CINDERELLA
A film review by Adrian Preston
Copyright 1996 Adrian Preston
The Brothers Grimm's fairy tales were a mish-mash of folk tales from around the world. Revisionists to the last, the Grimms traveled widely, collected tales and rewrote them to portray a Grimm version of the current socio-moral climate. Hans Christian Anderson did exactly the same thing. Rumplestiltskin is a prime example, the original version ( a Nordic folk tale I believe, but I could be wrong. ) had the heroine as a scheming shrew, who used her beauty to ensnare Rumplestiltskin into falling deeply in love with her, and who came to a very sticky end after she betrayed him and he snatched her first-born child away. The version we all know from childhood changes the focus of the story completely, so the ugly, un-socially-acceptible Rumplestilskin becomes the bogeyman. Revisionism in action.
The reason I'm mentioning this is that it draws an astonishing parallel with the Walt Disney of today, Pocahontas being the absolute definitive in this respect. However, Cinderella is the Walt Disney of the past and is Disney at it's best.
The plot is simple: Cinderella's father dies, and she becomes a char-lady to her evil stepmother and two ugly sisters. Meeting a woman who claims to be her fairy godmother and transforms her into a vision of beauty, she attends the Prince's ball. The Prince falls deeply in love, but because Cinderella must leave at midnight, he only has a glass slipper with which to find her. A search ensues, Cinderella is found, they are married and live happily ever after. O.K., nothing earth shattering there, but Disney have managed to take all their stock effects and tie them into a lovely unified whole around the simple storyline.
As far as the plot goes ( we were talking about revisionism remember ), some liberties are taken. In the original fairy tale, the two ugly sisters managed to fit their feet into the glass slippers by cutting their toes and heels off, and were only discovered because of the blood seeping out. At the end of the story, the stepmother and sisters as punishment had their eyes put out, and their tongues cut off, and were made to wander the streets as beggars. But really, you can't blame Disney for ommitting these little things. I doubt that an animated image of two women mutilating their feet would appeal to the younger audience. :)
The songs are simple and kept to a minimum. The comic relief characters ( the mice and the fairy-godmother ) are well-used througout the film and are tied in well with the plot, and the villain of the piece, the evil stepmother exudes a delicious air of evil. The weakest characters surprisingly are the ugly sisters, who are rather underutilised, and could have been depicted as more comic-evil than as they are portrayed, which is vindictive-nasty. One of the main criticisms one can make of the early Disney films is that the heroines were rather bland and ineffectual, witness Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. With Cinderella, Disney give us a much more rounded character as a heroine, and the film hangs together around her, rather than the supporting characters.
The animation, as usual is excellent. Cinderella I suppose is a early to mid Disney piece, and is all clean lines and subtle shades, where the animative focus is on the characters rather than the background. It lacks both the realism of earlier and recent Disney work and the minimalism of mid-period, and is a sort of halfway-house between the two. It works though, and works very well. As personal preference goes, it is probably my favourite of the animation styles Disney have tinkered with so far.
Anyway, my son loves the film and so do I. (Probably for different reasons, I've always held a bit of a flame for Cinderella.) and I award the film:
**** (four stars) out of five.
-- Adi, Lecturer in ??????? Kingston University
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