After the Second World War Disney began producing animated features once again, after having put many projects on hold during the war. The period immediately proceeding the war had been a rough one for the studio with many of it's films including Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Bambi (1942) bombing at the box office (largely as a result of their exorbitant costs). The first few films they released in this period were package films (an idea Walt had lit on during the war) which were cheaper to produce. The (relative) success of these movies helped to finance a new string of feature length animated films and the studio began to develop Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Cinderella, simultaneously. As Walt felt that Cinderella showed the most promise, it was given priority.
Just as Snow White often focuses on the Dwarfs and the good fairies from Sleeping Beauty are, for all intents and purposes, the film's protagonists, this film is
focused, more often then not, on Cinderella's animal friends, the mice ,and their struggles to help her while also avoiding Lady Tremaine's cat,
Lucifer. But this film does distinguish itself in that, compared to say, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the characters in Cinderella are drawn less broadly. The titular heroine, for instance, is more assertive and has more agency then either Snow White or, later, Aurora do. The wicked stepmother is also a more subtle villain then Maleficent, who is practically the embodiment of evil, or the thoroughly wicked Queen from Snow White. On the other hand, Prince Charming may be the most passive of all Disney princes, falling in love with Cinderella because of his father's machinations and then doing nothing, it would seem, to find her after she leaves the dance so abruptly.
With so much screen time devoted to Cinderella's animal friends there is plenty of room for the slapstick comedy the studio is so skilled at. Watching the mice's efforts to get a bite of bird feed, help Cinderella with her dress, or rescue her from the attic, all while avoiding Lucifer is all funny stuff. The real comedic highlight, however, comes from human characters: the antics between the King and the Grand Duke are side-splittingly funny and begin a tradition of manic, hyper masculine characters that can later be seen in the likes of Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Sir Ector in The Sword in the Stone.
The animation is somewhat streamlined and far less ambitious then the studio's earlier, golden age works. Certainly, the backgrounds are not as detailed or ornate as the painterly ones seen in Snow White and sometimes, as in the scene where Cinderella meets her fairy godmother, they have a indistinct, impressionistic look. In an effort to keep production costs down, the studio had began to use live action reference footage to check the plot, timing, and movement of the characters before animating it. The animators, prevented from doing anything that wasn't possible in live-action, found this incredibly limiting. Frank Thomas, one of Walt's "Nine Old Men" said that, "Anytime you'd think of another way of staging the scene, they'd say: 'We can't get the camera up there'! Well, you could get the animation camera up there!"
The film does have some excellent music. Disney turned to Tin Pan Alley songwriters Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston to write the songs, the first professional composers to be hired from outside of the studio. They're all winners. "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes", with a tune taken from an Etude by Franz Liszt is a lovely little piece, beautifully rendered by Ilene Woods. It's lyrics, which reference dreams both in the sense of an aspiration and the more conventional sense of nightly fantasies, is very typical of other classic Disney tunes like "When You Wish upon a Star". "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" evokes of the trio's hit song "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba" which got them hired when Walt Disney heard it on the radio. It's a lively song, as would be expected from its Tin Pan Alley roots, and perfect for the scene where the Fairy Godmother transforms Cinderella's mundane surroundings into a royal coach, complete with a footman, coachman and four horses. "So This Is Love" is certainly the weakest of the bunch, relying a little to much on generic humming in the place of lyrics but it still contains some clever wordplay and expresses the airy emotions that Cinderella and the Prince are swept up in. The orchestral score was provided by Oliver Wallace and for the first time it was done after the animation was ready for inking. This was yet another change that made the production move closer to that of a live-action film. Up to this point, Disney features had carefully synchronized the animation with the score.
It's certainly a well cast film. Ilene Woods helps make Cinderella the most well realized Disney princess until Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Eleanor Audley is perfectly cast as the cold, calculating Lady Tremaine. Verna Felton establishes the great tradition of the quirky Disney fairy/wizard and adds a real spunk to the Fairy Godmother. Luis van Rooten, doubling as the King and the Grand Duke, inserts a much needed jocularity to the proceedings as the former which is contrasted with a bit of pompous tomfoolery as the latter. Jimmy MacDonald brings a lot of heart to the mice, Jaq and Gus, while Lucille Bliss and Rhoda Williams are pitch perfect (no pun intended) as Cinderella's clueless, self-absorbed step-sisters. Finally, William Phipps does a good a job as can be expected in his thankless role as prince Charming.
In many ways, Cinderella represents a departure from the bold artistic vision that had characterized the first batch of Disney animated films. Despite this it remains a solid film thanks to a better-then-average story, some wonderful music, and a healthy does of slapstick comedy. It is not among the better films in the Disney animated canon but it's still well worth a watch.
Score: 8/10
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