User Reviews

"Cinderella" is a 7-minute black-and-white film from 1922 and this is Walt Disney's silent film take on the famous story by French 17th century writer Charles Perrault. Maybe this tale badly needs sound and color as this one here (without these two) is very difficult to watch. It is extremely fast to fit in as much action as possible into this short runtime, but it feels also extremely bizarre, especially in the first half. I am pretty sure that if the story would not be that well-known to anybody, this one here would be perceived even worse than it actually is because nobody would have a clue what was going on here. I cannot say I enjoyed the watch at all and I was actually glad it was over so quickly. And yes, this one may be almost 100 years old, but even back then animation was already better than we see in here. Watch the Betty Boop take on the story instead (with color and sound).

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.