DVDizzy Forum

I discovered these a long time ago. Betty Boop's 1934 color cartoon of Cinderella and a Russian Cinderella from 1979. They are so beautifully animated I wanted to share them with animation fans here.

Betty Boop in Poor Cinderella

Russian Cinderella with subtitles (click on CC to turn on the subtitles)
Russian Cinderella with brighter color (to see the animation better)

Watch them yourselves and form your own opinion on them first.

What's most amazing to me about Betty Boop's Cinderella is the backgrounds, they have great angles and scope, really good staging. And they're so detailed and shaded in a way that almost makes some of them look photo-realistic! And some of them are just creative or fun! The animation is very flowy and the transformations done really well. Betty Boop has a good ball costume. You can even tell that Betty Boop's body is rotoscoped (or live-action referenced?) while she dances with the prince, and to me it looks kind of weird but it's still a great effort to make the scene look great.

But did you catch how in the coach Betty Boop pulls up her slipping top? Lol dirty filmakers.

But what is the best one to me is the Russian Cinderella. Everything, the backgrounds, the designs, the animation, the music, is just beautiful. The backgrounds sprout or sprawl epically. Very creative and fun too. I really like how gentle and helpful this Cinderella is, bestowing good on everyone, even the cat in a painting, even despite her stepsister's treatment of her. She was a really kind and likeable Cinderella, even helping her sisters put on her own glass slipper (though in a way it's annoying she is willing to sacrifice her happiness for them, she must not have had faith in herself with the prince). And she's just so sweet and cute! The story is so gently and beautifully told in this version, from Cinderella's home and father slowly transforming under the stepmother's rule, to Cinderella's dark fire-lit slavery place, to what looks like her mother's portrait being shown as her fairy godmother appears, the gently magical way the godmother transforms everything, the mystical, otherworldly moment Cinderella and the prince have, the tender way the prince holds his true love's only remnant, the glass slipper. This must be my favorite version of Cinderella after Disney's.

I saw Poor Cinderella about six months ago, and I remember really liking it expect for the Prince there was something... creepy about him and the way he moved, walked and how he was animated.

Apart from that it was a really nice flick and one of the less dirty Boop cartoons.

I guess I'm surprised at how musical Poor Cinderella is. And her clearly-Rotoscoped prince dancing with her...it looked a little off to me...just personal preference, I guess.

I wasn't surprised at it being musical, but I agree the rotoscoping (or possibly just live-action reference?) did look off to me, too.

Just watched Poor Cinderella. It was entertaining. I lost it when the lizards and the pumpkin started singing. Talk about scary. Where'd Cinderella dig up two monitor lizards anyway?

But I thought the transformations were really well done, and I liked the scene with the dancing silhouettes going by. My beef with it was, even though I know it's OLD, the constantly moving animation is hard to watch. Why do all the characters continually move? It's like they're all connected to clocks or something and programmed to twitch every 1 second. Was there a reason the animators had to do this?

The talking lizards and horse were scary lol. I liked the transformations and the silhouettes too!

I never thought about how they were constantly moving. But yea, now that I notice what you mean, it is annoying! Why are they always bobbing or something?!

No one's watching the best video I posted, the Russian one. That one is freaking gorgeous!