CINDERELLA: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Walt Disney, 1950) Disney Club Exclusive

For at least four generations, Walt Disney’s Cinderella (1950) has successfully eclipsed its source material by Charles Perrault as the definitive adaptation of that classic fable. In hindsight, it is easy to see why. Cinderella marked a return to the fairytale format largely abandoned by Disney in the mid-forties, only partly in order to produce shorts for the war effort. In those ‘lean’ years, Walt saw his company teeter on the brink of fiscal ruin, buffeted by a company-wide strike to set his ‘family-orientated’ philosophy on its ear. Clearly, there were some very belligerent children in that brood! In the aftermath of the strike, Disney kept his dream alive – barely, streamlining his ideals into more cheaply made, though as creatively inspired ‘anthology’ animation like Make Mine Music (1946) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).  So, at war’s end, Cinderella was decidedly considered something of a renaissance for the company – a return to the hallowed threshold first crossed by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938). There is no getting around the obvious: that Cinderella tread on some very familiar ground. So, the approach to Cinderella would have to be different, while still adhering to the time-honored precepts of Perrault’s ancient lore – and Disney’s trademarks – brought anew to the screen with a fresh pair of eyes.

Despite the time in which it is set, Cinderella has a decided fifties’ appeal in its uber-sheen and ultra-glamor, creating a majesty and grandeur perfectly in tune with America’s post-war flourish of prosperity. The picture’s songs, co-written by hit-pop-tunesmiths, Mack David, Jerry Livingston, and Al Hoffman, perfectly complimented by Oliver Wallace and Paul Smith’s underscoring, are of that rarified Tin Pan Alley ilk. Although music always had a special place in Disney features, in Cinderella it attains a certain, slick marketability, surely to sell tie-in albums and singles. Moreover, the songs have since ripened into grand nostalgia with each passing year. Arguably better animation is seen elsewhere in the Disney canon. Yet, perhaps nowhere else in that canon has the visual style and its’ subject matter shared in such a perfect marriage of elegance and refinement. If the picture has a singular ‘iconic’ moment, it remains our heroine’s exquisite transformation at the behest and wand of her Fairy Godmother, whipped into a stardust frenzy from scullery maid in tattered rags into a handsomely tricked out consort fit for a future king. In hindsight, Cinderella has what Walt affectionately referred to as ‘heart’ – its ‘underdog’ narrative, poignantly embodied in the slender, dream-like figure sketched by Disney artisans and superbly voiced by Ilene Wood who, in fact, carries the whole show. Of course, a good Disney flick needs an amply mean villain and in Lady Tremaine (brilliantly voiced by Eleanor Audley – Walt’s ‘go to’ for vicious vipers), we get one of the most sinister and malicious of that nefarious breed.

Cinderella’s adherence to Walt’s basic wish-fulfillment standard has never been quite so intoxicating. Yet, in the spring of 1948, when Disney’s artisans were beginning preliminary work on the project, spirits and morale at the studio were anything but riding high. The 1940’s had begun in the spirit of ambitious picture-making: Pinocchio and Fantasia, both in 1940, and, Bambi in 1942). Sandwiched between these was Dumbo (1941) – the singular profit-driven bright spot in what was fast becoming a very dry spell for Walt. While the other, aforementioned movies are justly regarded as classics today, virtually none performed well at the box office. In fact, cumulatively, they all but wiped out Snow White’s monumental swell of success. If not to bankrupt the studio, much worse for Walt was the U.S. government’s temporary annexation of his facilities to make training films for the military – and Walt’s own episodic contributions to Roosevelt’s Latin American ‘good neighbor’ policy: Saludos Amigos (1942) and, The Three Caballeros (1943). By 1948, the Disney Studios were $4,000,000.00 in debt. Hence, the very preservation of the company rested squarely on Cinderella.

In more recent ‘woke’ times, Walt’s simple, cozy approach to Perrault’s refined parable has been unfairly marginalized for our heroine’s apparent lack of ambition and wherewithal to look beyond the arms of a handsome man for her future happiness. It’s a fairy tale, folks. It’s romance and love and gushing spectacle and singing mice for God’s sake – all of it, seemingly an anathema to our present vintage of cultural commentators, firmly to disavow any treatise that would deign to suggest a dream really is a wish your heart makes! Not everyone’s nitty-gritty is skewed to proto-feminist, re-coded ball-bashing of the masculine directive, with an even more fervently cynical mantra about true love being bunk, to severely compromise a woman’s destiny – either in the boardroom or bedroom. And Cinderella herself is, after all, a forthright, if briefly demoralized female protagonist whose ambitions skew to palace life and, through the auspices and guidance of another proactive female influence (her Fairy Godmother) achieves her dreams of escaping middle class mediocrity under the yoke of her wicked stepmother – albeit, in the arms of a male romantic ideal. Even rabid sixties’ femo-champion, Gloria Steinem eventually married! So, no more re-imagining of Walt’s winsome waif as a mere muddle-headed ‘less than’, simply because she chooses a good man over a good career. It’s still her choice. Besides, as a fairytale princess, I think Cindi’s scrubbed her last latrine.    

