This slow, talky, and inept version of Cinderella seems to be written and directed by people who never SAW a movie, let alone made one.
Caron is charming but wasted, along with Elsa Lanchester, some other good players, and the lavish sets and costumes. Ballet scenes are interesting, but you'll be hacking at your wrists with broken glass before you get to them.
Forty excruciating minutes pass before you find out the movie has music and dancing. The tedious exposition is narrated by Pigeon, who sounds here like a pitchman selling vacuum cleaners on 1950s TV. There is so little live sound, you wonder at times if this is a silent film with bad narration added.
Writer Helen Deutsch seems unaware that audiences may have encountered the Cinderella story before, so she draws out each scene to maximum length, with phony sub-Freudian psychologizing and clumsy attempts at "humor".
Ella's poor social skills, we are frequently reminded, are the result of an inferiority complex caused by societal rejection. What did a lovely fairy tale ever do to Deutsch that she should treat it this way?
This is one of the most amateurish major films ever made in Hollywood. Some posters here seem to be fond of it, having seen it first as a child. That's the only way I can explain anyone enjoying it.
Caron is charming but wasted, along with Elsa Lanchester, some other good players, and the lavish sets and costumes. Ballet scenes are interesting, but you'll be hacking at your wrists with broken glass before you get to them.
Forty excruciating minutes pass before you find out the movie has music and dancing. The tedious exposition is narrated by Pigeon, who sounds here like a pitchman selling vacuum cleaners on 1950s TV. There is so little live sound, you wonder at times if this is a silent film with bad narration added.
Writer Helen Deutsch seems unaware that audiences may have encountered the Cinderella story before, so she draws out each scene to maximum length, with phony sub-Freudian psychologizing and clumsy attempts at "humor".
Ella's poor social skills, we are frequently reminded, are the result of an inferiority complex caused by societal rejection. What did a lovely fairy tale ever do to Deutsch that she should treat it this way?
This is one of the most amateurish major films ever made in Hollywood. Some posters here seem to be fond of it, having seen it first as a child. That's the only way I can explain anyone enjoying it.