Snow White in France. Chapter 7 : 1994

For Disney to allow their masterpiece to be released in a format that will potentially enable anyone to scrutinize every frame, they need an image drastically cleaner that the photochemical restoration offered in 1987. As a matter of fact, the new copies struck from the original negative showed defects that were previously blurred out or at least not apparent  in previous releases such as the dust on the cel or lens flares that were photographed with the drawings in 1937. For such problems, leaning the film manually or chemically is not going to help: they are a part of the image.



In February 1993, the company makes a deal with Cinesite which, thanks to a new Kodak device, scans the film frame by frame on a video tape, at the rate of one frame every ten seconds and 10 to 12 million pixels per image. The complete film represents 4.7 terabytes. The frames are then cleaned on computers before striking new copies on film for exploitation. The software can detect  70% of the dust automatically, the rest being corrected by human hand by cloning surrounding elements in the image. However even the automated part has to be monitored because if not settled properly, it removes little moving details like the bird's eyes. As a matter of fact, if the computer takes a minute and a half to clean the image, it can take up to 8 hours to set up the parameters.

Nitrate negative of Snow White

It will take 6 months to restore the 120,000 frames of the film. The final result, delivered on June 18, shows an image without dust, scratches which no restoration of any film has managed to achieve until then. It is a critical success. Once more, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs makes cinema History and becomes the first feature on which this technique was used. The sound, however, is used again from the previous restoration in offered in Dolby Stereo.



The film comes out again in July of 1993 in the USA, a year after France but in a digitally restored version.

1994 will be the year which will revolutionize the way the film is released. In fact, in February 22, as EuroDisney is already in the red, Roy Disney brings a smile to Disney stockholders by announcing a Fall release of Snow White on video.

The tape is to hit the stores in the USA and the rest of the world at the same time in October.
Yet Snow White make another favor to the country that loves her so: the film will be sold on VHS (FF160) and on Laserdisc earlier there, on August 23, 1994.
For its promotion, the company invests more money than they did for the releases of The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast put together!
The choice of the release date also has a more pragmatic reason: a law in France demands to wait a year between the exploitation visa in theaters and its video release. And Aladdin had an exclusive showing at the Grand Rex theater on November 10, 1993. That means the video is due to hit the shelves in mid-October of 1994 in France and Disney is not about to make competition with himself: each film deserves a campaign all its own. As a matter of fact, after the two individual campaigns, a third mutual one is planned for the holidays.
French TV Guide Télé K7 publishes an article over 2 pages for the occasionwith an interview of Lucie Dolène, 63, the French voice of Snow White, quite happy that her voice is still used on this tape after all these years .

Lucie Dolène (right) and the characters

She reveals that, two years ago, as she was dubbing Mrs. Potts in the French version of Beauty and the Beast, the studio considered making a new version of Snow White because "the soundtrack was a little tired". Yet it is the second dubbing, with her voice, that you can hear if you buy Blanche Neige in a store. The tape also uses the complete 1962 main title with the two last credits dedicated to the French cast and crew. However, only the international inserts (the only ones that were restored digitally) are included, except for the scene where Snow White reads the names of the dwarfs off their beds and the Queen's books. From now on, Snow White doesn't have the word "Grincheux" written on the pie. Instead, the birds deposit a whirl of paste on it (that is the international version so that the animators wouldn't have to create a version for each and every language), the three shots with the text before the Prince appears were replaced by the ones created for the 1992 release (fixed shots with modern calligraphy).

Snow White French Laserdisc

On both the tape and the laserdisc, one finds the same program: the film is followed by a 9 minute documentary, a third of which being actually the famous soup sequence in English with subtitles. This was quite rare then, as most video tapes only presented a film, with no extra feature of any kind. This special event called for another special treatment: when most Disney videos started with several minutes of commercials before the film, Snow White started right after the compulsory copyright warning and a brief message about the documentary after the film.
A trailer is actually used on other videotapes and on TV.

Very fast, over two million copies are sold.

To tie in with the release, a CD comes out in 1993 with the original American soundtrack remastered from newly discovered elements. Restorers worked from seven different sources: restored final mixes, international tracks (a music and effects mix used to make foreign versions) and especially a few optical tracks of the original recordings of the music which had survived on nitrate film. On the CD booklet, the "huge" size of the sound files is given as 3.6 gigabytes. The CD offers monaural sound and the two last tracks are two songs deleted from the film: Music In Your Soup & You're Never Too Old to be Young.

