The Cinderella Problem

This title is misleading, because it implies that there is a problem with the classic Cinderella story. But that would require there to be one definitive Cinderella, which there is not. There are countless variants on the story across many many centuries, independently evolved in many cultures, brought together by convergent evolution, split apart by divergent evolution, and so on and so forth.

For this, and other reasons, I would like to take a moment to call out those who snarkily berate Disney and other adaptors for "sanitizing" the "original Brothers Grimm version" to make it more "kid-friendly," usually citing the part in the Disney movie where Cinderella's stepsisters conspicuously do not chop off bits of their feet to fit in the glass slipper. To that I say:

1. The idea that Disney or any other adapter is somehow at fault for changing elements of a story in their adaptation is blatantly untrue. Every adaptation of every story ever by definition makes changes to the work it is adapting from. The question is whether the changes made are in service of the story the adapter wants to tell.
2. Even if it were wrong for adaptations to stray from their source material, this specific criticism in the case of Cinderella would still be invalid, because the Grimm version of Cinderella was first published in 1812, whereas Charles Perrault had written his own version over a century earlier, in 1697. It is Perrault who codified (though not necessarily invented) most of the elements of Cinderella we consider iconic today, including the Fairy Godmother, the glass slipper, and even the pumpkin carriage. Since most modern adaptations of the story take after Perrault, any comparison with the Grimm version (at least insofar as criticizing it for the sheer crime of being different is concerned) is entirely moot.

For the purposes of this blog post, I will be using the term "Cinderella story" to refer to not so much an individual story as a selection of certain key events that form a common framework for the vast majority of stories called Cinderella. The key events are thus:

1. The protagonist (Cinderella) is abused by her (step-)family.
2. An individual of high status and/or wealth (the Prince) is hosting some sort of event (the ball), usually with the purpose of finding someone to marry.
3. Cinderella's family decide to go the ball, and prevent Cinderella herself from going.
4. Cinderella receives aid from some third agent (the Fairy Godmother) allowing her to go to the ball.
5. At the ball, Cinderella and the Prince hit it off, but she leaves before they exchange contact information. Cinderella leaves some clue as to her identity behind.
6. The Prince uses said clue to identify Cinderella, and they get married.

Note that these six story beats leave a lot of room for modification. Is the agent who helps Cinderella supernatural or not? Does Cinderella leave the clue on purpose or by accident? What the clue actually is famously varies from version to version, but some versions have a more compelling clue than others.

This is a less intensive morphology than provided by the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index, which classifies two main distinct types of what it calls the "Persecuted Heroine" story, called ATU 510A (Cinderella) and ATU 510B (Catskin), each of which comprises references to other indexed motifs, plot devices, and other similar tales in a beautiful web from which millions of individual fairy tales could be extracted.

The existence of the ATU Index almost discouraged me from writing this post, because, after all, if every possible variant of Cinderella story is contained so efficiently within this database, what is gained from my kicking around a few isolated examples? Then I remembered that the ATU Index is really dense and scary, and this my personal blog and I can write what I like.

"The Cinderella Problem," for me, comprises six storytelling pitfalls that many adaptations of the Cinderella story fall into. They are as follows, in diminishing order of priority:

1. Cinderella is an uncompelling/unsympathetic protagonist.
2. Cinderella has no individual agency in her own story.
3. The Prince has no development, and, in the words of Disney, "You can't marry a man you just met."
4. The Fairy Godmother (or equivalent) is deus-ex-machina-y.
5. The midnight deadline is arbitrary.
6. The glass slipper is contrived.

Not one of these is an actual issue in folkloric Cinderella fairy tales, of which the Perrault version (having all these "problems") is emblematic. In a simple morality tale intended to be told to young children in a matter of minutes, Cinderella does not need to be a well-developed character, she simply needs to be a personification of goodness. Likewise, the Prince does not need to have any interest, nor does his relationship with Cinderella need to be developed, because in the most bare-bones versions of the story, he is purely symbolic. Not so much a character as a stand-in for any reward for goodness. Perrault's Cinderella has a simple predeterministic moral standpoint: Virtue is rewarded, and virtue is an intrinsic trait; good is something Cinderella quite simply is. Trite and unrealistic, perhaps, but remember the intended audience and context of telling this particular version of the story.

The latter three points are extremely nitpicky, and largely irrelevant in many versions of the story. For example:

Here is my problem with the arbitrary midnight deadline in Cinderella: It doesn't need to exist, except to give her a pretext to run, and can easily be replaced by an implicit deadline that already exists in the fabric of the story: Cinderella needs to get home before her stepfamily does, lest they notice she was gone. Which is a completely non-arbitrary reason for her to run off before the party's over, and one that applies in every version of the story on this list. It's not that I think an external deadline is essentially a bad thing, it's just that imposing one here is an unnecessary detail that overlooks a simpler device that serves the same function already built into the plot.

