| Snow White | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Caroline Thompson |
| Produced by | Matthew O'Connor Caroline Thompson |
| Written by | Caroline Thompson Julie Hickson |
| Starring | Miranda Richardson Kristin Kreuk Tyron Leitso Clancy Brown Warwick Davis Michael J. Anderson Vincent Schiavelli Tom Irwin |
| Music by | Michael Convertino Robert Muzingo |
| Cinematography | Jon Joffin |
| Editing by | Margaret Goodspeed |
| Release date(s) | 2001 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Language | English, French |
Snow White, released in the U.S. as Snow White: The Fairest of Them All, was a television film, made in 2001, and based on the Snow White storyline. It was made by Hallmark Entertainment and directed by Caroline Thompson. It deviates in several places from the original Brothers Grimm story and adds significant new characters and subplots. It also includes story elements from Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. While often hailed as a much darker version of the original Grimm fairy tale, it includes some playful, humorous elements, and is not necessarily more faithful to the original than other popular film adaptations.
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Once Upon a Time a young girl was born from a drop of blood in a flutter of apple blossoms, framed in ebony. The young girl named Snow White (Kristin Kreuk) becomes the blessing of a loving peasant couple, John (Tom Irwin) and Josephine (Vera Farmiga). But with her birth comes the end of her mother's life. Left alone with an infant daughter, John braves a brutal winter in search for food for his starving child. Salvation comes unexpectedly when the father's tears melt the frozen tomb of a bewitched djinn, the Granter of Wishes (Clancy Brown). In thanks, the insinuating being grants John three wishes: nourishment for Snow White, a kingdom in which to raise his daughter and a queen by his side, (originally he wanted his wife back, his "queen", but the Green-Eyed Granter of Wishes cannot raise the dead, but he can give him a queen, followed shortly by His idea to give John a kingdom.) But John's cause for celebration is short lived.
At the same time, seven dwarves are in the forest, looking for their friends, the gnomes. Deciding to look for them by splitting up, the leader, Sunday, finds them all petrified in an old crone's garden, in trying to free them, he ends up petrified himself. Meanwhile, the Granter of Wishes has devious plans for the well being of his own family. Owing his loathsome spell-casting sister, Elspeth (Miranda Richardson), a long awaited wish, he encourages her desires for appointment to the throne, using a magical mirror he transforms her from an old crone into a young beautiful woman. Knowing that John will not accept another woman to replace his much loved wife willingly, the Granter of Wishes orders Elspeth to shatter the mirror. The mirror's pieces fall from the sky over the palace gardens where John is showing the infant Snow White some beautiful red roses that smell like her mother. A fragment of the mirror gets stuck in John's left eye while another is embedded in his heart, a large fragment of the mirror is left behind which Elspeth keeps to harness her magical powers. The two fragments of mirror bewitch John when he sees Elspeth causing him to fall in love with her, subsequently, ignoring Snow White.
Sixteen years later, Snow White grows in grace and beauty, at this time Prince Alfred is visiting their kingdom when he sees Snow White he falls in love with her. He spends most of his visit trying to gain her affection and attention. She, however, pushes him away every time. Throughout the sixteen years Elspeth has become more and more vain, determined to be the most beautiful creature there is. Keeping her last fragment of magic mirror in a private room full of other magical mirrors, she daily asks them who the fairest of them all is. In answer the fairest one's image leans out of the mirrors to reply in their voice. This greatly entertains Elspeth as it has always been her own image who answers her,'You are, you are. You are the fairest of them all.'
Elspeth grows tired of John and desires a new younger husband, the mirror fragment in John's eye falls out and his feelings towards Elspeth weaken. Without the mirror fragments in his eye and heart John realizes that he has neglected Snow White and stands by the red roses inhaling deeply, hinting that he remembers his great love for Snow White's mother, Josephine. Catching the mirror fragment from John's eye, and having taken out the fragment in John's heart, Elspeth sets out to place them both into Prince Alfred however the heart fragment is shattered accidentally by the Prince who is distracted by Snow White finally showing some affection to him. The eye fragment instead falls into the eye of a servant called Hector, furious Elspeth returns to her mirror room. Timidly she asks who is fairest, to which Snow White's image leans out of the mirror and replies in Snow White's voice,'Not you, not you, not you. I am, I am, I am the fairest of them all'. The Queen falls to the floor in a fit of panic, anger and rage. Hector comes to her and offers himself to do whatever she asks in a state of mad longing.
