An overview of the film
The film that I annotated is Cinderella that was released in 1950, directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske. Since it is an animated film, Ilene Woods casts for the voice of Cinderella; Verna Felton casts for Fairy Godmother, and Eleanor Audley casts for the villain Lady Tremaine. When the movie was first released on March 4, 1950, the domestic box office was $10,000,000. After the first rollout, there were re-releases of this movie 9 times, ranging from 1957 to 2020. After 2005, this movie was released in international markets rather than domestically.
The review I read was written by Roger Ebert in 1987. Ebert was a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times who also won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. In his review, Ebert focused on talking about how the animals in this movie made everything lively (the mice, cat Lucifer, birds), and he compared Cinderella to other predecessors such as Pinocchio and Snow White, commented that although there were obvious differences between them, these characters were still fairly bland. According to Ebert, “it's in the general smoothing-out of the character's appearances. Snow White herself looked fairly bland, but the other characters in the first decade of Disney animation had a lot of personality in their faces. They were allowed to look odd...Cinderella looks like the Draw Me girl, Prince Charming has all of the charms of a department store dummy, and even the wicked stepsisters seem petulant rather than evil. Only the old king, his aide, and a few of the mice look bright enough to split a ticket.” Elbert said the personalities and appearance of the two princesses are plain and boring, only the supported characters made these princesses movies more lively.
Annotation of the film
Back in that time, then gender rules for women were to be a beautiful and enduring housewife. In this movie, Cinderella was a poor girl who lost her mother and had to endure the torture by her stepmothers and stepsisters. Although the villains made Cinderella do all the dirty and heavy housework, they did not give her a nice bedroom, even tore her dress, and locked her in the room. However, Cinderella was kind as always. She never complained a single word about the unfair treatment. Rather, her endurance and kindness brought her a fairy godmother and gave her happiness for the rest of her life. Cinderella’s singing set the key of this movie, “No matter how your heart is grieving If you keep on believing The dream that you wish Will come true” (05:06). This beautiful fairy tale is telling girls to swallow the sadness and unfairness down into their stomachs. And if we keep being kind, do whatever we are told to do, you just keep that belief in your heart, your sweet dream will come true one day.
The picture above is when Cinderella got her dress tore and she wasn't able to go dancing, when Cinderella was crying and doubting her beliefs, the fairy godmother appeared and made her dream came true. It's not a bad thing telling girls to be kind and believe in a sweet future. However, girls should also be taught that they could stand up and say no when they were treated unequally. Because there might not be a fairy godmother in our lives to help us or save us, girls can be kind but also know that they can fight when they are bullied.
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