Cinderella: “The Sweetest Story Ever Told” Makenzi Crouch in 1950, Walt
Cinderella: “The sweetest story ever told” Makenzi Crouch In 1950, Walt Disney Productions released their first full-length animated film after the end of the war—a gamble, and one that, had it failed, might have meant the end of Disney (“Cinderella,” Disney Archives: “Cinderella” Movie History). Fortunately for the company, Cinderella was a success. Unlike Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which was based on the Brothers Grimm variant, “Schneewittchen,” the Cinderella film was based on the variant produced by Charles Perrault in 1697: “Cinderella: or, The Little Glass Slipper” (Tatar 77). Like the slipper in Perrault’s title, these two Cinderella stories have much in common, despite the two hundred and fifty-three years that separate them; it is evident that it was Perrault’s tale that Disney had in front of them when they created their Cinderella. Because of this, it is this variant, with its fairy godmother, pumpkins, and midnight curfew, with which we are most familiar, rather than those variants with magical trees, fish, or golden slippers. And with these familiar elements come more: characters, whose presence is so constant and similar that we do not so much as think about them. Despite these similarities in plot structures and characters, Disney’s variant differs from the very beginning. Perrault presents us with a gentleman who marries for a second time, without explanation as to why, and whose only other appearance in the tale is when we are told that Cinderella cannot tell him that her stepmother is mistreating her, as he “would have only scolded her since he was totally under the control of his wife” (Zipes 450).
[Show full text]