The Prince searches for Snow White and finds her walking in the gardens and declares his love for her, telling her that she is beautiful. Snow White pushes his feelings away saying that being beautiful has nothing to do with love and that the outer appearance of a person cannot tell what that person is like on the inside, such as being kind, gentle and caring. However she does try to answers his feelings with a kiss.
Hector arrives with orders from Elspeth to kill Snow White and bring back her heart, with the lie that he is going to the rabbit traps to kill a rabbit for Elspeth's breakfast, Hector lures Snow White (intent on freeing the rabbits), away from the Prince. While Snow White kneels to free the rabbits, Hector raises his knife but her innocence stops him from killing Snow White, and in shedding a tear, the fragment of mirror in his eye is lost forever. Realizing that he cannot take her life Hector warns Snow White of Elspeth's jealously and she runs terrified into the forest. Hector kills a nearby boar and cuts its heart out telling Elspeth that it is the heart of Snow White, in delight Elspeth cooks the heart and eats it for breakfast and even tries to coax John to eat some too, but he is too distraught over the disappearance of his beloved daughter, and searches the grounds.
Prince Alfred is alone searching for Snow White, Elspeth finds him and tries to seduce him, but he runs away and she transforms him into a bear in a fit of rage. But while doing so, her magic mirror's light reflects onto Sunday (who, along with the gnomes, have been put in the palace as garden decorations), and half of him is returned to normal, while the other half remains petrified. He flees to find his family, (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday)
Upon searching for Snow White, John, looking in Elspeth's mirror room, ends up trapped behind a mirror; Elspeth refuses to free him. In asking her mirrors who is the fairest of them all, Elspeth finds out that she was tricked. In a fit of rage and hatred, she kills Hector. Using the mirror, she flies to the forest where she previously saw Snow White, and drops a beautiful silken sash in her path. Snow White sees, and tries it on. The sash then wraps itself tightly around Snow White's waist, and causes her to pass out from suffocation. Sunday finds her and cuts the sash, causing Snow White to wake up with several deep, wheezing breaths. Snow White sees Sunday, and faints again from shock. And when she wakes up again, she is in the house of the seven dwarves. After a while she agrees to stay, but wants to get back to her home to find her father, free her prince, and stop the Queen. The dwarves agree to do so, but refuse to let her go with them.
Finding out she failed to kill Snow White, Elspeth tricks Snow White into eating a poisoned apple, Elspeth magically disguises herself in a way that resembles Snow White's deceased mother, Josephine, and eventually makes her fall asleep. Back at the palace, the mirror now says that Josephine is the fairest of them all, smug and confident that that will not be the same answer when she is back to her beautiful self, Elspeth transforms herself, but instead of her beautiful young body, she has become once again the ugly old hag she used to be before her brother turned her into a queen. The Granter of Wishes returns and she hopes that he will make her beautiful again, but he says that because of what her vanity led her to do she cannot have her beauty restored again. He also explains that Snow White only was a threat because Elspeth saw her as such, and the dangers of envy. In a tantrum, Elspeth destroys her magic mirror, the source of her magic powers, by throwing it at her brother, who dodges the blow. By destroying her source of magic, all of her spells undo themselves, (including restoring Sunday and the gnomes, transforming Prince Alfred back to normal, freeing King John from the magic mirrors and reviving Snow White.) Eventually the angry gnomes find Elspeth while she threatened to destroy them if they don't leave her alone, but she is powerless and helpless and they eventually kill her by strangling her.
Eventually the Prince finds Snow White and wakes her up with a kiss, (after he was turned back into a man) and the dwarves, upon realizing it was the end of this story, decide to move onto Sleeping Beauty. And they all live happily ever after.
Some of the characters required a great deal of prosthetic and makeup, including the goblin/genie-like Granter of Wishes, his witch-like sister, and a dwarf who is partially transformed into a garden statue. The filmmakers took advantage of computer-generated imagery to portray other fantasy elements. The Queen's magical hand mirror, when seen flying across various landscapes in search of Snow White, is computer-generated, as are several creatures and other props seen very briefly in the film.
The film was released theatrically in Europe and the Middle East in 2001, but did not debut in the United States until 2002, when it was broadcast as part of ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney.
The film was broadcast in Canada, the U.S., and the UK, where it has been broadcast on Channel 4 every Christmas. It was translated into French for the French speaking parts of Canada.
Both Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs were released. On 25 March 2007 a free DVD of the film was released in the British newspaper The Sunday Express.
The music for the film was scored in Berlin, Germany. The 84 piece orchestra was Conducted by film composer Robert Muzingo.