It really freaks me out that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Hitler's favorite movie. What could the personification of human evil see in Walt Disney's whimsically innocent fairy tale? So many '800 lb. gorilla' type questions arise: Didn't Hitler promote an ideology that would stigmatize dwarfism as subhuman? And Snow White's not exactly blonde-hair, blue-eyed. And though the movie might be rooted in the folklore of the Motherland, it's at least as much American as it is German.
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. Maybe Hitler just liked the movie itself, and didn't read too much into his enjoyment. Certainly there is much to love about Snow White as nothing more than a cinematic event. Disney's first feature length film - the first feature length cel-animated film - contains some of the most enchanting, awe-inspiring, and groundbreaking visions in the history of animated movies. The animators' understanding of the movement of human bodies is unparalleled to this day. 40 years later, Ralph Bakshi had to hire human models to run around and be filmed to achieve a similar effect, but in a way his effort was superfluous.* They had already nailed it here. It was a deft move to animate each swath of characters in a different style. The dwarfs are round, cartooney outlines. The hunter is a 'realistic' human in proportion and relative detail. The wicked queen is all sharp angles and towering menace. Snow White herself is some dreamy amalgamation of everyone from Clara Bow to Myrna Loy to Betty Boop, with a voice to match. I can't believe how many Ralph Bakshi references I'm making here, but the only other movie I can think of that mixes and matches character design like this is Bakshi's Wizards, albeit to very different effect.
When I recently re-watched Snow White, I couldn't believe how great the music is. Whistle While You Work, Hi-Ho, Someday My Prince Will Come. These are all so ingrained in our collective subconscious it took not watching the movie or really hearing those songs for many, many years to hear them with fresh ears again. I'm amazed at Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline, and Paul Smith's ability to craft such immediately and incessantly catchy melodies. Yet they always manages to layer shifting, dynamic chords and inventive counterpoint under even the most brain-dead melody. The point is, the passion and excitement of Disney and his crew is felt in every frame of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
But back to Hitler. The element that must have appealed the most to Hitler is, cynically, probably the element that appeals to most who cherish this movie: It's a fairy tale world. A world that makes sense. Every element in the movie connects and has a 'right place,' an order. Through Snow White's animal friends, we see that nature does not combat humanity, but complements it. Those seven lonely, homely men all have Snow White's best interest in mind, and no ill intentions toward anyone. Love is easy, dishes are easy, work is fun, and once the wicked queen is dead, there's no conflict.
Hitler himself was hellbent on creating a 'world of order.' Maybe this sort of setup makes for good fiction, but reality is not a 'world of order.' There are conflicting visions. What's true for one is false for another. Truths and values are constantly shifting and churning. Ultimately, Hitler would instigate genocide in an effort to make the real world a world of order like the one he loved so much in Disney's movie.
If you're thinking, “But of course it's a simplistic world: it's a fairy tale, dummy!,” go no further than another fairy tale adaptation from the same period, Jean Cocteau's La belle e la bete (Beauty and the Beast). By a stroke of luck, I happened to catch La belle et la bete on the same day I watched Snow White, and the differences between the two couldn't be more pronounced. The world is as violently divisive in Cocteau's vision as it is unified in Disney's. Whereas Snow White has the help and adoration of all creatures, Cocteau's Belle is at the center of a web of envy and unrequited passions. Her sisters only pretend to like her when it suits their interest. Her pre-Beast suitor cares for her, but when the cards fall, he cares for glory and money more. Beast himself embodies both masculine and feminine, both animal and human passions, and there appears to be no respite for his condition. Belle herself weathers the waves of adulation and jealousy with the poise and confidence of a self-centered beauty queen. She is 'selfless' in the most selfish way possible.
When Snow White gets her 'fairy tale ending,' she is finally fulfilling a destiny that was meant for her . When Belle gets her fairy tale ending, it's full of unearned conveniences such as human-form Beast looking exactly like her attractive previous suitor and the mention that her 'evil' sisters will have to serve her now. She feels like she earned it, but the viewer doesn't.
The world is not like Snow White. The 'real world' is full of incongruities. As soon as you develop a point of view, twenty exceptions and contradictions emerge. Perhaps in the congruent world of Snow White, Hitler would have risen to the absolute power he strove for. If he would have studied history a little more than fairy tales, however, he would have see more clearly where all his ambition would get him.
-Ben
*I don't mean to offend anyone with a thing for Ralph Bakshi. I actually really enjoy him at the right time and place. Hey, I own a copy of Fire and Ice that I put on from time to time!