Monday, February 20, 2017

Cinderella(1950): A classic film for now and always

          As one of the most beloved animated Disney films in 1950, Cinderella has left a deep impression for me. I watched the reboot of Cinderella a few years ago and it is hard to believe the 1950s had such amazing visual designs. The stylings of Cinderella produced by Mary Blair gave such a magical, dreamlike quality that makes me engage into the movie.
                             
          Although it did not have the most realistic ideology,
"No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true",
         the story itself is instrumental for children’s development and being optimistic is helpful in dealing with situations.
         As a wonderful and almost flawless tale, Cinderella’s small characters such as Bruno the dog, Lucifer the Cat and especially Gus the mouse certainly added an element to the beloved story.
          The wonderful music and sounding in the movie helped to evoke audiences’ emotions and affection to certain characters.
          The usage of color contrast between villains(step mother, the cat) and Cinderella is decisive and can easily create character stereotypes as the bright and dark side of the story.
           I appreciated the brilliant animation, the clever plot turns and humors. The animation is very well done, and brings me right into the scene with characters. The animation also does well portraying the styles of the backgrounds, at Cinderella’s home and the grand ballroom of the kingdom. The humor from the mice is a fundamental element in the movie that was one of the spotlight in the film
The movie is not made for accurate depictions, but to bring audiences into the life of Cinderella and see her lovely characteristics and cheerful spirit even in miserable situations.               
                                
          Something about this movie just evokes the magic of Disney. And it was the reason behind further successes in Disney’s films.
Although I do not find Cinderella as my style of movie, I can see why it had been such a popular children film in the past half a century and continues to be an ever-lasting tale.
        However, Disney’s films might seemed slightly redundant, where female characters were always saved by male protagonists. Although Cinderella is an optimistic, hard-working and loving lady, she is not able to escape from her living condition and continues to be tormented by her step mother until the Magic of old lady saved her.
       The unrealistic side of magic showed the fact that women at that time period were still not strong enough to make a difference for themselves and these messages can be viewed as biased; however, it is an accurate description of women in 1940s where they required the support from men.
        As magical as it seemed, Cinderella is still a product of the decade and cannot escape some of the biases. However, Disney’s magic is constantly evolving and its movies nowadays have much more dynamic within the women characters.
         Cinderella is definitely a classic animation that fully represented Disney’s values in its production: fun, idealistic, and fantasy-like wonderment, its goals are to attract, inspire, and entertain youngsters while bring them into a fantasy land where hope and magic are essential parts of the universe. And the magic remained in many peoples’ hearts.


No comments:

Post a Comment