were to take even a single bite of the apple. The sleep can only be cured by the power of "love's first kiss". The Queen reasons that this is no danger to her plans, as the dwarfs would not be able to awaken Snow White, and would think she was dead, thus resulting in Snow White being "buried alive". The Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away and tricks Snow White into biting into the poisoned apple. As Snow White falls asleep the Queen exclaims "Now I'll be fairest in the land!" The vengeful dwarfs, alerted by the woodland animals who recognize her, chase the Queen up a cliff and trap her. She tries to roll a boulder over them but lightning strikes the cliff she is standing on, causing it to collapse. The Queen falls to her death, and her body is crushed by the boulder. The dwarfs return to their cottage and find Snow White seemingly dead, being kept in a death-like slumber by the potion. Unwilling to bury her out of sight in the ground, they instead place her in a glass coffin trimmed with gold in a clearing in the forest. Together with the woodland creatures, they keep watch over her in an "eternal vigil". After some time, a prince, who had previously met and fallen in love with Snow White, learns of her eternal sleep and visits her coffin. Saddened by her apparanent death, he kisses her, which breaks the spell and awakens her. The dwarfs and animals all rejoice as the Prince takes Snow White to his castle, which glows in the presence of Snow White.
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