They keep re-doing it, and never get it right.

Curiouser and curiouser.

You may recall that I posted an item here two months ago complaining about the tight cropping of most of the cartoons on More Silly Symphonies: 1929 – 1938, one of the most recent entries in the ‘Walt Disney Treasures‘ series of DVDs.

At the time, I noted that The Goddess of Spring (1934) was not “windowboxed” like the other films, and I assumed this was because Disney was re-using the version they had made six years ago, when it was included as a bonus feature on the “platinum edition” of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

But now it seems I was wrong about that.

UltimateDisney.com recently put up reviews with screen captures of More Silly Symphonies and another new release, It’s a Small World of Fun, Vol. 4, which also includes The Goddess of Spring — but the version on that newest disc is windowboxed, which the version on More Silly Symphonies most definitely is not!

This made me curious, to see how the windowboxed image compares to the equivalent frame on the earlier versions of this cartoon. So I pulled out my copy of Snow White and fired up the cartoon — and I immediately discovered that the Snow White version is actually different from the More Silly version!

The Snow White version begins with an MPAA seal of approval, which is followed by the image on the left, whereas the More Silly version begins abruptly with the image on the right:

You can see ever-so-slight differences between the Snow White and More Silly versions of the frames below, too — in terms of the cropping and the colours, I mean (alas, I wasn’t able to capture exactly the same frames, in terms of the characters’ poses, etc.):

But what really surprises me is that the windowboxed image from the It’s a Small World disc actually seems to incorporate more of the original animated frame — though it still cuts some of it off!

This is very irritating. I can appreciate that colours and the like might vary from one transfer to another — but dudes, is it really so hard to keep the entire frame, the way the animators drew it!?

And why is there a new version with every DVD release!?