Cinderella (1950)
Honors:
Walt Disney Pictures return to full-length feature animation
for the first time in eight years reminding audiences and critics of the
charming enchantment of the studio’s enduring earlier films. In the same ilk as
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella delivers a
princess fairytale where love, kindness, and a little bit of magic overcome the
spite, jealousies, and evils of the world. Presented in stunning Technicolor
animation associated to Disney’s renowned features, the vibrancy of the visuals
are matched with the allure of its plot and characters manifesting the finest
skills of the animated arts since Bambi (1942). Following in the
footsteps of the original Disney princess Snow White, it is all too fitting
that a second “princess film” would launch the studio into it second, much
grander, age.
Cinderella is the animated classic fairytale about the
young lady cruelly mistreated by her stepmother who, with a little friendly
magic, achieves her dream to attend a royal ball and fall in love. Having lost
both her parents at a young age, Cinderella is left in the care of her cruel
stepmother, Lady Tremaine, who shows obvious favoritism to her own daughters by
assigning Cinderella menial tasks within her own home. Though beautiful and
charming she is persecuted by her stepmother and step sisters when a royal ball
is declared inviting all maidens of the land for the prince to find himself a
suitor, keeping Cinderella from attending the event. With the aid of her Fairy
Godmother, as well as her little animal friends, Cinderella is blessed with an
enchanted evening where she becomes the literal belle of the ball, falling in
love with Prince Charming before the spell wears off mat the strike of midnight.
To avoid embarrassment as the spell disappears Cinderella flees the ball,
leaving only a shimmering slipper as the lone reminder of her to the prince,
who will use it to find his missing love. As the story goes, the royals look
for the foot that fits the slipper, while Tremaine boards away Cinderella. When
all hope seems lost with the glass slipper being shattered Cinderella emerges along
with the matching slipper, revealing her identity. Of course, it all ends with Cinderella
marrying the prince and they live happily ever after.
With this picture Walt Disney returns to a style of feature
length animation that reminds audiences of his successful first picture, Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs. With an elegantly beautiful and appealing
princess heroine we also get a slew of small talking animals that serve as the
comedic supporting cast as the dwarves were in the 1937 classic. Brightly
stylistic in a fairytale picture book model Cinderella brings out the
very best of the animation artistry the Disney studio had been underutilizing
for most the prior decade and manifests it with the studio’s finest work since
the earliest part of World War II. Despite a lack of visual depth seen in Pinocchio
(1940) and the artistic depth of the medium seen in Fantasia (1940) one
could the film as a step back. However, Cinderella was a massive leap forward
compared to the package features released in the latter half of the 1940s. With
its beautiful layout, expressive use of shadows for an animated feature, and a
return to charming full-fledged characters Cinderella was not as much of
an achievement as it was a celebration of Disney’s return to pre-war form,
hitting all the marks critics and audiences have long yearned for.
Walt Disney’s connection to Cinderella goes back to
the early 1920s at at his Laugh-O-Gram Studios in Kansas City, before the small
cartoon studio went bankrupt and he moved to California and turned his career
around with Mickey Mouse. In one of his final shorts at Laugh-O-Gram he
produced a crude Cinderella inspire short with a flapper looking damsel as the
ill-treated heroine. Once established in Hollywood Disney imagined Cinderella
as a possible Silly Symphony, but ideas quickly outgrew the possibility of a
seven-minute short. Briefly considered as the first full length animated
feature, the Cinderella concept floated into early pre-production in 1938
before being put on the back burner with WWII cutting off European markets and
crippling all feature ideas for the studio. It was not until after the war that
Cinderella was brushed off again and began development in 1946. Package
features kept Disney afloat through the later 1940s, but the studio remained in
debt and Walt knew he needed to focus on a full-length production again to grab
larger attention and larger box office appeal. Cinderella along with Alice
in Wonderland and Peter Pan were all in development at the same time,
but it was the similarities to Snow White that made this feature the one most
focused on the studio’s return to full-length narratives.
Walt was very insistent on the success of Cinderella,
but due to the changing views he had with his studio through the 1940s, a new
focus on producing his first fully live action picture with Treasure Island
(1950), and other creative ideas the studio’s creative driving force was spread
much thinner than the days of Snow White. Many of Disney’s longest tenured
artists would be trusted with carrying the animated torch of production while
Walt interjected with his quality control that proved timeless in nature.
Artist Mary Blair provided the guiding look of the picture with her classic
fairytale picture book style. Ub Iwerks, Walt’s old collaborator who helped
developed Mickey Mouse and the multiplane camera, proved the special animated
effects. Like in Snow White live action models were used to help with
development of the human characters while the usual Disney style continued to
shine with the animal characters. It looked as if it was all-on-board with the
animation staff when it came to production.
In pursuit for the right voice for Cinderella over 309 women
industry wide auditioned for the voice role. It was when Walt was reviewing
recorded demos by his tin pan alley hired song writers who produced the
classics songs as “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” and the Academy Award
nominated “Bibbidi-Bobbidi- Boo” that he heard the voice he wanted. 20-year-old
small time radio singer Ilene Woods recorded the demos as a favor to her friends
that wrote the music so that Walt could get an idea of the tunes they were
writing. It was a favor that landed her the biggest job in her life as she was cast
as Cinderella by Walt Disney himself. Fellow cast members Eleanor Audley and
Verna Felton too were widely used voice actors with a good deal of work in
radio. Audley would be both the voice and visual model for Lady Tremaine, and
would later return to Disney for more work as the villainess in Sleeping
Beauty (1959). Fenton would be the sweet, comforting voice of the Fairy
Godmother after the character artist shifted from an elegant angel like being
to a more grandmotherly figure for the role, embodying the unconditional loving
figure that was very appealing.
Premiering in Boston in February 1950 Cinderella was
an immediate success. Critics praise the film for the studio’s return to form
and near perfection. Finicky critics would highlight how the human characters
were less appealing than the animal characters, but audiences loved them all.
The gambling Disney took a chance and it paid off with great profits,
establishing a new finical direction for the studio. With the help of Cinderella’s
success, the Disney Studio began a revolutionary decade that saw the Disney brand
become a cultural institution. Three Academy Awards nominations, Best Sound,
Best Music, and Best Song manifested Disney’s achievement back into critical
feature films.
With Cinderella Walt Disney founded his own in-house
music company, allowing him to profit further on the selling of records and
sheet music beyond just the box office returns. Cinderella’s soundtrack quickly
became a number one seller, further padding the pocket books of Disney’s studio
as it looked to expand more animated features, live action movies, and
documentaries with future, yet unforeseen, projects in television and amusement
parks in the years to come.
Cinderella, like many of the Disney classics would be
re-released in theaters several times through the decades, feeding off
nostalgia of past audiences who would introduce the film to new generations.
This practice carried on into home video release in the late 20th
century with the creation of the “Disney Vault,” an idea by generating their
own supply and demand by release the feature periodically in hope to stir up an
appeal.
Rather quickly Cinderella was considered in all-time
Disney classic, eventually becoming part of the famed Disney princess stable.
Its artistry would earn it the ninth best American animated feature on AFI’s
2008 top 10 list. Continued adoration saw the feature elected to the National
Film Registry in 2018. After a trying late 1940s Walt Disney was back and the
1950s proved to be a massive decade for the studio and its figurehead as Disney
and his impact on American culture would balloon in animation and beyond with Cinderella
was just the first step.
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