And lest we forget, Walt was working from well-ensconced fifties’ hyperbole about the ‘little women’s place’ in society, appealing to the hopes, aspirations and daydreams of a certain generation contented in their own femininity. So, Cinderella not only extols those social values, but gingerly reinforces the virtues of womanhood.  And Cinderella is, after all, a tale as old as time, its source – Perrault’s novella – derived from an even more ancient epoch when women were considered little more than chattel to be acquired at a certain age of consent. In re-crafting Perrault’s story for the movies, the Disney artists have remained relatively faithful to its central narrative, while managing to infuse a decidedly Disney-esque subplot into the proceedings. And Walt, ever-clever as a grand storyteller, has a more forthright and proactive heroine than one might first suspect; Tiffany-set in a straddling of Perrault’s, as well as his own, cultural mind-set. Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Wood) is a child when her father dies. Her stepmother, Lady Tremaine (Eleanor Audley) is a manipulative woman who pampers her offspring from an earlier marriage: Drizzella (Rhoda Williams) and Anastasia (Lucille Bliss) at Cinderella’s expense. However, when a royal invitation decrees every eligible maiden shall attend a ball in honor of the Prince (Mike Douglas – singing/William Phipps - dialogue) Cinderella makes ready her plans to attend, sewing a gown from bits of her stepsister’s discarded dresses.

Cinderella is ably abetted in her chores by Jacques, Gus (both voiced by James MacDonald) and other mice she saved from the trap and the claws of the Tremaine’s maniacal house cat, Lucifer (June Foray). On the eve of the ball, Cinderella appears before her stepmother and siblings in her refurbished gown, only to have it torn to pieces in a fit of jealous rage. Distraught and humiliated, Cinderella is attended in the garden by her kindly Fairy Godmother (Verna Felton) who bequeaths one magnificent night of good wishes that transform Cinderella into the very embodiment of a fairytale princess.  Cinderella attends the ball and dances with the prince who becomes instantly smitten. But her moment of triumph is cut short when the clock strikes midnight. Hurrying away, much to the prince’s confusion, Cinderella inadvertently leaves behind one of her glass slippers. The prince ambitiously decrees he will not rest until he finds the girl who fits it and orders the Grand Duke (Luis Van Rooten) to go house to house with the slipper. Realizing Cinderella is the prince’s ideal, Lady Tremaine locks her in the attic just as the Duke’s carriage arrives. But Gus and Jacques save the day, stealing the key and averting Lucifer to rescue Cinderella from her tower prison. In a last-ditch effort to deprive Cinderella of happiness, Lady Tremaine trips the Duke’s footman who drops the glass slipper on the tile floor where it shatters. The Duke is stricken with grief until Cinderella reveals to all she is in possession of the other glass slipper. Cinderella and the Prince are married, presumably to live their lives happily ever after.

From start to finish, Cinderella is Walt’s champagne cocktail, yielding some of the highest quality animation in the Disney canon and certain to mark a return to form for the company since the lean war years. Viewed today, it remains a treasure trove of effervescent delights. Chief among them is Cinderella’s transformation scene, imbued with the grandmotherly warmth of Verna Felton’s vocalization and the exquisite azure blue and alabaster sparkle of bibbity-bobbity-booing magic for which Walt’s most iconic outings have since been noted, praised and admired, Cinderella continues to warm the heart, impregnable to post-modernity’s litany of idiotic criticism.  Few movies - animated or otherwise - are as perfectly pitched to appeal to our sentiment without being overly sentimental. What makes Perrault’s original story so right for the Disney touch is it provides a very bare bones ‘good vs. evil’ scenario from which Walt has allowed his artisans’ imaginations to soar and excel.

