Cinderella

Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi and Wilfred Jackson’s 1950 Disney feature follows Cinderella as a servant in her stepmother’s house. Its centre of gravity sits oddly. At a story meeting on 15 January 1948 the cat and mouse sequences had grown so large that Walt Disney handed that line to a separate story artist, Bill Peet. In a 74 minute film much of the running time goes to material like Jaq and Gus hauling a key up a staircase, while Cinderella’s own scenes thin out. The passivity was argued over rather than overlooked. Maurice Rapf wrote a version in which the Fairy Godmother helps until midnight and leaves the rest to Cinderella, who revolts against her stepfamily. Rapf said nobody took the idea seriously. There is also a visible split in texture. To hold costs down the humans were filmed in live action first and the animators were tied to that footage, Frank Thomas complaining that they could not put a camera where a live one could not go. The animals were drawn with no such reference. Lucifer came from Ward Kimball’s calico cat. A good fit if you accept the cat and the mice carrying most of the storytelling. Not for anyone waiting on the heroine to engineer her own rescue, because that draft existed and was turned down.