Snow White (1937)  & Gulliver's Travels (1939)

Before the First Frame

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) & Gulliver’s Travels (1939)

When Animation Learned to Dream in Feature Length

Start Here

Before 1937 no one believed a full-length animated film could hold an audience. Walt Disney staked his studio and his future on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was a gamble of scale, technology, and faith in the emotional power of hand-drawn characters. Two years later Fleischer Studios, the New York creators of Popeye and Betty Boop, answered with Gulliver’s Travels. Where Snow White feels like a storybook come alive, Gulliver mixes seafaring adventure with a touch of satire and the rhythms of vaudeville. Together they mark the beginning of feature animation as a cinematic art form.

You Might Love This Double Feature If…

• You want to see how feature animation began and the different directions it could take

• You enjoy comparing artistic styles and storytelling approaches within the same medium

• You appreciate the mix of fairy-tale enchantment and theatrical showmanship

• You are curious how early animators balanced technology, artistry, and commercial ambition

The Journey In

Snow White adapts the Brothers Grimm tale into a lush romantic fantasy. Its innocence is framed by moments of terror and shadow. The film’s depth comes from how its artistry serves its emotion. Gulliver’s Travels adapts Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput voyage but removes the sharper satire, turning it into a parable of peace and friendship. It blends realistic rotoscoped movement for Gulliver with cartoon exaggeration for the Lilliputians, creating a playful contrast in style.

What Makes This Moment Different

• Snow White was the first feature-length cel-animated film in history

• Gulliver’s Travels was the first serious challenge to Disney in the feature format

• Disney aimed for seamless immersion in a fully imagined fairy-tale world

• Fleischer merged realism and caricature, creating a hybrid style unlike Disney’s

One Thing to Watch For

How each film uses scale to shape its world. Disney achieves depth and layered space through the multiplane camera and meticulous perspective drawing. Fleischer plays with proportion by compositing a human giant into miniature sets and using rotoscoping to anchor the illusion.

Moments Worth Noticing

Snow White

• The Queen’s transformation scene, steeped in the visual language of German Expressionism

• The forest panic sequence where Snow White’s terror distorts her surroundings into living nightmare shapes

• The dwarfs’ comic business, rooted in silent-era slapstick

Gulliver’s Travels

• The opening shipwreck sequence, rich in atmosphere and painterly color

• The contrast between Gulliver’s realistic motion and the elastic movement of the Lilliputians

• Musical sequences such as “It’s a Hap-Hap-Happy Day” that turn diplomacy into song

Where These Films Come From

Snow White emerged from Disney’s decade of short-film mastery, inspired by European illustration and theatrical storytelling. Gulliver’s Travels grew out of Fleischer’s East Coast sensibility, shaped by vaudeville, jazz, and the cartoon strip tradition. Both looked to European literature for their source material but filtered it through the demands of Depression-era entertainment.

Decode the Jargon (Gently)

• Cel Animation – the process of painting characters on transparent sheets placed over painted backgrounds

• Rotoscoping – tracing over live-action footage to create realistic animated movement

• Multiplane Camera – a device that moves multiple layers of artwork past the camera at different speeds to create the illusion of depth

• Expressionism – a visual style that distorts reality for emotional effect, often through shadow, angle, and exaggeration

Innovation & Impact

• Snow White proved that feature animation could rival live-action in emotional and box-office power

• Gulliver’s Travels demonstrated that feature animation was not limited to Disney’s style or approach

• Together they expanded the possibilities for animated storytelling and opened the way for decades of experimentation

• Both remain essential viewing for understanding how animation became a serious form of cinema

Discussion Sparks

• How do these films differ in their approach to storytelling and tone?

• Which style of animation feels more immersive to you and why?

• How does the use of scale change the way you experience each world?

• What do these films suggest about the ambitions of early feature animators?

What Stayed With You?

• Which film felt more emotionally engaging and why?

• How did each studio’s style affect your connection to the characters?

• What surprised you about the artistry of 1930s animation?

