Clever Cinderella There are a lot of Cinderella movies. Both the fairy tale and its heroine belong to the most popular theme in world cinema. In our time, it has come to the point that almost every year a new adaptation of this common plot appears on the screens. The ways of the producers are inscrutable, but still their desire to oversaturate the Cinderella market is not clear to me. Everyone thinks that his adaptation is the most original and the most unforgettable, but, as a rule, it is forgotten immediately after the film premiere and it only replenishes the statistical list of the number of adaptations of a popular fairy tale, not remaining in the minds or hearts of the audience.
The same fate befell this tape, staged in the best traditions of Hollywood - ' expensive and rich'. Directing was entrusted to Charles Walters, a year earlier pulled the quite bullying story of an orphan girl Lily to the scale of a Hollywood sensation, turning her into a real movie hit. For the scenery and costumes were responsible here Oscar-winning Cedric Gibbons and Helen Rose. The choreography was choreographed by the fashionable French choreographer Roland Petit, who breathed new life into the good old classical ballet with his talent. Adding to this the popularity of Perrault’s fairy tale with an unsophisticated viewer, and we should expect from this film if not “success for centuries”, then at least the title of “cute trifle”, which is sometimes worth revising. But it turned out the opposite – the film completely failed at the box office and was forgotten immediately as the first devastating article in the press came out. It’s been so deeply forgotten that even I, who is fond of Hollywood’s Golden Age, only recently learned about it. Summarizing.
The film is not perfect, and for good reason. Trying to bring the fairy tale closer to reality, the authors decided to experiment with the plot and characters, thereby depriving the story of Charles Perrault of the main thing - the fleur of romance and the expectation of a miracle. This is what even adults expect from this story, in fact, until the end of their lives, believing in fabulous magic that can dramatically change your life. Cinderella in this film is a damsel not that with character, but even with respect – daring, bullying, and in places and rude with ultra-fashionable for that time haircut “a la garson”. According to the well-known plot, the heroine got her nickname from the fact that she worked a lot around the house and often her face was covered with ash from fireplaces. But here completely smeared with dirt Cinderella from this film can be suspected of anything - sloppyness, excessive uncleanliness or simply disregard for hygiene, but not in the abundance of work performed by her. For the whole film, we will only see once how the heroine digs up a few potatoes, preferring all the rest of the time pointlessly running, dreaming, but bullying neighbors.
Then more. The stepmother does not despise our heroine at all, but quite reasonably treats her as an inadequate girl, a shunner of water, who really does not look like a competitor to her, although cold, but still feminine daughters. The fairy godmother has turned into a “city madwoman” here, giving Cinderella a rental of her rags from a past rich life. The carriage does not turn from a pumpkin here, and the coachman does not transform from a rat into a mustachioed escort to the ball, as conceived in the fairy tale. However, the authors in the final realized that they “overdid” with this issue and yet hinted to us that everything was exactly so – and the carriage-pumpkin, and the coachman-rat, but the destroyed impression of magical transformations can not be corrected. The authors of the film did not provide for the father of the heroine, and without mentioning him at all, thereby deprived the heroine of her own backstory, making her a kind of raging character without “kind and tribe.” And finally, the prince! The authors did not stint on imagination, making him a “Lovelace with experience”, who came to marry from Paris, where he was clearly tired of numerous Yvettes, Georgettes, Musettes and even an Egyptian princess. Coming from Paris to fall in love with the chubby, incomprehensible creature that ruded him in the first meeting? As Stanislavsky said, “I don’t believe it!” Like the whole movie.
Of course, the authors have the right to transform the battered plot in their own way, but they would have to leave the main thing - its romantic component. Having so radically taken up the “rethinking” of the story of Cinderella, the authors completely destroyed the fairy-tale basis of the work and turned one of the fundamental literary works for children about “always rewarded kindness” into a banal story for adults about an empty fantasist who “for free” stretched out her happy ' lottery ticket'.
But the biggest “puncture” in this film is still not a rethinking of the plot about Cinderella, but an acting casting. The older Cinderellas and princes I never saw on the screen being born. Yes, and in the domestic “Cinderella” (1947) the couple in love played people far over 30 years, but the film this can not be said, since the beautiful actors were able to qualitatively portray their young heroes and incredibly reverently convey the feelings of their first love. Here, looking at the “elderly” actors, it is difficult to get rid of the idea that before you is not a story of first love, but some “autumn of feelings of pre-retirement age”. And although Leslie Caron, who played Cinderella, was only 24 years old at the time of filming, she looks much older than her age, even when her face washed off the unnecessary dirt of the first half of the film. The prince, played by Michael Wilding, fully corresponds to his biological age at that time - 43 years. Although, referring to the “Paris background” of the Prince, perhaps the authors, and sought the age texture of the hero. But then this is no longer a story about the magical love of a young maid, but about a banal mesalliance. With a children's fairy tale, this goes quite poorly, and it's clearly not Cinderella's story. I can still understand why the inexperienced actress, but the beautiful ballerina Karon, was cast in the lead role, because she had to perform two mini-ballets in Petit’s production in the film. But why they took on the role of the prince actor in the years, and even forced him to portray some awkward ballet dances – I do not understand. After all, there were younger, more plastic, and just more charming actors in Hollywood.
Summing up, I want to say that this film adaptation of Cinderella is completely forgotten, because you will not be reading a fairy tale to your children for the night about the pure thoughts of young Cinderella and the prince, then put them a film where the same love is trying to reproduce us “grandmother and grandfather”, only remotely reminiscent of the heroes from the recently read? For children (and adults too) there are more interesting adaptations of this story, where all the proportions of the plot and romance are fully observed. For example, the already mentioned domestic film or the Czech "Three nuts for Cinderella". And let this film stay in its lonely forget. He deserved it.
3 out of 10