All this said, when you are telling a short story of only a few minutes, by word of mouth, possibly to children, it is far easier to establish and subsequently recall "Leave at midnight because the Fairy said so" than it is to pull out "and Cinderella saw that her stepmother was in line at the coat check and realized she needed to book it to get home in time to change and pretend she never left." The arbitrarily imposed deadline makes for simpler and smoother storytelling, and is thus an advantage for Perrault, and for short adaptations that hew closely to Perrault's model. Redundant variables may be, strictly speaking, unnecessary, but depending on the context, they can make the story easier to comprehend.

Two of the best film adaptations of Perrault's Cinderella specifically (the 1950 Disney film and the 1957 TV musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein) don't make any particular attempt to address any of these points, and thrive in their simplicity.

But there is a current trend of trying to add "depth" to fairy tales, usually in the form of adding extra plotlines or trying to make the characters more modern in their mentality. As a result, the last three Disney Princess adaptations (The Princess And The Frog, Tangled, and Frozen) bear little resemblence to the short tales they are ostensibly based on. It is no longer enough to have a simple morality tale, the characters must be three-dimensional, the moral nuanced, and the story more "realistic" -- for as much as that term can be applied to fairy tales. And when that is the goal, then, yes, these points do need to be addressed.

As such, I think it's best not to think of the six points outlined above as "problems" per se. They are more six prominent talking points that often come up in discussions about Cinderella, and which adaptations frequently try to address, for better or for worse. They are not problems inherent in the Cinderella story itself, because in the simplest versions of the story, they serve a purpose: Streamlining. But they are points which frequently become problems when trying to adapt Cinderella for certain formats and contexts.

I've put together a list of case studies, to talk about how different adaptations over the years have attempted to address these and other points.

(Note: As this is my blog, these will be heavily skewed toward operas and musicals. That is just because these are the ones I am most familiar with. I didn't selectively pick these as prime examples among all the hundreds of documented Cinderellas out there.)

I will be using the Perrault version of the story as my baseline for comparison. This is primarily because Perrault's version is the most popular and/or most heavily drawn-from by the items in this list. This analysis is far from comprehensive, and will not apply to every single version of the Cinderella story ever published.

I also want to preface this by saying that I like (almost) all of these versions, and even the versions I am lukewarm toward have their redeeming elements. I have not chosen to list a single iteration of Cinderella which I consider unilaterally "bad." Some versions make a virtue of the contrived elements of the plot. Some try to resolve them in ways that may or may not work. None of them are without fault, but none of them are without merit either. I have ordered them in a semi-chronological way, making allowances for certain related adaptations to be grouped together, and also allowing me to build up to one particular adaptation at the end.

Now let's get on with it.

Illustration by Charles Robinson

1. Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812)

Perrault's Cinderella was published in 1697, and is a predeterministic story about inherent goodness being rewarded. The Grimms get a bit more technical. They add to the setup a part where Cinderella promises her dying mother that she will always be good, and specific examples are given of Cinderella being mistreated by her stepfamily. These are the two key ways in which most adaptations address point one. Cinderella can be made automatically likeable if we see her being good, and can garner automatic sympathy if we see her being mistreated. She is given some amount of agency in that, unlike in Perrault's, she actually asks for help herself, instead of receiving it unsolicited from the Fairy Godmother.

Point three is unaddressed, but points four and five are. The Fairy Godmother equivalent is not a deus ex machina, because it is appropriately set up. In the very first paragraph, Cinderella's mother tells her: "Dear child, remain pious and good, and then our dear God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you." Cinderella is promised help on the condition that she is good, and sure enough, that help is given her. Following this, there is an episode where Cinderella's father goes on a journey and asks his daughter and stepdaughters what they'd like him to bring back. The stepdaughters both ask for fashionable finery, but Cinderella asks "the first twig that brushes against your hat on your way home." The oral tradition the Brothers Grimm got this version of the tale from was possibly influenced by Villeneuve's Beauty And The Beast tale, which dates back to 1740. (After Perrault, before Grimm.) As in most stories that include similar episodes, the three daughters asking for gifts serves early on to highlight Cinderella's humility, but for the Grimm story, it also serves to facilitate the plot: It is with the branch her father returns with that Cinderella plants the hazel tree at her mother's grave, which then proceeds to stand in for the Fairy Godmother. As discussed earlier, this whole setup serves to let the Fairy Godmother equivalent to emerge much more naturally from the story.

Interestingly, this fundamentally shifts the nature of "goodness" from the Perrault version. Per Perrault, good is something Cinderella inherently is, because she is so passive. Per Grimm, good is something she aspires to. Something she does. If Cinderella must be good to honor her dead mother, the implication is that it is also possible for her to be bad. Ergo, the burden is on Cinderella's choices, not on a trait inherent to her character. This might seem like I'm pulling at straws now, but this tiny little thread gets pulled on more in some later adaptations, and I want to point it out now to show where the seeds are planted.

