Easy to forget that after SNOW WHITE, three of the four now canonical Walt Disney follow-up animated films came up short at the box-office on original release. (Only cost-conscious DUMBO initially earned out.) It was a full eight years between BAMBI/‘42 and this careful reentry into animated features with a significantly less ambitious project. Lighter in tone & look (no more Grimm German Romanticism or childhood terrors), everything now fit for domestic consumption; burdensome troubles rather than life or death issues. Yet don’t underestimate CINDERELLA’s pleasures, on its reduced terms, real imagination & fresh inspiration is brought to familiar terrain. Surprisingly, nearly half the running time given to household & farm animals who befriend Cinderella. And since everyone knows the plot, we can find the story development tweaks unique to Disney. (Mastertweaks, really. Perhaps from master story editor Walt?*) Only in this version is Cinderella unaware that the nice young man she spends the whole ball dancing with is the Prince. (Made clear in a single line of dialogue. Such economy!) That Step-Mother deduces Cinderella as the girl, the one who lost the glass slipper. And only here does the glass slipper shatter before Cinderella can try it on.* (It’s a fur boot in Perrault’s original story.) Maybe you don’t know this version as well as you think.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Baby Boomers may also have forgotten that Mike Douglas, syndicated Philadelphia Talk Show host of the ‘70s does the meager six lines the Prince gets to sing. Or that Fairy Godmother just sounds like Maureen Stapleton. It’s actually vet character voice actress Verna Felton.
DOUBLE-BILL: *A Disney live-action version (not seen here) was a hit in 2015. Did they keep those three structural mastertweaks?
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