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Cinderella (1950)

tomatometer

97

Average Rating: 7.7/10
Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 1

The rich colors, sweet songs, adorable mice and endearing (if suffering) heroine make Cinderella a nostalgically lovely charmer.

100

Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 0

The rich colors, sweet songs, adorable mice and endearing (if suffering) heroine make Cinderella a nostalgically lovely charmer.

audience

76

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 792,577

My Rating

Movie Info

Cinderella was Walt Disney's return to feature-length "story" cartoons after eight years of turning out episodic pastiches like Make Mine Music and Three Caballeros. A few understandable liberties are taken with the original Charles Perrault fairy tale (the wicked stepsisters, for example, do not have their eyes pecked out by crows!) Otherwise, the story remains the same: Cinderella, treated as a slavey by her selfish stepfamily, dreams of going to the Prince's ball. She gets her wish courtesy

Oct 4, 2005

RKO Radio Pictures

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All Critics (30) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (37) | Rotten (2) | DVD (33)

Cinderella is beguiling proof that Walt Disney still knows his way around fairyland.

November 3, 2009 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine
TIME Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The musical numbers woven into the fantasy are generally solid, with at least two or three likely hit tunes standing out in the half-dozen songs.

October 27, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety
Variety
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This 1950 effort shows Disney at the tail end of his best period, when his backgrounds were still luminous with depth and detail and his incidental characters still had range and bite.

September 3, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader
Chicago Reader
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Considering the army of craftsmen who work on a Disney cartoon film, it is hard to give individual credits, for the memorable qualities.

May 6, 2008 Full Review Source: New York Times
New York Times
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As usual, everything is slightly glossy, soppy and hearty, yet not a string is left untwanged.

November 2, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out
Time Out
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When those little mice bust a gut trying to drag that key up hundreds of stairs in order to free Cinderella, I don't care how many Kubrick pictures you've seen, it's still exciting.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

As with nearly all of the first wave of Disney animated features, the fantasy of Cinderella thinly disguises and provides momentary escape from a social ill.

October 14, 2012 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

One of the best animated features in the Disney stable, this was also the box office smash that saved Walt's studio during the precarious post-war period.

October 13, 2012 Full Review Source: Creative Loafing
Creative Loafing

One of Disney's most admired feature animations, Cinderella was nominated for several Oscars.

August 25, 2012 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com
EmanuelLevy.Com

It's not all action, and while there's plenty to keep the kids entertained, there are also nice poetic touches of animated artistry that will appeal more to adults.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Eye for Film
Eye for Film

Sweet fairy tale classic for little princesses.

December 22, 2010 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media

Great animation, but not quite as great as the pre-war standard; deeply problematic gender issues in a reed-thin story; some brilliant characters, a lot of fairly dull ones.

November 9, 2009 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy
Antagony & Ecstasy

Yes, it's beautiful, and yes, it's classic. But it's also got rather a bland pair of lead characters. That said, it's still enjoyable family entertainment, and shall remain forever so.

November 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine
Empire Magazine

Excellent animation, marvelous color, and lovely music make Cinderella a delight all the way around.

September 3, 2008 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide
TV Guide's Movie Guide

the validity of Disney's color transfer is ambiguous, although it appears less manipulated than it has on other cartoon features

July 20, 2006 Full Review Source: Movie City News
Movie City News

...there's no denying the overall effectiveness of this familiar tale.

February 4, 2006 Full Review Source: Reel Film Reviews
Reel Film Reviews

Audience Reviews for Cinderella

The story of "Cinderella" is one of the more beloved tales of the Disney universe, becoming such a pop culture sensation for it's time! It helms one of the most basic storyline's of it's kind, but it has one of the best executions onto the screen. As Cinderella is living a life of slavery to her family, her dream is to meet the King and attend the annual ball. Aside from the unnecessarily dragged out first half with the mice side plot, this film is enchanted beyond belief. this story has sparked what have become many children's films today, and filmmakers around the world will strive to create something as original as this is. It's not quite filled with enough story in the first half, but "Cinderella" is a great film!
September 25, 2010
KJ Proulx

Super Reviewer

When I reviewed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs several months ago, I took the time to address the legacy of the Disney Company on our culture, and to analyse whether the baggage thus created has undermined our ability to enjoy their films. In the case of Snow White, it's relatively straightforward: the film is a masterpiece. But when we apply the same criteria to Cinderella, things get a little more complicated.

If Snow White is the film which established Disney's aptitude for European folk and fairy tales, Cinderella is the film which consolidated their easily marketable character archetypes, which would rear their somewhat ugly head during the Renaissance. You could almost call it Snow White's commercially-minded sister, since it occupies very similar territory in terms of source material but has far less innocent intentions. It's still enjoyable as a frothy pantomime, and contains much by way of visual beauty, but its problems are a little bit harder to ignore.

On the plus side, there can be little doubt that Cinderella looks beautiful. While in other Disney efforts it's the dark reds and deep blacks that stand out, this film offsets a relatively earthy opening with shimmering blues and whites at the ball. It uses Technicolor to its full advantage, using the brightness and high contrast of the colours to create a sense of magic which paler animation might not succeed in replicating. Even if you're a miserable cynic like me, you'd still find something to admire in the ballroom scenes or the transformations.

However, the openly bright and cheery animation is also an indication of the liberties Disney takes with the source material. It's well-documented that the famous glass slipper is a mistranslation on the part of Charles Perrault: considering that fairy tales were mostly passed down by word-of-mouth, it's understandable that you could confuse vair (meaning 'squirrel fur') with verre (meaning 'glass'). By the time Disney came along the Perrault version was the most widely-known on both sides of the Atlantic, and so it was the obvious version on which to base an adaptation. But while we can't blame Disney for that particular bout of artistic license, they are guilty of a more unfortunate departure.