The deus ex machina aspect is also lessened by the lentil episode. In this version of the story, Cinderella's stepmother provides a challenge for Cinderella, and, if she completes it, she will be allowed to go to the ball. The challenge is to pick out a pot's worth of lentils from the ashes, which she does with the aid of the birds. The stepmother, of course, goes back on her word. By setting up a condition for Cinderella to go to the ball, having her fill that condition, and then not be allowed to go to the ball, the story firmly establishes in its own logic that Cinderella deserves to go to the ball and is being treated unfairly. The introduction of a deus ex machina at this point therefore feels more earned. Cinderella has done everything correctly, and tried to get to the ball without supernatural aid. When that has failed, we can allow a Fairy Godmother character to step in. The actual logic of the plot is not made smoother, but the flow of the storytelling logic is, and storytelling logic beats logic logic.

The midnight deadline is addressed simply: There is none. Cinderella flees the ball of her own accord. No reason is given in the text, though an offhand line implies that she doesn't want the Prince to follow her and find out who she really is. That said, there is actually a strong plot-related reason in most versions for some sort of deadline, however arbitrary it must be. A deadline makes sure Cinderella has to leave the ball in a hurry, therefore facilitating her losing her shoe. (This can be addressed simply by having the identifying article simply not be a shoe, but this is surprisingly uncommon.) In the Grimm version, the shoe remains accounted for despite the lack of deadline, because the ball takes place over three days, and on the third day, the Prince lays out pitch on the stairway, and when Cinderella runs, her shoe gets stuck. The actual contrivance of her shoe size is unaltered, but the Prince does explicitly recognize her face in the text.

I think it's worth noting that we are still fully within short story oral tradition based Cinderella stories and all but one of these points is addressed at least a little. They might not be fully formed, but the seeds are there. So even though the Cinderella problem is largely moot in this particular story format, we see that it doesn't actually have to be.

Illustration by Anne Anderson

2. Massenet and Cain's Cendrillon (1899)

For most adaptations of Cinderella, point one is really a non-issue. As I said of Grimm, there are at least two really easy ways to quickly get audience sympathy for Cinderella. I am therefore almost impressed that Massenet's opera with a libretto by Henri Cain, more so than any other version I've looked at, completely fails to do so.

In this version Cinderella doesn't even appear until twenty minutes in. The first chunk of the opera is spent on establishing her family, and Cinderella herself barely gets an offhand mention. Quintessential rule of theater: Show, don't tell. Pandolfe (Cinderella's father) saying that Madame de la Haltière mistreats his daughter is less impactful than actually seeing it. All we see is Pandolfe being the henpecked husband, Mme de la Haltière doting on her own children, and them all leaving for the ball. Then Cinderella appears, and proceeds to passively resign herself to her lot in life before falling asleep. So not only have we failed to see any reason we should care about her, she has also failed to express any want that might motivate her through the rest of the story. She hasn't tried to get to the ball. She doesn't even say "I want to go to the ball." This makes point four especially weak in Cendrillon as well, because when the Fairy Godmother shows up (just after Cinderella falls asleep) it is even more unprompted than usual. Thus, by ignoring point one, point four is made that much worse.

I don't want to thoroughly bash this opera, however, as it does come ito its own in the second half. It gets shockingly dark and psychological, going so far as to indicate that Cinderella might be suicidally depressed. After the ball, Cinderella realizes that her one taste of happiness has put the rest of her miserable existence into perspective, and what she passively accepted in Act I, she no longer can. In the third act, a lot of depth is added to both her character and her relationship with Pandolfe, but none of it is set up in the first two acts. She ultimately runs off into the forest (presumably to die) so as to no longer be a burden, at which point the Fairy Godmother steps in again and saves the day, which feels less deus ex machina-y than her first appearance as, one, she's already been established as existing, and, two, the stakes are that much higher. Acts III and IV of Cendrillon are a brilliant psychological character-based spin on the Cinderella story that you don't see anywhere else on this list. Unfortunately, Acts I and II don't justify it.

The rest of the points, regarding things like deadlines and glass slippers, are basically identical to how they are the Perrault.

Laurent Pelly's production at the Metropolitan Opera. Joyce DiDonato as Cendrillon.

Photo by Ken Howard

3. Cinderella (1914)

This silent film version of Cinderella starring Mary Pickford follows the Perrault model quite closely, with one exception. At the beginning, Cinderella and her stepsisters meet a beggar. Cinderella is kind to the beggar, while the stepsisters are not. The beggar, of course, turns out to be the Fairy Godmother, and rewards Cinderella for her kindness. This is the most simple example of a joint 1-4 resolution that has shown up in earlier versions, and will show up again in this list. It shows Cinderella being good early on to get sympathy from the audience, and it provides a pretext for the Fairy Godmother character to help her later. In addition, it gives Cinderella at least one active choice to make (to help the beggar) thus beginning to address point two.

Poster for the 1914 silent film Cinderella

4. Disney's Cinderella (1950)

Arguably the most iconic and influential version of the story in modern American media, Disney's Cinderella actually does lift most of its iconography straight from Perrault. Even the pumpkin carriage, which I've always thought of as the most Disney-esque element, is original to Perrault. What is original to Disney are the assorted animal sidekicks, and the dress challenge. While these specific mice and cats are the property of Disney, the idea of Cinderella having animal sidekicks is present in the Grimm version. (I don't mean to imply that Disney was necessarily inspired by Grimm here; animal sidekicks were de rigueur for Disney Princesses of this era.) Likewise, the dress challenge has its parallel in Grimm.

