Plot
Cinderella is the much-loved only child of a widowed aristocrat. After deciding that his beloved daughter needs a mother's care, Cinderella's father marries Lady Tremaine, a proud woman with two daughters from her first marriage, Drizella and Anastasia. Plain and socially awkward, these stepsisters are bitterly envious of the beautiful and charming Cinderella. After the death of Cinderella's father, Lady Tremaine and her daughters take over the estate, and begin to abuse and mistreat Cinderella out of jealousy, and even allow their cat, Lucifer, to torment her. Despite being forced into servitude in her own home, Cinderella becomes a kind woman and befriends the animals living in the barn and many of the mice and birds who live in and around the chateau.
At the royal palace, the King is distressed that his son does not intend to marry. Determined to see grandchildren, the King and the Duke organize a ball for Prince Charming in an effort to enable his son to marry, with every eligible maiden in the kingdom requested to attend. When the invitation to the ball arrives, Cinderella asks her stepmother if she can attend, since she too is an eligible maiden. Lady Tremaine agrees, provided Cinderella finishes her chores and finds something suitable to wear. Her animal friends, led by Jaq and Gus, fix a gown that belonged to Cinderella's mother, using beads and a sash cast away by Drizella and Anastasia. When Cinderella wears her dress just before departing, Lady Tremaine compliments Cinderella's gown, subtly pointing out the beads and sash. Angered by the apparent theft of the discarded items, the stepsisters destroy the gown, forcing Cinderella to remain behind while her stepfamily leaves for the royal ball.
At the point of giving up her dreams, Cinderella's Fairy Godmother appears and bestows upon Cinderella a silver blue dress with glass slippers, and transforms a pumpkin and various animals into a carriage with horses, a coachman and a footman. Cinderella departs for the ball after the godmother warns her that the spell will break at the stroke of midnight, meaning that her dress and everything else will change back to the way they were. At the ball, the Prince rejects every girl (especially the stepsisters), until he sees Cinderella. The two fall in love and dance alone throughout the castle grounds until the clock starts to chime midnight. Cinderella flees to her coach and away from the castle, inadvertently dropping one of her glass slippers. After the Duke tells the King of the disaster, they plan to find Cinderella with the slipper they recovered during her exit.
The next morning, the King proclaims that the Grand Duke will visit every house in the kingdom to find the girl who fits the glass slipper, so that she can be married to the Prince. When this news reaches Cinderella's household, her stepmother and stepsisters prepare for the Grand Duke's arrival. Cinderella, overhearing the news, begins dreamily humming the song from the palace ball the previous night. Upon realizing that Cinderella is the girl who danced with the Prince, Lady Tremaine locks Cinderella up to her attic bedroom.
When the Grand Duke arrives, the mice steal the key to Cinderella's room, but before they can deliver it they are ambushed by Lucifer. The animals alert Bruno, Cinderella's bloodhound, who scares Lucifer out of the house. As the Duke prepares to leave after the stepsisters unsuccessfully try on the slipper, Cinderella appears and requests to try it on. Knowing that the slipper will fit, Lady Tremaine trips the footman, causing him to drop the slipper, which shatters into hundreds of pieces. The Duke laments over the broken slipper, but Cinderella then produces the other glass slipper, much to her stepmother's horror. Delighted at this indisputable proof of the maiden's identity, the Duke slides the slipper onto her foot, which fits perfectly. Soon after, Cinderella and the Prince celebrate their wedding, surrounded by confetti tossed by the King, the Grand Duke and the mice.
Read more about this topic: Cinderella (1950 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)