To ensure the film’s marketability, Walt auditioned Tin Pan Alley songwriters, Al Hoffman, Mack David and Jerry Livingston – men who were keenly attuned to writing ‘pop’ hits of their day. Asked to produce one song on spec for consideration, the trio collaborated on ‘A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes’ – a lyrical ballad that prompted Walt to immediately put them under contract. Walt also assigned resident studio composers, Oliver Wallace, Paul Smith and Joe Dubin for the orchestral portions. In the end, the gamble paid off handsomely. Cinderella was Oscar-nominated in Best Original Song and Score categories. More importantly, it set cash registers ringing around the world, replenishing the studio’s badly depleted coffers, and allowing Walt to move into his most ambitious period yet, diversifying into live-action, more animated projects, television programming, and his most monumental gamble yet – the Anaheim, California family oasis, Disneyland. Despite changing times and attitudes, Cinderella has lost none of its magic. In fact, it is as fresh and appealing as the day it was made. The songs sincerely capture the timelessness of its fairytale setting – as appealing to adults – perhaps of a certain vintage as well as to provide memorable highlights for each new generation who continue to experience Walt’s masterpieces at home. The empathetic warmth in Ilene Wood’s vocalization, ever so slightly peppered with a hint of larceny, offers youngsters the promise of better days ahead while teaching them the virtue in stubborn perseverance. Verna Felton’s lovably obtuse Fairy Godmother can bibbity-bobbity-boo with the best of them, a bundle of joyful ineptitude. Add to these elements a visually resplendent stylization, and Cinderella endures as an ageless flower, likely to appeal to little girls especially, but also to have found its home in the hearts and minds of all who came to know her via Walt’s reimagining. So, this is love? Indeed!

Given Disney Inc.’s 100^th anniversary, is it really any wonder Cinderella – one of Walt’s irrefutable ‘crown jewels’ should be trundled out yet again, this time in UHD 4K? What is impressive – and, frankly, unexpected, is how diligent the home video apparatus of the company has been this time in preserving the original intent of these hand-drawn cels. For decades, and via virtually every video format to come forth since VHS, the Walt Disney Company has been rather aggressive in its digital scrubbing of classic animation to make it appear as though these movies were rendered digitally to suit contemporary standards. This gave pause and was cause for much consternation among film aficionados, poo-pooing the general lack of fine grain and fine details – ‘cleaned-up’ for home video. But the Disney Club’s ‘exclusive’ 100^th anniversary 4K UHD release of Cinderella is nothing short of a loving preservation of original source elements, with their inherent texturing and grain left wholly intact. Re: the idiotic ‘exclusivity’. It won’t last. Cinderella in 4K will be released later this year to all who wish to possess her via the traditional home video distribution arm of the company. This is an excellent and faithful, surely to delight fans in search of the definitive home video incarnation. It is the texturing that really comes to the forefront here, revealing pencil work and a glorious amount of minute detail. With traditional hand-drawn animation, its the subtler variations that count (sometimes referred to as ‘flicker’), and herein the image does indeed throbs with that organic film-like representation (previously homogenized into oblivion on Blu-ray). HDR color grading yields considerably more depth to the palette with subtler contrast. This just looks more like a movie made in 1950. Disney Inc. has also included a new standard Blu and DVD in this set, cribbing from this same 4K remaster. Just a heads up: when Cinderella streets later this year outside of its ‘exclusive’ Disney Club release, it will NOT contain the DVD. So, if anyone is re-re-re-purchasing this catalog release just for the DVD (and I cannot imagine who would be), you have to get the Disney Club version. Just saying.

We are still missing Cinderella’s original theatrical mono. Disney has also – curiously, ditched the 7.1 upgrade available on the last 2 previous Blu’s. Instead, we get a standard 5.1 DTS. How good is it? Very, with more spatial separation given to the music and crisp sounding dialogue and SFX. Extras are only on the Blu-ray and are copied from the 2019 Signature Edition, not the 2012 Diamond Edition, which had a few more goodies in store – never again to appear on any other home video edition. What’s here, however, is still fairly comprehensive: In Walt’s Words, an intro from Diana Disney Miller, the making of…, concept art, and other featurettes and storyboards,  plus the ’tribute’ to Walt’s original 9 old men, a featurette on artist, Mary Blair, the Laugh-o-Gram of Cinderella, excerpts from the Mickey Mouse Club, radio spots, and original and reissue trailers. Absent – 3 deleted scenes, audio only recordings of 7 unused songs, the animated short, Tangled Ever After, and the still frame gallery containing a copious backlog of pre-production photographs. Bottom line: even with these omissions, Cinderella in 4K is a ‘must have’ as it represents The Walt Disney Co.’s first truly concerted effort to represent the picture quality in a manner befitting the original theatrical release. Highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+++

EXTRAS

3.5