The vain and cruel Queen of an ancient Germanic kingdom asks her Magic Mirror each day who the fairest of all is. One day, the Mirror answers that it’s not her, but her stepdaughter Snow White, who she’s always been jealous of. Outside, Snow herself is forced to do menial chores while dressed in rags but stays in good spirits as she makes a wish into a wishing well for her true love. This gets the attention of a passing Prince, who startles her by finishing the wish. Snow runs inside, leaving the Prince to profess his love from outside while the Queen angrily watches.
The Queen orders her Huntsman to trick Snow into a trip to the forest where he’ll kill her and bring her heart back as proof. The already reluctant Huntsman loses his nerve entirely upon seeing Snow’s kindness to a lost bird and confesses everything, urging her to run away. She heads deeper into the woods and quickly becomes terrified as the trees seem to take on monstrous faces, but regains her senses when she startles the various curious animals who come out to see her. She asks them if there’s any place she could sleep, and they take her to a tiny cottage, which from the tiny furniture and untidiness she assumes is the home of orphan children. She enlists the animals to help her clean the whole place, hoping it will convince them to let her stay.
The cottage’s actual inhabitants are seven Dwarves currently hard at work digging gems out of a mine. But then the bell rings for the end of the workday, and they head back home, where Snow has finished cleaning and discovers their bedroom, amused at seeing their descriptive names carved in their beds before falling asleep. Upon getting back home, the Dwarves are horrified to see someone has broken in and cleaned, leading to lots of slapstick with Sneezy and Dopey before they finally set eyes on Snow. She wakes up, and they all greet each other, and despite Grumpy’s dislike of having a woman around and warning that the Queen will take revenge on them all, the others are instantly won over by Snow’s offer to clean and cook for them. Though first, she insists they all wash for the very first time, with even Grumpy forcibly put through the basin.
The Queen again asks the Mirror who’s fairest, to which the Mirror reveals the Huntsman tricked her with a pig’s heart and Snow is still alive with the Dwarves. The furious Queen goes so far as to sacrifice her treasured beauty and makes a magic potion that transforms her into a hideous old hag so she’ll be able to get close to the cottage, and she also starts work on a poison apple to take her revenge.
Snow and the Dwarves have a party after dinner, where after the dancing, Snow regales them with the story of how she met the Prince, who she is still sure will return one day to marry her. When it’s time to go to sleep, the Dwarves eagerly offer the comfortable bedroom to Snow over Grumpy’s protests, leaving them to sleep in various spots in the rest of the cottage after tearing apart their one good pillow.
The Queen finishes the poison apple, which she then disguises to appear normal. She’s sly enough to look up any antidote and finds love’s first kiss can only cure the poison. She’s not concerned by it as the Dwarves will think Snow is dead and bury her, gleefully cackling over the idea of Snow being buried alive before she heads out to the forest, passing a long-dead skeleton vainly reaching for a water jug in the dungeon.
The next morning, Snow sees the Dwarves off with a kiss to the forehead as they head back to the mine, which actually gets Grumpy to smile though he quickly covers it up. After they’re gone, the Queen arrives, pretending to be an apple peddler, and tells Snow the poison apple will grant her wish. The forest animals race off to warn the Dwarves, who ride to the rescue with Grumpy of all people leading the charge. But they’re too late, and Snow has already bitten the apple and fallen into a coma. The Dwarves chase the Queen up a cliff face, where she’s about to turn the tables by sending a boulder down onto them when a lightning strike destroys her foothold, sending her falling to her death with the boulder following after.
The Dwarves and animals all mourn Snow’s apparent death and still find her so beautiful they can’t bear to bury her, instead interring her in a glass coffin above ground. The Prince, who’s been searching for her, gets word of it and arrives to give her love’s first kiss, which breaks the spell. The overjoyed Dwarves see her off to her new happy life as she gives each of them one more kiss, “And they lived happily ever after.”
