Cinderella (1922)
7/10
About as far removed from the great 1950 version by Disney, but still very good for the time.
28 April 2012
Warning: Spoilers
One of the Walt Disney Company's most famous full-length cartoons was "Cinderella" back in 1950. However, few fans today would know that Walt himself made another Cinderella story long before this--back in 1922. Back then, Walt had just created the Laugh-O-Gram studio. Unfortunately, his cartoons never really made much money and the studio shut down soon after--and Walt moved from Kansas City to California.

When you watch "Cinderella" (1922), you need to keep a VERY open mind. Cartoons were all black & white, silent and quite short--and so compared to the average cartoon of the day, "Cinderella" is quite well done and cute. It's also very watchable today--something that can't be said of most of these older toons.

The story is very different from the traditional Perrault story. Much time is spent on extraneous things meant to entertain as opposed to convey the story--such as showing the young Prince hunting and then writing invitations. It's also quite different because Disney apparently forgot to include an evil step-mother--or even any step-mother. Instead, she lives with her two homely sisters who won't let her go the the ball. And, interestingly, although the Prince later goes looking for Cinderella with the shoe, he never even tries it on her--as, when he sees her he instantly knows who she is (this actually makes A LOT more sense told this way).

All in all, a cute little film that fans of the studio might enjoy seeing--just to compare it to the later film and to see how far Disney progressed over the years.
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