In the Grimm, Cinderella is challenged to pick out a pot of lentils from the ashes in order to be allowed to go to the ball. In Disney's version, she is told that she can go to the ball if she can somehow acquire a dress to wear. This actually unifies the whole sequence better than Grimm does, because when Cinderella succeeds in picking out the lentils, the stepmother responds that even so, she doesn't have anything to wear, thus shifting the focus from a random lentil-based challenge to a dress. Disney keeps the focus from the start on the less-arbitrary dress challenge. And in Disney's version, when Cinderella does manage to produce a dress (aided by her animal sidekicks), her sisters end up tearing it up anyway. This essentially heightens the characterization of the entire family, making Cinderella still more sympathetic, and the stepsisters still more deplorable. As with Grimm, the fact that Cinderella has tried every legitimate method within her power to get to the ball, only to still be held back, makes the appearance of supernatural aid seem less uncalled for.

(The Fairy Godmother is still a deus ex machina, but the key point is that a deus ex machina feels more justified to the audience when all other options have been exhausted. And so Disney, as well as any version of the story which contains a variation on the dress or lentil episodes, has an edge over Massenet.)

Though the rest of the movie follows Perrault pretty closely, this whole episode is easily Disney's most effective contribution to the Cinderella story. (Well, the artwork and music excepted.)

Disney does make one other notable alteration to the Perrault, and it addresses point six. Though the Prince does first attempt to identify the mystery woman using her shoe, Cinderella actually manages to identify herself not through her shoe size, but through being able to produce the matching slipper, which is a much more water-tight verification. Disney is, of course, neither the first nor the last to find a more realistic way for Cinderella to verify her identity, but it's a good change, so I want to call it out when it happens.

Ilene Woods as Helene Stanley as Cinderella

5a. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1957)

This made-for-TV musical starring Julie Andrews also follows Perrault pretty closely, right down to the pumpkin carriage. In fact, if not for the fact that it was remade three times, I would feel compelled to ignore this adaptation entirely in this list, as it does nothing particularly special to address the six points I laid out before. It is only the simplest (making Cinderella sympathetic) that Rodgers and Hammerstein manage to address, this time by giving Cinderella a memorable solo, "In My Own Little Corner."

Rodgers and Hammerstein do make some other contributions to the story, however, that are independent of the overarching "Cinderella problem" trends I've noticed. In particular, they give the supporting characters a bit more focus. Aside from the Prince's parents getting a bit of comedy in "The Royal Dressing Room Scene," (the King and Queen are played quite amusingly by husband-and-wife team Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney, the former of whom would go on to co-author the book for The Sound Of Music), the Prince himself gets a little bit of internal conflict in the song "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful," in which he questions whether he is actually in love with Cinderella, or just infatuated with the idea of her. (There is no room to explore this theme further, and the Prince and Cinderella end up happily ever after with no more commentary, but still, it was a nice touch, and was built upon in later versions.)

Most particularly, the stepsisters are actually made marginally more sympathetic in this version. In addition to their comic-yet-relatable "Stepsisters' Lament," they actual share a small bonding moment with Cinderella after the ball, in the song "When You're Driving Through The Moonlight/A Lovely Night." This version downplays the abuse Cinderella suffers at the hands of her stepfamily, which, for better or worse, makes it possible to make the stepsisters more likeable without getting in the way of storytelling. This would be expanded upon later.

Rodgers and Hammerstein also toy with the introduction of the Fairy Godmother a little. In this version, she is simply Cinderella's regular godmother -- who turns out to be a fairy. She entertains Cinderella's wild notions about a pumpkin turning into a carriage, and mice turning into horses, though she reminds Cinderella that such things are "Impossible." When Cinderella persists in wishing, she reveals herself to be a Fairy Godmother, and makes all those things happen. This sort of "test of faith" is maybe a weird thing to add to a Cinderella story, but it does serve to make the Fairy Godmother seem less random, and also puts more of the onus on Cinderella herself to figure out how to get to the ball. But more than that, the song is super catchy.

This 1957 version does also briefly address the shoe problem in the form of a joke, where the shoe is indeed shown to fit at least one other person. I'll let you watch it for yourself.

Julie Andrews as Cinderella

5b. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1965)

A remake of the 1957 TV special was made in 1965, starring Lesley Ann Warren. It stays pretty close to the same format as the 1957 version, but adds a new introductory scene where the Prince, coming back from a year of travels, stops at Cinderella's cottage for a drink of water. Cinderella provides said drink, but does not recognize the prince. (He's not in disguise or anything, she just doesn't recognize him.) Her stepsisters are away during this time, and so there is no "test of moral character" as there is in the 1914 version. It simply serves to add a little bit to Cinderella and the Prince's respective kindness, and lets them interact a little bit before the ball, thus addressing points one and three. (Further strengthening point three, the offer of water is later used as part of what tips off the Prince that Cinderella is the person who she is, though it is still ultimately the slipper that is used to verify her identity.)

