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Author
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Comment
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(12/14/04 4:18 pm)
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A new Cinderella film!
Hi,
I'm sure you have seen my other Snow White thread.
I am making new musical versions of classic fairy tales. This one that I need help on is Cinderella.
I want it to be like a Drama with some comic moments. I want a dark atmosphere and it will include elements like the mother's spirit from the tree, stepsisters cutting up feet, etc.
Any ideas about character motivation, scenes to write in, things to change, costumes, sets, anything.
Thank you.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(12/14/04 6:22 pm)
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Re: A new Cinderella film!
What I've always felt needed to be addressed in Cinderella for me to like it was the issue of why she never rebels or runs away. Ella Enchanted deals with this fairly well, but most other versions can only come up with Cinderella being too "good" to even do basic rebellion like, oh, bad cooking, or whatever, which makes her into too much of a simpering goody-goody for me to feel any sympathy. I don't know how to address this, but there's my thought.
I'd love to see a version in which Cinderella does rebel and deliberately screw up her tasks or fight back.
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(12/14/04 7:13 pm)
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Rebelious
Do you mean like puching her sepsister or running away many times? We have her do that. She also breaks into a confrontation with her stepmother in the end. The also throws a pot of tea on a cruel visitor at her house.
She does not run away, because she has no place to go.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(12/15/04 3:24 am)
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Re: Rebelious
That's terrific! I would so go see that! I've wanted to see Cinderella act out for years!
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(12/15/04 1:42 pm)
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Wow!
Thanks!
I too have tried understanding why she didn't run away. I finally came to the conclusion that she jsut had nowhere to go. I also added the fact that her father died, which takes out the parts in the Grimm version where the father just doesn't care about his daughter.
I always found that very disturbing that the father just didn't care.
I also added that Ella had only one friend, which was her dog named Rufus. The stepmother, because Ella hit her daughter named Emma, decides to burn the dog alive. Ella plants the bones on the grave of her mother and father and it adds more magic to help her.
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LostBoyTootles
Registered User
(12/15/04 6:00 pm)
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Sounds cool!
Sounds great! Do you have an explanation as to why the stepmother makes Cinderella work and why Cinderella obeys (even if she does rebel)? Answering those would help a lot!
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(12/15/04 8:47 pm)
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Stepmother
Well, Ella comes back from a long time at school and finds the house re-arranged and her room taken. Thats when it really begins. Ella wants to go back to school, but since the stepmother and sisters use so much money on fancy things, there is no money to send her back. Therefore, Ella must be useful.
The stepmother secretly envys Ella, because of her beauty and kindness. She keeps her inside so that noone will release how awful her own daughters are.
Ella really just has no place to go.
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jess
Unregistered User
(12/16/04 10:50 pm)
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running away
It always seemed to me that Cinderellas stayed out of a sense of duty to her heritage, her father, her mother's memory. Also, if she remained, she is more likely to be able to challenge her stepmother's claims to property rights (going back to old codified roman law). In France, for example, property rarely goes to a spouse. It nearly always passes to a descendant. Cinderella being a direct line descendant would have greater right to real property than her stepmother, who at most would be given a life estate.
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(12/18/04 1:06 pm)
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Interesting!
That is a really interesting fact. I guess it really is about the stepmother wanting the rights to the estate.
This subject also enters into my Snow White film. The queen realizes that her husband is on death's door. She realizes that when Snow White comes of age, she will enherit the throne. Also, if Snow marries a prince, she will be queen of two kingdoms and the evil queen will be queen of none.
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Mollyzkoubou
Registered User
(12/20/04 7:42 pm)
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Re: Interesting!
I've kind of played with the details of Cinderella myself, though, I have never really finished one of my tellings (I'm about halfway through my rather bizarre "Ashleigh Ashface" project, and I'm not sure how I'm going to do the all-important ball part).
Some ideas I've played around with: the younger stepsister only acts wicked around the older stepsister and the stepmother, and is secretly trying to help Cinderella; the stepmother is somehow responsible for the real mother's death, and killed the father shortly after they wed; the "fairy" benefactor is Cinderella's dead mother as an angel; the stepmother is secretly an evil witch and comes out after the angel of Cinderella's mother in a climactic battle that leaves place for a rather unorthodox ending. Still, the story is clearly and obviously Cinderella even as it stands now.
Moll.
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(12/21/04 10:09 am)
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Wow!
Thats really good. I had a couple of those things in my first draft. I had the stepmother and stepsisters coming from far away and taking residence in Ella's home to take care of her dying mother(she has cancer). The stepmother then poisons the mother. Ella goes off to school for a year and comes back to find the rooms different and she now has a new stepmother and sisters. They are cruel to her at first sight and tell her to do chores. Then when Ella's father leaves to go on a buisness trip(Ya know the one where the sisters ask for dresses, pearls, etc and Ella asks for the twig), he does not return and one day Ella gets a note and a twig from a messanger. She then plants the twig, etc.
My fairy gomother character is also the dead mother who rises up wearing all white. I was think about a long white dress, that when wind hits it, it flies in the air.
In this draft, I took out the fact that the stepmother and sisters nursed Ella's mother. Ella goes of to school and find everything in dissaray.
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