Starting with snow white

Snow White 
tale itself. 
What Ames lost in the creative presentation of humor then, he attempted to 
recreate by heightening the romance of the film. Not only do the Prince and Snow White 
meet early in the film’s action, but this relationship is cultivated in a more domestic space 
with the insertion of an additional scene involving the Prince (prior to their meeting at 
court). Where Merington’s and Ames’ plays draw Snow White’s meeting with the Prince 
into the opening scene, the film finds Snow White’s first encounter with her Prince in the 
woods, where she saves a bird from his bow. Although they briefly interact and return to 
Berthold’s (the huntsman’s) home with his children, the Prince is not aware of her 
identity during this interlude. He is equally unaware of her public standing when he 
visits the court and she appears with the rest of her Maids. Nevertheless, each of these 
interludes works to build the romance between the two and impacts the audience’s eager 
anticipation of their next encounter. Further, when the queen decides that they should be 
parted for a year and a day, as in the play, this separation is even more distressing, given 

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that the audience has heretofore seen the romance building between the two. Where 
words cannot as be useful to Ames, per the rhyming interlude of the Prince and Snow 
White as they danced across his stage, the mounting dramatic action and romantic tension 
enables the viewer to become similarly engaged in the production. 
Further, although it is not the same type of encounter and manipulation of 
dramatic action, there is also a domestic romance that is cultivated though the greater 
visibility and impact of Berthold’s children. Again, a viewer cannot understand 
Berthold’s fatherly compassion, as one had in the play, without the language of his verbal 
exchange with Queen Brangomar, when he intends to beg off from the task of killing 
Snow White.
THE QUEEN. Suppose I lock your six children in the great Grey Tower. Suppose 
I order that no one shall take them food or drink. 
BERTHOLD. Oh, your Majesty, have mercy! 
THE QUEEN. Think! Can you not hear their six small voices call to you from the
dark. ‘We are hungry, Papa,’ they will cry; and they will beat on the door 
with their little hands. 
BERTHOLD. [
Sinking to the ground.
] Spare me! Spare me! 
THE QUEEN. At last they will be too weak to cry or beat. Then, when all has
grown still within the Tower, I will say, ‘Berthold, here is the key. Go and 
see how Queen Brangomar punishes disobedience.’ 
BERTHOLD. [
Rising with a cry.
] Oh, I will obey, your Majesty! Heaven 
forgive me, but I cannot let my children starve! (White 66-67) 
This language in addition to the staged action of this scene, filled with sentiment, aims 
for a viewer’s/reader’s heart. An audience feels for Berthold based on his display of a 
parent’s unconditional love for his children when their safety and well-being have been 
threatened. In short, White’s/Ames’ words and stage directions within the play make an 
audience feel 
with 
Berthold. However, in the film, most of the play’s language is lost.
This exchange, including Berthold’s agreement, takes place over the course of a mere 25 

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seconds. Only two sentences appear on the screen. The first (from the Queen), 
“Berthold, go to the Forest, kill Snow White, and bring me her heart — or I will lock 
your children in the Grey Tower and starve them to death!” and 6 seconds later 
(Berthold’s reply), “Heaven forgive me! — I will obey” (Ames). Although during those 
6 seconds of action, Berthold falls to his knees before the Queen, the audience might not 
necessarily feel for the giant of a man. Yet, with an earlier scene in the film’s action 
portraying Berthold alongside those children—when he came in from his work and they 
bounced beside him holding his hands, before he lifted one to his chest—the audience 
knows him to be a good and loving father.
This heartfelt domesticity is further evinced when Berthold is senselessly thrown 
into the “same dungeon where the Queen had imprisoned his children,” as a result of her 
mistrust (Ames). When Berthold realizes that his children are close, he is a man strong 
enough to bend the bars of his prison cell, inventively using a string (which a bird brings 
to his cell window) along with his boot to pull each of his children to safety. While this 
scene is entirely tangential to the episodic structure of Snow White, it does play on a 
viewer’s heartstrings. Although his words are silenced, one views a parent who, even 
when broken, would do anything for his children. An audience aches with him and for 
him and cannot stop watching the filmic action for a moment. The music amplifies the 
tension in this scene, and although a viewer knows that his heart is with his children, it 
remains uncertain whether he will be able to rescue them. When he does, and hangs the 
guard whose keys he steals, an audience rejoices in this resolution of good triumphing 
over evil, just as it will with the romantic ending of the play, when Snow White and the 

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Prince come together, and the Queen is punished by having to live with her “evil face” 
(Ames). Where the play did not require Berthold’s children to be readily visible, the film 
required their presence to position Berthold in this same romantic light, and also to 
reassert Ames’