The Prince here sings "Loneliness Of Evening," a song originally cut from South Pacific, which deepens his character a bit. Of all the Perrault-based versions on this list, the various iterations of Rodgers and Hammerstein's give the most focus to the Prince himself. The seeds for this were planted in the 1957 version, but Hammerstein died in 1960, and he did not touch any of the subsequent remakes. I therefore think it is somewhat impressive that the later adapters of Hammerstein's own adaptation all consistently latched onto this unique element and continued to develop it.

The 1965 iteration also continues to make the stepsisters more sympathetic. In this version, the stepmother is made the main abuser of Cinderella, while the stepsisters are also on the receiving end of constant criticism, and are pitted against each other by their mother. That said, in this version, the stepsisters do not join Cinderella in singing "A Lovely Night." Instead the stepmother sends them both to bed in between the two songs.

In this version, there is no pretext for the Fairy Godmother (played by the original Ado Annie, Celeste Holm). She simply appears from a cheesy special effect, and kind of kills the point of the "Impossible" song. So, some changes for better, some for worse.

Lesley Ann Warren and Stuart Damon in Cinderella

5c. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997)

This was again remade in 1997, this time starring Brandy Norwood, and this time presented by Disney. The differences now are more substantial.

This time, the Prince as a character is even further expanded. In a new opening scene, Cinderella meets the Prince at the marketplace while the latter is incognito. Here, they begin to bond on equal footing, which more strongly addresses point three. The Prince's general overarching sadness, which is present in the previous versions, is brought more to the forefront here. Now Cinderella and the Prince share the song "The Sweetest Sounds," lifted from the musical No Strings (music and lyrics both by Richard Rodgers.)

(Sidebar: One of the most continually acclaimed aspects of the 1997 film is its racially diverse cast. Fun trivia: The musical No Strings, in 1962, was the first Broadway musical to depict an interracial leading couple (Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley) while race was not an essential element to the plot. I don't know if this was intentional on the part of the filmmakers, but it is perhaps a nice nod that this famously diverse Cinderella borrows a song from one of the landmark musicals in the history of race-conscious casting. The song itself is a fairly generic "I Want" song that could reasonably be inserted into almost any story, and, also being by Richard Rodgers, it fits stylistically into this Cinderella about as well as anything else.)

A sidekick is added for the Prince, his valet Lionel, played by Jason Alexander putting on a vaguely Italian (?) accent for some reason. "The Royal Dressing Room Scene" is cut, but its melody is worked into "The Prince Is Giving A Ball."

The stepfamily is played substantially more comically than usual which makes them more enjoyable to watch, if perhaps less compelling as characters. In addition, the stepmother is given the song "Falling In Love With Love," lifted from Rodgers and Hart's The Boys From Syracuse. I'm not sure why this song was added other than to give Bernadette Peters something to sing. In the context in which it is added, it is not really played comically enough to be entertaining, nor does the song serve to make any particularly relevant point.

As in the 1965 version, the Fairy Godmother is given no explanation for her introduction to the plot. Although the special effect with which she appears is a bit better. But an effort is made to address point two. The Fairy Godmother tells Cinderella that she's going to have to help herself. "Go to the ball, Cinderella," she says. "No one's stopping you but you." This turns out to be little more than lip service, however, as Cinderella proceeds to make the extremely valid point that she has no way to get there, and the Fairy Godmother magics everything for her as usual.

There is one other moment of note that deviates from the previous iterations of this adaptation. After "A Lovely Night," the stepmother gives Cinderella an unexpectedly harsh dressing-down. (Unexpected because the character has been largely comical in her villainy up to this point.) The Fairy Godmother now tells Cinderella that she never needed the former's help. Which kind of rings hollow when, well, she did. Because magic. Even when Cinderella runs away from home, the exact sequence of events makes this turn out to be pointless, and the plot would have turned out the same regardless. As in the 1965 version, Cinderella and the Prince have a moment of recognition prior to the slipper being used for final verification.

The Fairy Godmother caps things off by singing "There's Music In You," originally written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the non-musical movie Main Street To Broadway.

To its credit, this movie does make attempts to give Cinderella more active agency in her own plot, but the dictates of the story mean they all ring hollow. So the story is improved in some ways (mostly relating to the Prince), but not in others. Call it even?

One more note, this is the first version of Cinderella that seems to present to me the advantage of the slipper being made of glass -- its transparency makes it easy to see how well someone's foot fits inside it, which allows for a variety of foot shapes and sizes to be shown in the shoe-trying-on montage, even allowing for feet too small for the shoe to be shown.