Even though the disc came out in France, the booklet explaining the restoration process remained in English, except for the last page which is an ad for other soundtracks of Disney classics in English.

1988 CD reissue of the 1938 soundtrack

Unlike the 1938 album (a temporary mix of vocals, music and effects), reissued on CD in 1988, and the one from 1957 (where the character voices were included only in songs), this time the disc contains more incidental music. The final chase is noticeably absent as it only exists in a version mixed with effects which a quite intrusive in the scene (storm, rain, etc.). Moreover, a short segment of the final cue is also missing.

That isn't the case on the 1994 CD which includes the complete final cue and and the second French version. On this recording are the same tracks, only the songs are in French and mixed in stereo. As it is missing any other vocal credit, the mention "The part of Snow White is performed by Lucie Dolène" on the booklet after the track list sounds like an honor. Unlike the American CD, no lyric is offered and there is no mention of restoration or anything specifically related to the French version. The product is conceived, it seems, more towards children even though the track list is the same.

Just because this is a special release doesn't mean that books are published again at the time, but most of the ones that came out two years before are still available.

Panini issues a new album: this time, the stills on the stickers are from a restored copy and the images have the rosy tint of Technicolor. The pages of the album, sold for FF6, are illustrated with new color drawings. Now, one can complete their collection by ordering over the phone or by connecting to 36 15 Panini with one's minitel (a French ancestor of the Internet) for 75 cents per sticker and a 5 franc  shipping fee.

It is only in 1997 that the translation of Martin Kraus & Linda Witkowski's book, L'art du dessin animé of 1987 comes out. The story of the making of the film is illustrated by drawings, cels and original documents, from the Steve Ison collection, and gives precious advice to whoever wishes to start their own collection of original art.





In the record department, the previously recorded stories are re-issued on tape and CD like the one by Bernard Giraudeau. Marie-Christine Barrault comes in the show Télématin on September 1994 to talk about the release of her recordings: in fact, two versions come out on tape so that parents can buy the one best suited to the age of their kids.
She says that "it is pure joy to tell stories", even more so now that she is the grand mother of little Marie, and that she would have loved to be in the Dwarfs' cottage.

Snow White records and tapes from 1993 & 1994

Lucie Dolène & Michel Drucker

But Marie-Christine Barrault is not the only actress to promote the film on TV: Lucie Dolène is invited by Michel Drucker on September 26, 1994 on France 2 on the show Studio Gabriel where the Cinq colonnes à la une sequence from 1962 is partially shown with her and the cast reenacting their dubbing session. She shares her surprise and her joy to be there and finds it "fabulous that [her] voice was kept". She says she met Walt Disney as she was with Gilbert Bécaud at the opening of the Hilton Hotel in Hollywood. Michel Drucker talks about her role as the teapot in Beauty and the Beast which made her grand daughters scream "It's Granny!" at the scream in the theater. She also evokes her daughter's career, Virginia Constantin, herself a singer who worked as Jean-Luc Lahaye's back up singer, who also happens to be on the show.

Though for the actress, felicity does not last. In fact, actors specialized in dubbing rebel against the way they are payed on October 18 that same year. They go on a massive strike to denounce illegal competition from Belgium or other French speaking countries and more specifically the fact that they are only paid a final sum for their work and do not get residuals as a film or series comes back in the light.
In a country where most moviegoers and TV viewers only watch fiction when it is dubbed, the strike has a chance of succeeding.
On November 20, 17 dubbing companies assign in chambers the main unions to have the strike declared illegal which strengthen the movement.
On December 30, a first meeting is organized.
The strike officially ends on January 4, 1995, after eleven weeks, thanks to guarantees obtained from Jacques Toubon, Minister of culture, but everyone now intends to defend their own rights.

Lucie and her Walt Disney autograph

On November 1, 1996, on the France 2 news, we learn that Lucie Dolène hasn't earned a cent from the sale of the Snow White video tapes. The journalist specifies that "in 1958, Lucie had earned 5,000 francs" (The date is probably a confusion with the American release). Her lawyer, Maître Raymond Illouz thinks that the release of this tape entitles her to a share of the profit according to a French law from 1985 mostly overlooked by production companies. He wants 500,000 francs for his client. The verdict falls on December 6: Lucie wins the case.

As can be expected, the company will not leave it at that.

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That's all for today folks!