Bryan Forbes (1976)

The trailer I saw for The Slipper and the Rose a fortnight ago made me fear the worst.  ‘Let’s get away from dismal disaster and senseless violence …’ was the call although the strained, would-be fresh and romantic voiceover had an oddly voluptuous tone.  This self-deluding, we’re-giving-the-public-what-it-really-wants sales talk ignores the immense box-office success of films like The Towering Inferno, the story of a disaster which the censor doesn’t consider sufficiently dismal – or senselessly violent enough – to prevent children from seeing it.  I dismissed The Slipper and the Rose in advance as another doomed attempt at wholesome family entertainment.  The makers of pictures like this and Lost Horizon (also a Royal Film choice, three years ago) seem to think you have to convince a sentimental public that your film-making motives are pure in order for them to buy a ticket.  As it happens, The Slipper and the Rose is entertaining enough and parts of it are good but it’s a dull idea and that dullness permeates the competently crafted result.  This is the elaborated and protracted (nearly two-and-a-half-hour) story of Cinderella, as told by Bryan Forbes and the Sherman brothers (who wrote the songs and co-wrote the screenplay with Forbes).   From the start, the film is struggling to reconcile its two main ingredients: fairy story and big-screen romance.  The cinema isn’t really the place for a fairytale and, if you know Cinderella primarily as a pantomime story, the Sound of Music­-esque alpine vista against which the opening credits appear immediately seems wrong.  You can’t help expecting a cheerful, tawdry backcloth rather than a breathtaking outdoor view.  The Slipper and the Rose is neither self-consciously delicate nor imaginative and fantastic (two possible types of fairytale interpretation).  Only the plot retains a conte de fée quality – the rest of the film is a romantic comedy with a few magic tricks thrown in.

[1976]