• Which sequences linger in your mind after the credits?

The Close Up

Looking Deeper for Context, Insight, and Legacy 

This Week's "The Close Up" provided by Charlie

Observations on the First Two Full-Length Animated Films

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney, abbreviated SW and Disney) and Gulliver’s Travels (Fleischer Studios, abbreviated Gulliver and Fleischer).

These two films are important in film history not only as “firsts” but also as proof that audiences would pay to see a cartoon longer than the typical six- or seven-minute theatrical shorts of the time. By the late 1930s both Disney and Fleischer were beginning to lose money on shorts, especially once double features became popular and theaters had less space for them. Both features made money. Disney’s studio was saved outright, while Fleischer’s held on for several more years before eventually closing.

Neither Walt Disney nor Max Fleischer was a particularly skilled artist, but both were remarkable innovators and idea men: Walt as a storyteller and Max as an inventor. Max invented the rotoscope in 1915 and incorporated popular hit-parade songs into his Betty Boop and Popeye shorts. Walt created the first synchronized-sound cartoon, the first color cartoon, the first feature-length cartoon, and introduced the multiplane camera (invented by his top animator and technical genius Ub Iwerks).

Production costs: SW cost $3.5 million to produce, while Gulliver cost $1.5 million.

Things to Look For

(It is recommended to watch Snow White first, then Gulliver’s Travels, in the order they were released.)

Story

Snow White is based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale first published in 1812, drawn from European folk traditions. Of all Disney’s adaptations, this one follows the source material most closely. Notable differences: in the Grimm version, the Queen attempts to kill Snow White three times, with the poisoned apple being the third; and the dwarfs have no names.

This was Walt’s favorite childhood story. As a newsboy in Kansas City, he saw a silent Snow White film in 1916. In the early 1930s, he traveled to Europe, purchased hundreds of children’s books, and brought Swedish and German illustrators back to his studio. In 1934 he performed the entire story to his artists in a dramatic four-hour session, after which he announced it would be their next — and studio-saving — project. He believed it had the perfect plot: a pretty girl in danger, a wicked witch, dwarfs for humor, and a prince for rescue. He described the Queen as part Lady Macbeth, part Jekyll and Hyde, and part Big Bad Wolf. The dwarfs were given individual names and distinct personalities. Walt also cut two nearly completed sequences — “Soup Slurping” and “Bed Building” — because they did not advance the story.

Gulliver’s Travels is adapted from Jonathan Swift’s 1726 satirical novel, which skewered human weakness and folly. The children’s version was Max Fleischer’s favorite book as a child. The novel is written as the travel log of Lemuel Gulliver, who undertakes four voyages. Fleischer’s version uses only the first, the voyage to Lilliput, but changes it significantly. The rival nations retain their names — Lilliput (England) and Blefuscu (France) — but the kings are renamed King Little and King Bombo. Gulliver himself is given little personality. His only dangers are from spies attempting to steal his gun and from the possibility that his damaged ship may not get him home. Max even considered casting Popeye in the title role.

Director Dave Fleischer once decided a fully animated sequence was too long and left it to the animators to decide which scene to cut — something Walt Disney would never have done.

Animation

Both films employed about 500 artists, with some working on both productions. Snow White took four years to complete; Gulliver took about a year and a half, and the difference in quality is apparent.

Snow White had one director (David Hand). Gulliver had eleven, one for each sequence. In animation, all directorial and editing decisions must be made before production begins, since cutting a completed sequence can waste thousands or even millions of dollars.

Walt Disney produced two shorts as preparation for Snow White: The Old Mill, to test natural effects like rain and wind, and The Goddess of Spring, to improve human character animation. Disney artists took art classes and screened classic films such as Nosferatu, Metropolis, Chaplin, and Keaton to study draftsmanship and lighting. Rotoscoping was used only as a reference tool to refine human movement.