Brandy and Whitney Houston in Cinderella

5d. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (2013)

So, the 2013 Broadway production of Cinderella had a revised book by Douglas Carter Beane, and it added... a lot:

• The water episode is more or less retained from the 1965 version.
• The song "Me, Who Am I?" (cut from Me And Juliet) was added for the Prince.
• The song "Now Is The Time" (cut from South Pacific) was added for a new character, Jean-Michel, who is basically Perchik.
• The Prince's parents are dead, and he instead has a conniving advisor named Sebastian who runs things behind his back. Sebastian also wants the Prince to marry one of the stepmother's daughters, for some reason.
• Cinderella has an established relationship with both Jean-Michel and "Crazy Marie" (who turns out to be the Fairy Godmother, a la the 1957 version.) Jean-Michel and Crazy Marie essentially put Cinderella on a mission in going to the ball, to warn the Prince of the changing times.
• After the first ball, Cinderella loses a shoe, but retrieves it. The search is conducted with no clues.
• The song "He Was Tall" (cut from The King And I) was added for Cinderella.
• One of Cinderella's stepsisters (called Gabrielle -- the names of the stepsisters are the most inconsistent part of all of this) figures out Cinderella's secret, and also reveals she has a crush on Jean-Michel.
• The song "Loneliness Of Evening" (as before, cut from South Pacific) is added for the Prince. It had previously been added in an earlier scene in the 1965 version.
• A second ball is held to find Cinderella, which Cinderella plans to attend with Gabrielle's help, but the stepmother finds out about this and prevents it. The Fairy Godmother steps in and saves the day.
• The song "There's Music In You" (as before, from Main Street To Broadway) is added for the Fairy Godmother.
• At the second ball, Cinderella introduces the Prince to Jean-Michel, and tells him about this newfangled thing called democracy. The Prince sets up an election for the post of Prime Minister between Sebastian and Jean-Michel. Jean-Michel wins handily.
• When fleeing this ball, Cinderella decides to leave a shoe behind on purpose as a clue, and it is duly used to find her.
• Everyone forgives everyone for everything, the end.

So, there's a lot to unpack here. And can we start with the fact that political upheaval is a really weird theme to add to Cinderella?

As I noted about the Perrault version of the story, the fact that the Prince has no development in most versions of the story, as well as the fact that he usually meets Cinderella a grand total of once before deciding to marry her, is largely immaterial. The Prince is purely a symbol. A reward for Cinderella's goodness. And, as much as the Prince's character has been expanded in the last few stops, this is still basically true. Cinderella herself, after all, remains the protagonist. And there is an awkward disconnect here, when the story attempts to espouse morals of social and political equality, but still Cinderella's reward for being better than everyone else is to marry someone of high social standing. Note that the Prince forms the new post of Prime Minister, but doesn't abdicate his power completely, because to do so would undermine an iconic part of the Cinderella story. Of course, Douglas Carter Beane could have had the Prince abdicate and choose to live a simple life with Cinderella while Jean-Michel takes over forming the new government full-time, but this is not ultimately what happens, and the result is a sort of half-baked attempt to make the story more "modern," without altering it too fundamentally. There will actually be one item on this list where a commentary on class structure would not be thematically inconsistent with the story as a whole, but I'll come to that later.

As in the 1965 version, the Prince is given a song early on to establish his character. 1965 chooses "Loneliness Of Evening" to establish the Prince's sadness. 2013 instead moves this song to the second act, and makes his establishing song "Me, Who Am I?" which is more about his identity crisis. This is a smart move for this particular adaptation, as "Me, Who Am I?" appropriately sets up the character arc Douglas Carter Beane sets out for him in a way that "Loneliness Of Evening" wouldn't. The fact that this character arc is somewhat ill-conceived (see last paragraph) set aside, this is a good choice in support of it. It is coupled with the change of the Prince's parents being dead, and him struggling with taking over running the country. This, incidentally, also adds an urgency to the Prince needing to find a bride. In previous Rodgers and Hammerstein versions, the decision to hold a ball to find a bride is either random (an accepted precondition for the story to take place at all) or at the whim of the Prince's doting mother. Here, Sebastian plays the part of a Haman character, wanting to set the Prince up with a wife through whom he can better control the Prince. (Presumably the reason he wants said wife to be the daughter of his good friend the Wicked Stepmother.) Sebastian frames the idea of holding a ball as a distraction for the upset populace. This whole "Prince gets a full character arc" thing is kind of a mixed bag. There are good ideas in here, but they are not fully explored, and they clash with other parts of the story.

Giving Cinderella friends is also a little bit playing with fire. It gives her a support structure, which downplays her suffering, in turn lowering how much we feel sorry for her. On the flip side, it lets us see her being amicable with people, which makes her seem like a generally likeable and friendly person. At any rate, reverting the Fairy Godmother back to her 1957 form (a character already known to Cinderella, but who keeps her magic hidden until the last possible second) does soften point four a bit.

The second ball, the choice for Cinderella to leave the shoe behind on purpose, and her using the ball as a mission to bring Jean-Michel's political ideas before the Prince do make Cinderella a more active character. Everything involving Gabrielle is more or less plot clutter introduced to help push along some of the newly introduced threads.

With the exception of the usual magic nitpicks, Douglas Carter Beane actually does a really good half-job of fleshing out the characters and giving them more to do. Unfortunately, it wants too badly to be both modern and traditional, and stops short of being either particularly well.

It did, howeer, have the best dress transformation of any Cinderella ever.

Okay, I think we're done with Rodgers and Hammerstein for now.

6. Hey Cinderella! (1969)

I just had to mention the Muppets' version.

