The Snowman (Channel 4, 1982) — Fantasy/Animation

The Snowman, produced by John Coates, turns forty this year. Remarkably, it has been a regular feature of Channel 4’s Christmas schedule since its first broadcast (an intriguing but important acquisition for the fledgling channel), taking its place within contemporary culture. This blog post is intended to connect with the enduring appeal of this seasonal film and my commentary exists, in part, to very simply celebrate an achievement in fantasy animation television. In this way, I am offering a short collection of thoughts, arranged in fairly loose (and loosely-titled) sections, which might hopefully encourage further consideration of this film and its qualities.

Beginning

**Fig. 1 - David Bowie’s introduction to *The Snowman*.**

Firstly, who introduces The Snowman? In my mind it was always David Bowie, but originally it had been the author of the original book, Raymond Briggs, providing a beautifully downbeat introduction as he trudged across a frosty field at dusk in wellington boots and an anorak. From 2002 to 2013, following The Snowman’s 20th anniversary on television, the animated, Mel Smith-voiced Father Christmas (another Briggs creation) provided a somewhat self-referential version, in which he settles to watch the film whilst recounting his own involvement in the story. Bowie’s introduction (selected to replace Briggs’ for the US market, apparently) has since been reinstated and suggests at least two things about the artist: the curious projects he would get involved in, especially during that somewhat uneven period of the 1980s, and also the sincere dedication he gave to them.

Watching his introduction again, I’m struck by Bowie’s devotion to the material: a delivery that is understated, brief and poignant (Fig. 1). It reminds me of his work on the fantasy film Labyrinth (another interesting career choice, coming during those same years). Bowie is often wrongly characterised as chameleon-like in discussions of his musical stage personas (chameleons adapt to their surroundings, Bowie never did) but, as a dramatic actor, he often displays an ambition and ability to inhabit the fictional world, whatever it is. And so he is the little boy, now grown-up (albeit with striking bleach-blond hair).

Seeing

The story of The Snowman begins with a transition to a scene of a snow-capped trees, as yet more snow falls, accompanied by the first bars of Howard Blake’s musical score.[1] The image gives the first taste of the film’s visual style, which retains the exquisite drawing technique of Briggs’ original book (Figs. 2 and 3). In that source material, the linework is still visible to the reader, and used effectively to create movement in the still, drawn images as well as capturing character thought and emotion.

From the initial work of the animators, through to director Dianne Jackson’s storyboarding and, finally, in the finished film, this graphic style was retained (and what a gift Briggs’ original book must have been to a filmmaker, a nearly frame-by-frame inspiration for storyboarding an animation.) As soon as the image begins to move, swooping over snow-encrusted trees, fields and hedges before arriving at a little boy’s bedroom window (Figs. 4 and 5), the graphic form is more pronounced before becoming an integrated element, seamlessly part of the way this story is being told.

That form gives the film a distinctive style, especially when compared with other animations that seek to disguise the hand of the artist in the pursuit of a clean, precise verisimilitude (inspired, perhaps, by the classic era Disney films that achieved this ‘hyper-realist’ register so well). Fundamentally, though, it makes the fictional world of The Snowman both distinctive and distinct. The same as ours and different; some things ordinary, some things extraordinary. Style in synthesis with fantasy.

Hearing

The music we hear is an instrumental piano version of Blake’s ‘Walking in the Air,’ which becomes a recurring theme throughout the film and achieves its fullest rendition as the boy and snowman fly magically together through the night sky. The early use here is the first indication of the powerful cohesion between music and image in The Snowman, weaving tone and mood together. ‘Walking in the Air’ begins in a minor key and, although incorporating major key sections, maintains a somewhat melancholic and mysterious quality. The melody responds to and evokes the world that Briggs created, now rendered in film, blending moments of soaring joy with apprehension, wonder, danger, solitude and sadness. Blake’s soundtrack, written to fit the film’s visuals, is alert to these fluctuations and exists in synergy with them throughout, capturing their characteristics, and reflecting the emotions of the little boy, particularly, in a wordless work.[2] In this fictional environment, a snowman can come wonderfully to life and fly through the air (Fig. 6), express humour and love, but is also in danger of melting, is enigmatic, prone to taking thrilling risks and can even frighten domestic animals (Fig. 7). Blake’s music understands and becomes one with this world’s miraculous phenomena but also its precariousness, its rules and risks.

