Cinderella

A return to the more full and lush animation after the wartime years found the studio releasing a series of package films held together with thin narrative constructs, Cinderella kicked off the Silver Era of Disney animation. This film is the distillation of what that era would entail: films with pieces of glorious animation, but a general sense of unsatisfactory wholes. Too many cooks in the kitchen would spoil quite a few of the films in this era, with Cinderella being a prime example.

Ostensibly, this film tells the well-known story of Cinderella, and the mechanics are all in place, yet the film adds more to center of the story, often sidelining Cinderella and her prince in favor of slapstick with cutesy mice and a cruel cat. Lucifer, Lady Tremaine’s pet, may have even more screen time than the Lady herself, who is technically the actual villain of the piece.

The basics are all there, no doubt. The backstory of tragedy befalling a young girl, her callous stepmother and wicked stepsisters, her animal helpers, the divine intervention to get her to the ball, the glass slipper, the frantic search throughout the kingdom for the maiden with the dainty foot, all present and accounted for. We speed through these set pieces, and this is a frequent problem. These are the best animated segments in the movie, but it prefers to spend more time watching cartoon mice engage in humorous side-plots.

Walt Disney rightly considering Cinderella’s transformation scene to be one of the highlights of the studio’s animation, and it is a beautiful moment. The amount of wonder and awe the animators were able to capture is a tiny piece of magic that only great animation can provide. The fairy godmother, for all of her omnipresence in the marketing of this movie, is only in one scene, but she’s the best part. Her magical spells transforming ordinary objects and animals into a coach and coachmen is the type of whimsical character specific detail that made films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Dumbo so memorable.

But long gone are the more detailed and stylish techniques of the Golden Era. The Silver Era has its own landmark moments, but the animation style has been flattened, partially out of necessity, partially out of economy. Aside from the fairy godmother’s sequence there are a few others in which the leads get to show some semblance of personality. Cinderella’s awakening to a new day sees her chastising the ringing bells, and proclaiming that no one will be able to take away her dreams. This leads us into a song, which is nothing but platitudes, and should be a revealing moment for her character, but abandons that notion before it even begins. What are the dreams that her heart is making? What are the dreams that the dawning of a new day won’t be able to take away? We learn nothing about her, besides she is hard-working and benevolent.

Fairing much worse despite his high-ranking presence in the Disney canon, is her Prince Charming, whose one moment of personality comes in him yawning at the ball. He’s handsome enough of a drawing, but what is it about Cinderella that draws him to her, aside from plot necessity? If Cinderella had spent half of the time engaging with its leads as it does with Gus, Lucifer, or Jacques, we’d have a much better film on our hands.

Most Disney films are only as good as their side-kicks and villain(s), and Cinderella only has half of that equation down. Lady Tremaine mostly stands around looking haughty, while Eleanor Audley’s delicious line readings do most of the major character building work. Audley would be much better served nine years later in Sleeping Beauty’s grand bitch supreme, Maleficent. And her two daughters aren’t much better, as they’re just loud, whiny brats with grand senses of entitlement. None of their scheming feels very pleasing in comparison to egotism evoked in, say, Ursula, Cruella, or the Evil Queen. In fact, given their lot in life and era in which their story takes place, the Lady’s gold-digging and scheming is almost understandable as a means for their survival.

Is Cinderella one of the best films in the Disney canon? No, but it’s not one of the worst, either. It’s serviceable, pleasing in its slight charms, but generally unsatisfactory. I consider it a warm-up for their eventual return to form in some of the later films of the Silver Era, a masterpiece like Sleeping Beauty needed something to pave the way. And Cinderella did bring in Mary Blair, whose concept art during this era is some of the greatest in the studio’s history. Her dreamy backgrounds and playful sense of color and dimension would find better use in Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. It’s a good film, but nothing that enchants me quite as much as many of the other films I’ve mentioned in this review.