This hour-long TV special follows the basic plot of the Perrault, but in true Muppet fashion, it is done as a vaudeville. Every scene is pretty much just jokes, and it moves along at a nice brisk pace. In between scenes we get little clips of the Fairy Godmother trying to turn a pumpkin into a carriage before the audience, only to fail in increasingly comical ways. It's a very Gonzo-esque interlude, and, in a humorous way, manages to address point four.

Interestingly, the constant-joke nature of Hey Cinderella! does actually help to resolve a lot of the nitpicks commonly addressed at Cinderella, because, well, the Muppets are so meta they can just point them out. Now, pointing out an issue is not the same as actually dealing with it, but when the story in question is designed to be a comedy from start to finish, framing the whole thing as jokes suits the special just fine.

Hey Cinderella! also allows for Cinderella and the Prince to meet before the ball. The reason they run into each other is contrived (and based in jokes, of course), but it follows logically in the presented plot, and the jokes in the scene immediately prior actually set up the development of their relationship. The Prince is disguised as a gardener in this scene, which follows in the tradition of a few Cinderellas in which the Prince initially appears as a character of low status in order to find a suitable partner. More on that later, but suffice it that point three is suitably addressed.

This adaptation also puts a clever spin on the glass slipper, which is present, but used in some unexpected ways that not only resolve point six, but points two and three as well. In fact, except for the midnight deadline (which at least gets a joke acknowledging it) Hey Cinderella! resolves every point on my "Cinderella problem" checklist to a greater or lesser degree.

But at the end of the day, Hey Cinderella! is obviously the best item on this list for one reason and one reason only: Kermit the Frog is in it, and his scenes are easily the best part.

Joyce Gordon and Kermit the Frog in Hey, Cinderella!

7. Into The Woods (1987)

Of all the items on this list, Into The Woods (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine) is the only one that is based clearly on Grimm rather than Perrault. In fact, except for the parts where Cinderella interacts with the other fairy tales occuring in the musical simultaneously, the Cinderella presented in Into The Woods is almost identical to the Grimm version, down to the birds and the trees and the pitch. Sondheim and Lapine can do this with little in the way of padding, because Into The Woods comprises several fairy tales mashed together, and so while the musical itself runs well over two hours, the Cinderella portion of it is barely fifteen cumulative minutes.

The biggest difference between this and the Grimm is that here, Cinderella is given a clear internal conflict: She recognizes that she could reveal her identity to the Prince, but she is uncertain as to whether she wants to upset the status quo. She is unhappy at home, but at least she knows what to expect. She unsure as to how the Prince will react to finding out who she really is, and can't decide if she wants to chance it. Ultimately, she leaves the shoe behind on purpose not just as a clue, but to put the burden of what to do next on the Prince. It is a clever idea, and allows for Cinderella's character growth as she overcomes her indecisiveness and begins to take action on her own behalf in the second act. (Addressing point two, not to mention her hemming and hawing makes her more relatable, strengthening point one.)

Point three is also dealt with, although not in the way you might think. Rather than trying to build up Cinderella's relationship with the Prince more from the beginning, they marry as comparative strangers just as they do in the fairy tale. And then in the second act they face the repercussions of not having gotten to know each other better beforehand.

And, as with the Grimm version, Into The Woods avoids the arbitrary midnight deadline by simply not having one. Cinderella just flees the festival whenever she begins to feel overwhelmed. That said, Into The Woods introduces an even larger and more arbitrary ticking clock to the main story of the musical that bothers me to no end. And, to be clear, it's not the mere existence of an arbitrary deadline that bothers me. A deadline imposed by a third party who needs to be able to collect doesn't bother me. If rules of magic dictate that a spell, once placed, can only be undone within a certain time frame, that doesn't bother me. But the deadline in Into The Woods is neither of those things. The Witch knows the precondition for the spell to be broken, and, more than this, the Witch has incentive to want the spell broken herself. The character who itroduces the deadline is also a character who would stand to benefit from the deadline being as far away as possible, which then raises all sorts of questions as to why she's just revealing it now, or what the exact nature of the deadline even is.

Now, I will grant that Into The Woods does benefit greatly from its ticking clock. In addition to adding tension throughout the act, it provides structure. The Baker and his Wife are given three midnights to complete their task, and Cinderella's Prince's festival occurs over three nights. So at each midnight, an interlude is given as both a status update and a sort of mini act break, splitting the first act into three smaller acts. Then at the end of the act, the third midnight provides a reasonably pretext to pull together all its constituent subplots for the resolution. (Granted, this does lead to Cinderella's Act I resolution feeling almost like an afterthought due to how it's structured and the fact that it actually occurs the following morning.)

Robert Westenberg and Kim Crosby in Into The Woods

Photo by Martha Swope

8. Disney's Cinderella (2015)

Disney's second full-length Cinderella movie should probably not be classified as a "remake" of the 1950 version, though often is, largely in order to group it with Disney's current trend of remaking animated classics. But the 2015 Cinderella really shares little of the Disney iconography associated with the 1950 movie, and what they do share stems from both being largely based on Perrault. The character designs and treatments most unique to the 1950 film (the stepmother and the Fairy Godmother) are quite different in the 2015 version, and the slapstick animals are all but entirely removed. The one thread that you might assume would codify the movie as distinctly Disney's -- the songs -- are also entirely gone. In short, I have no intention of assessing the 2015 film as a remake of the 1950 film, which is why I have not grouped them together like I did the various iterations of Rodgers and Hammerstein's.

