Delightful Mirth

Algarve, Portugal

Now we reach the first full-length sound film on my list of Cinderella adaptations. This 1947 film from Soviet Russia isn't a version a that many people in the US have grown up with. But that certainly doesn't mean it isn't a charming, adorable version!

Set in a pastel-colored fantasy land literally named Fairytale Kingdom, with lavish 16th century-style costumes, this Cinderella is brimming with old-fashioned charm. Even though its look and its special effects have an artificial quality that by modern standards can definitely be called "cheesy," this somehow adds to the fairy tale atmosphere. The overall tone of the film is comic, never taking itself too seriously, yet without detracting from the warm sincerity of Cinderella herself and of her romance with the Prince. While not a full-fledged musical, it does feature four songs as well: one sung by the Prince, the other three by Cinderella. And while the film is faithful to the classic fairy tale as a whole, it still finds its own creative touches to add.

Once again, we find an adaptation where Cinderella's loving father is still alive, but henpecked by his wife, in this case because she's a noblewoman with powerful "connections" and could have her husband banished or imprisoned if she chose. (The Stepmother's "connections" are satirically mentioned throughout: even the Fairy Godmother remarks "I'd like to turn her into an ugly frog, but the old hag has lots of connections.") This version also gives an extended comic role to the Prince's father, the King: a flighty, melodramatic man who proclaims at every slight inconvenience that he'll give up the throne and become a monk, but kind and amiable nonetheless and charmed by Cinderella. Another endearing character is a new one: the Fairy Godmother's apprentice, a little Page Boy who aspires to be a wizard. He's the one who creates the glass slippers for Cinderella, which presumably explains why they don't vanish at midnight like the Fairy Godmother's creations. At the ball, one of the guests is a wizard who, at the king's request, transports everyone to the wonderful Land of Magic for a few brief minutes; Cinderella and the Prince find themselves in a romantic garden, where the Prince declares his love to her. And after the ball, the King sends his soldiers out into the kingdom wearing seven-league boots, so they can travel all the faster to find the girl who fits the slipper.

We also get an interesting new twist on the finale. The Stepmother takes advantage of Cinderella's skill at all types of handiwork by ordering her to make the glass slipper fit the elder stepsister Anna, threatening to harm Cinderella's father if she refuses. Cinderella succeeds in squeezing Anna's foot into the slipper and Anna is taken triumphantly to the palace. The King knows instantly that she's an imposter, but can't go against his own orders that whoever could wear the slipper would marry the Prince; but when she tries to dance in the ballroom, the slipper flies from her foot. Meanwhile, Cinderella and the Prince have both fled into the forest in despair of ever meeting again, and there they find each other (shades of the opera Cendrillon), but Cinderella runs and hides when the Prince recognizes her, either ashamed of her rags or afraid of what the Stepmother will do if she wins the Prince. It takes Cinderella's father discovering that she has the other glass slipper, and a little magical interference, to finally reunite the two lovers.

Yanina Zhejmo, although 38 years old and not exactly a "classic" beauty, is a nicely innocent, gentle and endearing Cinderella: one with a high, sweet singing voice reminiscent of Disney's Snow White, and who remains an artless country girl even in her ballroom finery, sewing up the King's torn collar and leading the ball guests in a lively peasant-style dance and a silly song about a beetle. Aleksey Konsovsky is also endearing as her tender, passionate Prince. (Both he and Zhejmo would later lend their voices to a Russian fairy tale film that's better known to Western audiences, the 1957 animated version of The Snow Queen: Zhejmo voiced the little heroine Gerda, Konsovsky the Reindeer.) Meanwhile, Erast Garin steals the show as the silly yet likable King. The rest of the supporting cast is uniformly good, and Antonio Spadavekkia's musical score evokes the perfect atmosphere of fantasy, humor and romance.

If you don't mind foreign films with English subtitles, and you don't mind older fantasy films with a slightly cheesy, old-fashioned look and feel, this is an excellent, underrated Cinderella that I wholeheartedly recommend to fairy tale lovers.

Gravensteen, Ghent, Belgium,