Cinderella (1911)

Director:

George Nichols

Writer:

Charles Perrault (story)

Release Date:

22 December 1911 (USA)

Genre:

Short | Fantasy

Plot Keywords:

Fairy Tale

Cast

Florence La Badie	...	Cinderella
Harry Benham	...	The Prince
Anna Rosemond
Frank Hall Crane		(as Frank H. Crane)
Alphonse Ethier
Isabelle Daintry

Runtime:

14 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Thanhouser Film Corporation

Trivia:

Prints of this film survive in the Library of Congress, and the UCLA Film and Television Archives.

Movie Connections:

Version of "Great Performances: 'Cinderella' from the San Francisco Ballet" (1985)

The Many Cinderellas

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is a mediocre one-reeler, an adaptation of the popular fairytale. The story had already been made into a few movies before this one. The first was by film pioneer George Albert Smith in 1898 (currently, a lost film), one of several one-scene films he made during that period where he employed the then-new film technique of multiple-exposure photography (or superimpositions). ('Santa Claus' (1898) seems to be his only surviving film of these trick attractions.) The following year, Georges Méliès made a multi-scene version, which employed even more trick effects, and was unique in its length and structure of multiple scenes for the time. This 1911 Thanhouser production was soon upstaged by a three-reel 'Cinderella' by the Selig Company released within less than a month's span of this film and, later, by a 1914 four-reel feature starring the wife-husband team of Mary Pickford and Owen Moore.

This one-reeler begins with some decent continuity editing: brief crosscutting between the crier bringing news of the ball and Cinderella inside. After that, however, the stationary camera positions become more noticeable as scenes begin to linger. This was most noticeable to me in the first scene with the fairy godmother, where she brings the carriage to life within in a kitchen. Just when I was wondering how it was going to get outside, the fairy godmother makes a kitchen wall disappear. This sequence of stop-substitutions and superimposition and dissolve transitions made this, albeit slight, one-reeler worth watching for me. It's also interesting to compare this film to the Méliès and Pickford adaptations also available on video, in addition to the many more cinematic versions since.