Snow White (1961 film)

Schneewittchen, a 1961 East German film directed by Gottfried Kolditz, adapts the Brothers Grimm fairy tale *Snow White*. Its plot closely follows the original story, and the changes it makes can be compared to those in the 1937 Walt Disney film.

The story begins with a queen, jealous of her stepdaughter Snow White’s beauty, ordering a hunter to kill the girl. He lets her escape into the woods, where she finds shelter with seven dwarfs. When the queen learns from her magic mirror that the hunter failed, she disguises herself as an old woman and tries to kill Snow White herself. After two unsuccessful attempts, she succeeds with a poisoned apple. A prince’s love revives Snow White when one of the dwarfs knocks over her coffin, dislodging the apple piece from her throat. The evil stepmother flees after being humiliated at their wedding.

The cast includes Doris Weikow as Snow White, Marianne Christina Schilling as the Evil Queen, Wolf-Dieter Panse as the Prince, Harry Hindemith as the Royal Huntsman, and Steffie Spira as the Old Crone. The seven dwarfs are played by Arthur Reppert, Jochen Köppel, Georg Irmer, Fred Delmare, Heinz Scholz, Willi Scholz, and Horst Jonischkan. Fritz Schlegel appears as the Cook, and Gerry Wolff is the Narrator.

The film was shot at the DEFA studios in Babelsberg. Doris Weikow later worked as a presenter and announcer for Deutscher Fernsehfunk from 1965.

According to DEFA records, the film was seen by approximately 4.5 million spectators, making it one of the twenty most successful fairy-tale and children’s films in East Germany.

The film was released on DVD by Icestorm Entertainment on March 21, 2001, and in a digitally restored version on September 13, 2010. Fernsehenjuwelen GmbH released it on Blu-ray for the first time on November 2, 2023.