The Disney version of Cinderella is a pretty accurate take on Perrault's story, including the pumpkin, the mice and the fairy godmother. But Perrault's version ends with the ugly stepsisters (here called Drizella and Anastasia) begging for forgiveness at how they treated Cinderella; Cinderella in turn forgives them and all three end up getting married. Perrault's closing words prize graciousness over beauty, intelligence or breeding, saying that "even these may fail to bring you success." The Disney version undermines this by having the stepsisters humiliated, and Cinderella rides off without them even getting a look-in during the final scene. In short, they take something quite uplifting and make it unnecessarily cruel.

This departure changes both the story and the central character quite drastically. It ceases to be any kind of Christian morality tale, about loving one's enemies and working tirelessly for the good of others, and becomes a story about getting what you deserve without doing the hard work first. In one of her typically sardonic reviews, the Nostalgia Chick called it: "the revenge fantasy where you show up to your high school reunion in a white limo and 40 pounds lighter wearing furs, all under the guise of innocence and martyrdom." Even if you don't take such a forthright view, it's certainly true that the expectations the film presents are more than a little askew.

These uncomfortable feelings become magnified by the context in which the film was made. Cinderella was Disney's first genuine feature-length effort since Bambi, after it had finally sorted out the jumble of half-finished efforts that had accumulated during WWII. In the aftermath of the war, there was a greater emphasis on the family unit in society, and with it came the promotion of female domesticity: women who were empowered during the war were now being told to stay at home and help rebuild the population. Cinderella appears to promote this, with the protagonist desiring to be whisked off by a prince, and not much else.

Cinderella is the archetype on which the modern Disney Princess phenomenon is based. It is the epitome of someone living their life based on aspirations which are simultaneously unobtainable (the prince) and beneath you (the resulting acceptance of domesticity). While these characteristics may have been exaggerated and refined still further with the Renaissance (not to mention the explosion in Disney merchandise), it's hard to let Cinderella totally off the hook. Even dismissing it as a fairy tale doesn't work, since all fairy tales contain morals to teach children the ways of the world: when done right, they are works of substance which are only fanciful or ridiculous on a superficial level.

At this point you're probably thinking: if you hate this film so much, why give it so high a rating? Why does a film with such a seemingly anti-feminist legacy merit a higher rating than the completely unobjectionable The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad? The answer is that when you put aside the unwelcome changes to the story and the repurcussions this has on creating real-life expectations, you are left with a frothy, fun little pantomime which is every bit as enjoyable as Peter Pan. Whatever my negative feelings towards the legacy of this film, as a piece of narrative cinema in and of itself it is perfectly entertaining.

Much like Peter Pan, the entertainment comes through when we embrace Disney's visual and musical conventions, in particular their talent for music-related slapstick. Some of the best scenes in the film involve the mice trying to evade the clutches of the fat, proud Lucifer, with Disney's talent for comic choreography coming through. There's nothing quite on the level of Hook's battles with the crocodile, or the tea party in Alice in Wonderland, but there's still more than enough to keep young children entertained. As for the music, it's not as memorable as other Disney efforts, including Snow White, but there's plenty of variety within the score by Paul J. Smith and Oliver Wallace - enough at least to take your minds off how annoying 'Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo' is.

When we stop trying to analyse the make-up of the central character, what we discover is that the Disney film focusses to a relatively large extent on the supporting cast. While you'd have a good case for attacking its take on Cinderella herself, the film is every bit as much about the stepmother, the mice or the king. It's much like Disney's take on Sleeping Beauty nine years later, in which the main protagonists don't do all that much, and the real drama lies in the conflict between Maleficent and the fairies.

The interactions between the King and the Duke are genuinely funny, with the physical comedy being well-timed and the sets playing up the pantomime quality, such as the King's enormous bed. The happy-go-lucky attitude of the cute mice is fun to watch, particularly in the dress-making sequence. And while Lady Tremaine is perhaps too understated and reserved to be a proper pantomime villain, she fulfils the criteria in terms of her cruelty towards the lead character and her seemingly awareness that she is being evil. Eleanor Audley would later voice Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, and it's easy to view this performance as her audition for that role.

Cinderella is a harder film to like than many of its predecessors, sticking in the throat with its worldview where Bambi did with its overriding schmaltz. There will be many out there who will balk at Disney's treatment of the Perrault fairy tale, or simply object to it on the grounds of its legacy. But for those who stay or attempt to overlook this, it passes the time very nicely as an enjoyably frothy pantomime romp with visual beauty to spare. It's not classic Disney by any means, but it's still vaguely satisfying - in spite of everything.
September 23, 2012
Daniel Mumby
Daniel Mumby

Super Reviewer

    1. Cinderella: Why, it's like a dream. A wonderful dream come true.
    – Submitted by Jackson S (5 months ago)
    1. Cinderella: I got go before the clock stricks 12:00.
    – Submitted by Katherine R (8 months ago)
    1. Prince Charming: Cinderella, come back here.
    – Submitted by Alyssa B (20 months ago)

Discussion Forum

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Latest News on Cinderella

April 30, 2013:
Lily James Is Disney's New Cinderella
The "Downton Abbey" star has herself a pair of new glass slippers.

March 12, 2013:
Emma Watson Turns Down Cinderella
Watson turns down Kenneth Branagh's invitation to the live-action ball.

March 1, 2013:
Emma Watson in Talks for Disney's Live-Action Cinderella
It's still early, but Kenneth Branagh may have found his leading lady.

Foreign Titles

  • Cinderella (DE)
  • Cinderella (UK)
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