Fleischer relied heavily on pure rotoscoping, tracing live-action footage directly for his human characters. This saved money but produced a stiffer look. Disney had a large pool of Hollywood animators to draw from; Fleischer had to recruit talent from both New York and Hollywood for his new Miami studio. Both studios used three-color Technicolor, which was relatively new but easier for animation than for live action.

Walt’s animators each had their own Moviola for reviewing footage. Fleischer’s Miami team had to share one machine.

Sound

Both films featured songs that were on the contemporary hit parade. Snow White was the first musical film to weave songs seamlessly into the story to advance the plot — five years before Oklahoma! did so on stage. It was also the first film soundtrack ever released as a commercially available album. The voice casting in Snow White remains more distinctive and memorable than in Gulliver’s Travels.

Impact

Both films were critically praised, but Snow White was a phenomenon. Early detractors who called it “Disney’s Folly” were silenced when they saw adults weeping at the premiere. Stars like Douglas Fairbanks attended and were visibly moved.

Paramount filled all 1,300 of its U.S. theaters with Gulliver and kept its 3,600-seat New York flagship packed for months. Snow White grossed $9 million in its first year; Gulliver grossed $2 million. For ten years Snow White was the highest-grossing sound-era film and became one of the first 25 films inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Critics singled out its art quality and visual storytelling, with the “Whistle While You Work” sequence often cited as a masterpiece of sustained movement and choreography.

The success of both films ensured a future for animated features.

Miscellaneous Notes

Some critics feared Snow White might be too frightening for children. Staff at Radio City Music Hall reported many “wet seats” after screenings of the Queen’s transformation scene. Walt’s own daughters Sharon and Diane described it as scary but thrilling. Walt wanted to redo the final scene because the Prince’s animation looked “palsied,” but Roy refused, saying there was no money left.

The success of Gulliver’s Travels in 1939 reportedly encouraged MGM to move forward with The Wizard of Oz. Many alternate dwarf names were considered for Snow White, including “Dizzy” and “Cranky.”

"Bedeya, bedeya-that's all folks!'   

After the Credits

After the Credits

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs & Gulliver’s Travels

Two first steps into the same unknown — and two very different paths forward

Framing the Conversation

When we talk about the birth of feature animation, we are talking about a moment when two very different studios took the same leap into uncharted territory. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Walt Disney’s gamble that an audience could live inside a hand-drawn fairy tale for 83 minutes and come away moved. Gulliver’s Travels was Max Fleischer’s answer, shaped by the vaudeville stage, East Coast humor, and the promise of rotoscoped realism. One aimed to create a world so immersive it could stand alongside live-action cinema. The other blended comic invention with a playful sense of scale. Together they proved the animated feature could be more than novelty. They also revealed that, from the very beginning, there was no single way to imagine what animation should be.

What Stayed With Me

• The sense that Snow White is as much about mood and atmosphere as it is about plot, and how it sustains an emotional spell from first frame to last

• The way Gulliver’s Travels plays with scale as both spectacle and comedy, making the miniature world feel strange yet familiar

• How the different animation styles — Disney’s painterly depth and Fleischer’s rotoscoped realism — create entirely different emotional textures

• The realization that these were not just “cartoons” but ambitious feature films staking the future of their studios

What Stayed With You?

• Which film felt more alive to you, and why?

• Did the differences in animation style change how you connected to the characters?

• How did each film’s tone — Snow White’s fairy-tale romance versus Gulliver’s light satire — affect your experience of the double feature?

• Which sequences linger most vividly in your mind after seeing both?

Themes We Might Circle

• The birth of feature animation as an art form

• Storytelling through scale: giants, dwarfs, and the worlds built to contain them

• How each studio balanced technology, artistry, and commercial risk

• The role of music in shaping the pace and mood of animation

• How these early features set expectations for all animated films that followed

Try Naming a Moment Where…

• The animation style made you feel something you did not expect

• Music and image combined to create a moment of pure cinematic magic

• A character design or movement choice revealed the hand of the animator

• The illusion of scale or depth suddenly felt real — or suddenly felt artificial