This film, the first feature-length animated sound motion picture ever made in cinema, probably constitutes the most fantastic financial and artistic gamble in the whole history of Hollywood… You have to marvel at the creativity of Disney, which, at first attempt, combined so many new elements together in a perfect synthesis. To list them all is to celebrate the glory of the movie: a fantasy narrative, both linear and full of suspense, skilfully deploying the parallel editing found in the best tales of distress. The storyline is closely modelled on films with real characters, where camerawork is as important as the characters’ development… A semi-musical structure, certainly preferable to the total-musical version originally planned (the film’s score contains several popular tunes that are as iconic as the film itself: Heigh-Ho, Some Day My Prince Will Come, Whistle While You Work to name a few.). A collection of characters and animals that exemplifies the scope and variety of the palette of Disney and its collaborators. For the first time, Disney creates a female character whose realism has to contend with grace and elegance…
Not only is Snow White a flawless action film, but it is also a pictorial masterpiece in which grace, fantasy and acuity triumph in equal measure. If certain viewers insist on calling this grace soppy, it’s a matter of misinterpretation and lapse of taste that will only be to their own detriment. Its acuity becomes apparent in the many sequences based on the primal, universal feeling of fear… Decade after decade, re-releases of Snow White have proven its enduring appeal, despite the plethora of developments and innovations in cinema. This is hardly surprising: is it not, after all, the most beautiful film in the world?

Jacques Lourcelles, Dictionnaire du cinéma. Les films, Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris 1992