Disney's Cinderella...
Jan. 19th, 2013 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIs 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.
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.
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Re: Eh - this post wasn't about the message in Cinderella
Date: 2013-01-20 09:43 pm (UTC)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.