Feeling

The solitude and sadness that Blake’s score encapsulates might lead us instinctively towards the film’s final shot: the boy standing over the melted snowman, clutching his Christmas-gift scarf as the camera circles out and away from him, now reversing the movement that first brought us to his bedroom window at the start. Yet, antecedents to that scene can be glimpsed in earlier images of the snowman standing alone, an unmoving sentinel in the midnight garden (Fig. 8) and, before that, the boy alone in that same garden, toiling alone in the white wilderness to create a companion (Fig. 9).

The film embraces solitude early. Not solitude through neglect: the boy’s mother attempts to protect him from the cold with a woollen hat, calls him in when dusk falls, beckons him over to the warmth of the hearth, where his father keeps an eye on bedtime. Instead, it conveys a kind of private seclusion that childhood can also feature and so, in a shot where the boy stands still and looks at his motionless creation, we may gain a sense of a muted affinity between them (Fig. 10). He has made a friend for himself, to share some of his traits. Perhaps this is where some of the powerful joy from the snowman’s magical animation derives from: the exuberant liveliness his presence lends to an environment that was so recently still and subdued (Fig. 11). Watch again as he moves through the house and brings every object, every room, everything he encounters to life.

The film understands the ironic pleasures in a snowman bestowing warmth and light. But the house cannot contain him. He takes first to a motorbike (an inclusion of the film’s animators, Hilary Audus and Joanna Harrison, rather than a feature of Briggs’ original story), racing it around the nearby fields and woods, spooking the wildlife, and then to the skies: drawing the boy up and away with him in a majestic passage of movement.

**Fig. 12 - The Snowman’s flying sequence.**

**Fig. 13 - The snowman and the boy encounter a surfacing whale.**

The flying sequence is perhaps the film’s centrepiece in terms of its skilful combining of imagery and sound (Fig. 12). The journey takes in sweeping landscapes, rolling oceans, even a surfacing whale (Fig. 13), whilst Blake’s ‘Walking in the Air’ returns in its fullest form, now with lyrics describing the thrilling sensation of flight from the boy’s perspective. The music has a haunting quality even as it celebrates, rendering the cold stillness of the night as the duo continue on in silent companionship. And the boy’s apprehension dissolves into delight, his creation expanding the boundaries of possibility all the time, now out of control but a wonderful guide through astonishing spaces.

The mood becomes celebratory as snowman and boy eventually land and discover a whole host of other snowmen eating, drinking, playing music and dancing beneath the Northern Lights at a party hosted by Father Christmas (Fig. 14). This character, again, was not in Briggs’ original storybook, but the author did not disapprove. We might see why: the introduction of Father Christmas gives the film a central point, an immediately accessible sentimentality, as well as securing its festive status. The party also reinforces the little boy’s special centrality: all of these snowmen gathering for celebration but only one child.[3]

He receives his gift of a scarf in Father Christmas’ reindeer shed (complete with present-laden sleigh) and then we are away again, rapidly retracing the journey through the skies. It is a brief reprise, accompanied by a major-key rendition of ‘Walking in the Air’s central theme that evokes the lingering warmth of the celebrations, but again the animation is crafted meticulously, with detailed houses, fields, trees and waves maintaining this world’s still textures and subtle depths while the pair swoop, soar and glide around them.

Back at home, the snowman guides the boy to his house, an arm around a shoulder in a gesture of compassionate care. The soundtrack takes on a brief, minor-key melody as they shake hands and the boy walks away, as though the audio were anticipating a change of mood as the adventure comes to an end and separation beckons. But then the music soars once more as he runs back to the snowman and they embrace. The image is sustained, white arms cradling the child; small hands finding their place on the expanse of snowy body (Fig. 15).

**Fig. 16 - The snowman resumes his place in the garden.**

It is a composition of contrasts: the sensation must be cold for the boy, but nothing against the emotional warmth he feels for his companion and guide. His friend. They finally part with a wave, and the snowman turns away to resume his place in the garden (Fig. 16). The little boy waves faintly again from his bedroom window but the snowman is now silent and still once more.

Believing

The next day begins with a repeat of restless movements and the lively, impatient musical theme that signalled the start of yesterday’s snowy adventure. The boy races downstairs, not bothering to dress this time, but has to shield his eyes from the sunlight as he flings open the front door. A first sign that something has changed is complemented by a change in the soundtrack, resuming the minor-key melody that was held briefly when boy and snowman began to part the night before. And before we know it, he is standing over a mound of melted snow: a bundle of coals, a hat and scarf the last reminders of where his friend once stood (Fig. 17).

