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"Cinderella was the most risky and crucial film - in respect to the future of the studio - since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, the atmosphere around the initial phases of Cinderella's production was not at all as electrifying as it had been for Snow White. For the studio to thrive, it needed a success, but no one thought that Cinderella would be a leap in the advancement of animated drawing art as Snow White had been." (Michael Barrier)
Disney had lacked a box office hit for at least 8 years; the last film that really worked was "Bambi" (1942), and the previous one was "Dumbo" (1941), but before these, there were the heavy flops, especially from an economic point of view, of "Pinocchio" (1940) and "Fantasia" (1940). The war didn't help, and Disney focused on short films like the Silly Symphonies era and on less than mediocre movies (although one of these, "The Three Caballeros" (1944), eventually gained good success) such as "Saludos Amigos" (1942); "Make Mine Music" (1946); "Fun and Fancy Free" (1947); "Melody Time" (1948) and "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949). If "Cinderella" hadn't been successful (but a real success, like in the days of Snow White) Disney would probably have gone bankrupt. And "Cinderella," in the end, was a fallback since any subject even minimally considered was mathematically discarded by Walt. Perrault's fairy tale, an old idea dating back to 1938, after the Snow White exploit, seemed the most intelligent idea. For two reasons: 1) the fairy tale itself was a revisit, in tone and color, of Snow White; the girl to be saved who falls in love with the prince in an enchanted world made of castles and magic (essentially, if it worked with Snow White why shouldn't it work with Cinderella?); 2) if there were the seven dwarfs there, here are the mice, and anthropomorphism in Disney films is one of the main elements of the product (in Perrault's fairy tale, no mention is made of mice or cats, like the clocks in "Pinocchio," they are the fruit of Disney's vivid imagination).
Without great enthusiasm and goals, the production of "Cinderella" began in 1948. The production was revolutionary, and Disney, despite everything, spared no expense. In practice, two films were made in one: one with models, live actors, who played the characters, and the other with drawings almost tracing the scenes shot in real life. All this is especially noticeable in the figure of the stepmother (Lady Tremaine in the original), a woman represented with impressive realism, elegance, and aristocratic movements. And the backgrounds, second in beauty only to those of "The Aristocats," are exceptional, including some revolutionary (and very daring) special effects like the protagonist glimpsed between soap bubbles or the distorted view of the ballroom seen through the Grand Duke's monocle. Besides the mice and the cats, Disney invents a nineteenth-century Europe (the much-discussed Middle Europe) that seems to come out of a dream but has its feet firmly planted in a verist and concrete historical reality. And it is the first film in which the protagonist appears no longer as a surfboard, but as a girl with shapes and a clearly visible bust (the mischievous opening sequence of waking up where some little birds cover her with sheets), though in subsequent Disney films this will be set aside and "rediscovered" only in 1989 with "The Little Mermaid," in part, and particularly in 1992 with "Aladdin" (one of Disney's more adult and significant cartoons from this point of view).
"Cinderella" is an oasis of freshness, a succession of ideas, more or less brilliant, as hadn't been seen for many years. The first part is a masterpiece of comedy, between the gags of the mice (especially the legendary Gas Gas (Gus in the original) and the cat Lucifer (Lucifer) to which are gradually added the comedic moments between the Grand Duke and the King (the skinny and the fat one, an evident homage to Laurel and Hardy); the famous sequence of the Fairy Godmother ("Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo," sung in the original by Verna Felton, 60 years old at the time, who became, until 1967, a mainstay of the Disney world, giving her voice, among others, to the Queen of Hearts in "Alice" and Flora in "Sleeping Beauty"); followed by a (semi) thrilling finale with the famous key scene (here Disney pays homage to a certain type of Hitchcock-style cinema). In barely an hour and twenty minutes, Disney packs all its visual universe to create a work that, over time, has become one of the most famous and most beautiful in the entire catalog.
However, some details should be noted.
"The poeticism of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi is absent. Here Disney does not take on an enraptured air in the face of the miracle of anthropomorphic nature: the animals are few, domestic, and not too reliable, amusing before they are good or bad. [...] This underlying note, grimly naturalistic, somewhat clashes with the sparkling and semiserious style" (Oreste De Fornari)
The discrepancy between a nature actually represented in a linear way (and not detailed as in "Bambi") and the visual and formal richness of the royal palaces (almost a rib of the Metro Goldwin Mayer Studios) cannot leave you indifferent. But if, according to some critics, it might be a flaw, in my opinion, it could be another stroke of genius by Disney, who knew well that the attic of a castle where Cinderella is locked up must be squalid, because it is, and instead, the glittering and luxurious world of a king must be blinding. The dance scenes at the castle will then be the foundations on which the animations of "Beauty and the Beast" (1991) will be based.
"Cinderella" achieved a sensational public success, saved Disney, and ensured that, with the money raised, all the works of the decade in progress could be realized (in the '50s, "little things" came out like "Alice"; "Peter Pan"; "Lady and the Tramp;" "Sleeping Beauty," plus a series of live actions, as we would say today) and even a cult director like Michael Curtiz ("The Adventures of Robin Hood"; "Casablanca") had to say: "masterpiece of all the images you have created," applauding Disney.
The critics were divided into two. Bosley Crowther of the "New York Times" snarled: ""Lovely Cinderella has a face and a voluptuous form, not to mention an enthusiastic disposition, to compare with Daisy Mae of Al Capp [...] Consequently, the situation in which they are mutually involved (humans and animals, note) has the constriction and immobility of episodes expressed in panels. When Mr. Disney tries to make them behave like human beings, he renders them banal".
Time has proven him wrong.
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