shadowkat | Disney's Cinderella...

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Is a very oddly told tale. And an incredibly beautiful piece of animation - considering no computers and all the cells were individually drawn, a feat.

But it is told mainly through the points of view of mice, birds, and the Prince's father. Cinderella and her Prince are sort of on the periphery. In fact 60% of the film is the mice trying to avoid the evil Stepmother's nasty fat cat Lucifer. The animals don't really talk though, well except for the mice.

The romance is dreamlike...told through lullaby like songs. But the main focus is on the comedic characters of the Prince's father, the King who wants grandchildren and his aide de camp, and the
Cinderella's pet mice who will do anything to help her.

It's so odd.

A clip:

An aside on Aladdin...Jonathan Freeman's voice is bit similar to Jeremy Irons in the Lion King...and Irons apparently has made a career of playing slinky voiced villains.

Crossposts: http://shadowkat67.livejournal.com/895656.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

shadowkat67.livejournal.com

Well duh. ;-)

Keep in mind this was done in the 1940s.

The message? Not interesting to me and wasn't focused on as a kid anyhow - never was a princess fan, thought the whole dream a bit silly.

And every time any one sees this movie online they go on about what you always see in Cinderella.

BUT...what I was commenting on above - was the majority of the film is well like a Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoon. LOL!

Such as the mice avoiding the cat - which is 66-70% of the movie. The whole fairy godmother/princess bit is really just 30% of the movie - which is quite odd. It lasts a mere few seconds.

In future representations...the focus is on Cinderella who wants to be a princess and the romance with the prince.

In this one - it's on the mice and animals and their desire to get back at their nasty head mistress - the evil Stepmother, and the Prince's battle with his father - who wants him to wed.

Also the animation at that time is quite beautiful and interesting, also a tad...dreamlike.

Edited Date: 2013-01-20 01:54 pm (UTC)

From:

flameraven.livejournal.com

I suspect the focus on the mice and cutesy animals here is because Disney was still graduating up as a company from short cartoons to full-length features in the 40's. Actually, I was quite surprised when I was looking at the history of the Disney 'canon' and found that there are quite a few films that aren't really "films" at all, but two or three short films smashed together into one presentation. Apparently this was a common thing to show in the 40's and 50's, but I suspect it's why those films get forgotten now, because they just don't fit the modern idea of a movie.

I can't say I'm much a fan of the early Disney films; mostly due to the limitations of the tech, a lot of them come off as incredibly dark and dreary. Just look at the backgrounds from Cinderella or Alice in Wonderland as compared to even the Jungle Book or Robin Hood. Very dark colors, very sombre tone, and the pacing is much slower overall. The company did a lot of impressive, pioneering things for animation, but a lot of the films seem odd in hindsight. I actually recently watched Robin Hood again, a film I adored as a kid, but as an adult I realize there is a LOT of recycled animation, looping animation, and other shortcuts (makes sense, as apparently Disney was not doing so well financially in the 70's) and the pacing of the movie itself is really strange and kind of jarring.

I'm sure much of this is my own bias, though-- I hit the Disney age of childhood right as the Little Mermaid and Lion King were coming out, and the Disney Renaissance began. I did see many of the earlier films too, but the ones that were foremost in my attention were the films of the 90's, and it's hard to get past my childhood nostalgia to look at them objectively.

From:

shadowkat67.livejournal.com

Again, you really have to judge it in the context of the time period.
In the 1940s and 1950s...they were graduating from black and white to technocolor. Disney was amongst the first to actually use color in their films and tv series. I remember as a kid, about 5 or 6 at the time, and this was in the 1970s, being told that we were getting our first "color" tv to watch the Wonderful World of Disney, which at that time used "techno-color".

The soft pastel colors, the soft blurred lines of early cell animation, which was done entirely by hand. 100s, 1000s of carefully drawn cells.
As opposed to today - where people quickly do it by computers. It's rather thrilling.

I think you are right however...that the focus on the animals is the graduation from shorts, such as Mickey Mouse and Donald, to feature length films with humans. It's rather telling that many of the early animated films had talking animals in them...often as the story-tellers.

My favorite film as a child was Robin Hood. (I never quite understood my mother's love of Cinderella. Snow White was completely lost on me.
But Robin Hood, The Aristocrats, Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, and Sleeping Beauty - were sort of cool. But at that time my favorite cartoon was Kimba - the template for the Lion King.)

I've since re-watched these films, and find them sorely lacking in comparison to BRAVE (in theme, story, and animation), although I will state Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Pinnochio, and Snow White still have the astonishing beauty of that early blurred line soft cell animation.

From:

angearia.livejournal.com

I was simply noting, prompted by your post, how the message results from the structure which protagonizes the magical creatures used for farce, as opposed to the romance between the prince and Cinderella. The outrageous farce of arranging Cinderella's meeting the prince drives it home.