And so we circle out, wheeling away from the scene as the piano version of ‘Walking in the Air’ plays again, taking us back to where we first began. But not before the boy has reached into his pocket and retrieved the scarf. This moment might categorise the story as ‘marvellous’ according to the Tzvetan Todorov terminology, for anyone interested in that sort of thing. But perhaps that’s not the best path here. Morphology, structuralism, theory: these can often tell us what a thing is, but not always why it should matter, or how we might experience it. The Snowman ends with impermanence, sadness and loss. But the discovered scarf also recalls a happiness that will remain: not only that it all really happened but also that it will always have meaning (Fig. 18). The moment marks the end of an experience but the beginning of a memory, which can provide new comforts once the pain of loss has diminished.

Legacies

One, perhaps originally unanticipated, consequence of The Snowman’s burgeoning popularity over the years has been the explosive emergence of a huge variety of associated commercial products. It is no challenge to discover a massive array of items bearing the ‘brand’ image, including clothing, soft toys, clocks, figurines, crockery, lights, bathroom accessories, jigsaws, snow globes and, of course, Christmas decorations. It seems curious that this silent, unobtrusive character should have inspired such a plethora of merchandise but, of course, it makes clear commercial sense. The brand imagery is malleable, relatively free from context, immensely reproducible and the character has no voice, so it can translate freely. Little surprise, then, that there is a strong overseas market for The Snowman products, with Japan particularly keen.[4]

It is tempting to relate the commercial success of the brand to the emergence of a follow-up film, The Snowman and the Snowdog, directed by Audus in 2012. No doubt, it capitalises on the iconography and has led to new lines of merchandising potential. Equally, in an era of increased sequelisation across all forms of popular media, there is perhaps something inevitable about a second film coming into existence. Dedicated to the memory of Coates, written by the animators who worked on The Snowman, Audus and Harrison (and directed by Audus), but without the contribution of either Briggs or Blake, the film is faced with the challenge of revisiting but also expanding upon the original story. The result is a work whose tone is lighter, which seems a natural direction given that it happily resurrects a central character that had been afforded a poignant demise thirty years earlier, and introduces further diversions such as the snowman flying an aeroplane now and, of course, the introduction of a canine companion. This addition perhaps divides the narrative focus a little uncomfortably, superfluously even, but the storyline might equally be read as not merely a convenient supplement. The boy in this new film has recently lost his dog and we may also notice that he is without a father, which at least raises some questions about when that first dog first came into his life, what it may have provided, and what it might have meant to him. If the magical conjuring of a new puppy at the end of the film feels like a convenient uplift (contrasting with the closing mood of the original, certainly) it at least has a fairly tangible motivation.

Otherwise, the follow-up film traces the familiar footprints of The Snowman but in a fictional world that reveals certain ontological distinctions: snowmen no longer scare animals, for example, but instead compete against anthropomorphised penguins in downhill slalom races. The risk, we might suppose, it that it ultimately becomes a remake that falls short of the original: aesthetically recreating the visual style but with CGI flourishes that somehow diminish its effect; essentially telling the same story but with slightly awkward new embellishments and a happy ending; returning to the wordless, musical format through a soundtrack that has an easy charm but possesses few of the tonal variations and depths that Blake achieves. Yet, these are the kinds of perils that sequels are always bound to face, and we should take care that judgement is not perennially restricted by comparison. The Snowman and the Snowdog, we might reasonably assume, was not made for adult devotees of The Snowman and was instead intended for discovery by new audiences. Perhaps, then, some of its achievements could be appreciated in those terms.

**Article published: December 16, 2022**

Notes

[1] In the Bowie version, his voice continues over these visuals and score, giving the lines that Briggs delivered in his original introduction.

[2] It was Blake’s suggestion that there should be no spoken dialogue in the film.

[3] Like so many characters in fantasy fiction whose magical journey makes them the temporary or permanent focus of a world whereas, before, they may have been marginal or even marginalised. We might consider archetypal examples like Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy in Oz or Harry Potter at Hogwarts.

[4] Coming in the 1980s, this commercial development reverses a trend set by US toy manufacturers like Kenner and Mattel at the time, who were producing toy lines like Transformers and Masters of the Universe and releasing ‘toyetic’ cartoons as a very successful means of advertising them to children.

References

Todorov, Tzvetan. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Biography

James Walters is Reader in Film and Television Studies at the University of Birmingham.