A friend once described Walt Disney as "a small town man who has read very little, seen very little, heard very little". This is important, for a knowledge of an artist's background leads to a better understanding of his work. Disney is a poet — a poet of simple things. Because of his background he is concerned with fantasy and not with reality, and so he works in a little world of make-believe that is all his own. Satire, though he has attempted it, is foreign to his nature, and nearly always has he kept free from the commercial influences that surround him.
Snow-White is a milestone in his career, and not only because of its length. Until it was made, death had never been mentioned in Disney's work, and since his little fairy world of fun and fantasy ignored all reality, cruelty and unkindness were unknown. He has toyed with the macabre before, but playfully and never with any real malevolence, and always has he avoided human figures and human emotions. Snow-White therefore is unique in many ways ; here, for the first time, Disney has relegated his animals to the background, andhere, for the first time, the shadow of human pain and suffering has fallen across his happy little people.
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