Film #029 - Cinderella (1950)
I hadn’t seen Cinderella, Disney’s 12th Animated Feature, in several years, but was inspired to watch it because of the impending release of Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, which was getting strong reviews. I’ve still yet to see Cinderella III (I’ll apend my thoughts here when I do), but after watching the original again, I can see it’s got a lot to live up to.
I’ll be honest. Cinderella has never been particularly high on my list of Disney movies. I was always drawn to the more action-oriented films and, apart from Snow White, was not a big fan of the “Disney Princesses”. So I was surprised to enjoy Cinderella as much as I did.
I remember thinking before I watched of all the ways it couldn’t possibly match up to the best of the genre (namely Snow White and The Little Mermaid). But I found it stood up pretty darn well.
For instance, I expected the villainous stepmother of Cinderella to be a distant shadow of Snow White’s. But as I watched the film I realized that Cinderella’s situation is in many ways worse than Snow’s. While the wicked Queen wants Snow White dead, Cinderella’s stepmother Lady Tremaine simply makes her life miserable for no good reason. I’m not claiming the Queen’s motivation was a good one, but she’s clearly insane, in her way. But Lady Tremaine just as clearly has all her faculties about her and is torturing poor Cinderella. I started to get angry at her as she continually dashed all of Cinderella’s hopes. The Queen may have been an evil villain, but Lady Tremaine is a bitch.
I also thought there was no way that the music in Cinderella could match the great songs in The Little Mermaid. I guess the only one I really remembered was “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” which, admittedly, is a bit weak. But “The Work Song” (or “Cinderelly” to me) is every bit as clever as the work of Ashman and Menken and there is a fantastic dual use of “Sing Sweet Nightengale” that made me sit up and take notice. (It was, in fact, the point where I went “Hey! This is proving to be pretty darn good!” to myself.)
Just about the only thing Cinderella is missing is a strong human male character, as the Prince has even less to do with the plot than the other Prince Charming (in Snow White) does. But there’s lots of solid support and the comic relief has just the right touch. The best supporting work, of course, is Eleanor Audley as Lady Tremaine. Her performance really underlines the cruelty. But a nod should also go to Luis van Rooten who does a one-man double-act as the King and the Grand Duke, sharing many memorable scenes with himself. (I particularly liked the King’s motivation for the wedding. While most films would have gone with the standard “we need an heir” idea, the King just wants grandchildren to play with.) The mice are also very entertaining and Verna Felton’s Fairy Godmother wasn’t as annoying as I seemed to remember her being. (Her part is actually very small.)
Cinderella is also a very beautifully animated film. The imagry is lush or stark depending on the needs of the scene and everything fits together as a satisfying whole. The musical numbers are exuberant and lively and if it still suffers from some of the Snow White-style focus on the animals, they are at least as animated as Cinderella herself. But it’s just as good at quieter moments, such as Cinderella and the Prince’s first meeting, which happens almost entirely in a longshot that somehow conveys the emotion of the scene without actually depicting it in detail.
Sure, some might say that Cinderella could have used some more action, but I honestly can’t see where it could have been fit in without damaging the feel of the film. Cinderella is not a story of adventure, it’s a tale of unjust suffering and how someone can make their destiny come true once they decide to take action, even if it doesn’t take very much. Just the decision to not sit idly by is enough to fix things for Cinderella. Not a bad moral as these things go.