Disney's Cinderella...

[shadowkat]

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.

Comments

[rahirah]

It's kind of interesting to compare Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty - in that one, there's even less focus on the romantic leads, and the real protagonists are the three fairies.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's admittedly been a while since I've seen Sleeping Beauty...but you are right. Although the Prince had a lot more to do in that one and actually saves her - where here it's two mice. Also magic was more prominent in Sleeping Beauty, while it's more peripheral in Cinderella - outside of the brief bit with the fairy Godmother...there really isn't any. No creature outside of the fairy godmother is magical.

And there's a great deal of focus on the comical animals.

It's also interesting to note that the live action/animated film "Enchanted" appears to be a bit of ...a tongue in check metanarrative on Sleeping Beauty/Snow White and Cinderella by Disney. They sort of make fun/mock what they did in the prior films, complete with a squeaky chipmunk, and an evil Stepmother/Queen/Fairy.

The animated style of Sleeping Beauty is so drastically different than the prior to films - it reminds me of stained glass actually in how they painted it. Sharp angles and vivid color - I think I remember seeing a documentary on it once - where they actually stated that they were going for a feeling of stained glass while making it - which is interesting.