Disney's 2015 Cinderella is largely based on Perrault, but features a hodge podge of elements from other sources, starting right with the prologue, which is largely taken from the Grimm version. We get some background on Cinderella's childhood, and the promise she makes to her dying mother to always be good. We also get the start of the hazel branch episode, where Cinderella's father goes on a journey and promises to bring Cinderella back a branch, which should, in the long the run (see Grimm) allow the Fairy Godmother equivalent to arise more naturally from the story.

But Disney doesn't let this happen. Instead, Cinderella's father's journey is a pretext for him to stay away long enough to die offscreen, thus making Cinderella more sad. Though a messenger does return with the branch, Cinderella does not plant it, and it is not addressed again. The Fairy Godmother is as much a deus ex machina as ever, and this whole twenty-minute prologue turns out to be largely redundant from a plot standpoint. (It does, if nothing else, manage to amp up the emotion; I think the general rule of thumb for the 2015 Cinderella is that it does all the most obvious things it can do to evoke the desired emotion, and then one more. It's really really schmaltzy. Which is maybe what you're looking for in a Cinderella, I don't know. The exception to this, weirdly enough, is the dress episode, which earlier I commended as being one of Disney's stronger additions for the 1950 movie. It is kept here, but made far less violent, and Cinderella's subsequent breakdown far less dramatic. I honestly don't know what they're going for. Disney, either go for the easy tears or don't. Just make a decision and stick with it.)

But all is not lost, for another attempt is made to keep the Fairy Godmother from being too deus ex machina-y. Here, she is introduced first as a beggar, which we saw earlier in the 1914 silent film, and will see again before this list is through. But here we run into more problems. In basically every version I've found where the Fairy Godmother character is first introduced incognito as a beggar, it is early in the story, when all three sisters are present. It is a test of moral character, and only Cinderella passes, which is why she gets the Fairy Godmother's help later on. Here, however, the Fairy Godmother only appears as a beggar to Cinderella, and only for about half a minute before revealing her true identity. The haste of this scene, as well as the addition of one shot earlier in the movie, make it clear that the Fairy Godmother was designated to help Cinderella anyway, and so the whole beggar schtick is also rendered redundant. Back to being a deus ex machina she goes.

(Sidebar: It is a little disheartening that twice this adaptation attempts to address some of the Cinderella Problems by importing plot devices from other adaptations, but shoehorns them both in so clumsily and without regard for what made them actually work the first time. Just because a certain solution worked for Grimm, or for Hammerstein, or whomever, doesn't make it a catch-all that will work in every version of the story. A plot device doesn't work on its own, it has to fit with the plot it's a device for.

This does, however, raise a new question: The inclusion of these plot devices without the context that made them work bothers me, because I am familiar with where they originate and how they can be used. But to someone who has not thought way too hard about this for way too long, does the hazel branch not being used to its fullest potential actually hamper the storytelling in this context? That is left as an exercise for the reader, because I really don't know.)

Because this movie was made by a post-Frozen Disney, it leans pretty heavily into the "you can't marry a man you just met" angle, and, true to form, it does give Cinderella and the Prince a brief meeting prior to the ball. (Note: A small amount of attention is drawn to the fact that an extra five minutes of conversation a couple of days earlier does not actually a stronger relationship make. Arguably, drawing attention to it makes it worse.)

As is common for these scenes, Cinderella does not recognize the Prince in the earlier scene, and the setup is there for the Prince not to recognize Cinderella at the ball. This complication is used to lengthen the run time of the Muppets' version, among others. But it's a non-issue here, because they recognize each other immediately at the ball. If you're thinking this should make the entire last third of the story redundant, you're right. From this point on, the 2015 movie invents a whole new slew of plot threads and padding that, being largely unrelated to the standard Cinderella story, I feel uncompelled to analyze here. There's another princess the King wants the Prince to marry and this is resolved (or, more accurately, undone) in about a minute. The unnamed Grand Duke has some machinations of his own, as does the stepmother, and they just... don't go anywhere.

Despite being something of a mess, I think this is a valuable addition to this list because of how it is basically a mish-mash of a bunch of different versions of Cinderella that yet fails to play to the strengths of any individual one. (It even tries to throw in the symbolic song-based recognition from Alma Deutscher's version -- which  is entirely unprecedented in this movie.) Fairy tales are, by nature, simple stories, and so they make for some interesting case studies as to how singular changes in adaptation can ripple out and affect the reading of the whole story. (That's more or less what I've been doing this whole list.) The 2015 Disney adaptation jams together all of the changes, and the result is some incredibly agitated water, albeit with great set and costume design. This is the Thomas Kinkade Cinderella, and I will elaborate no further than that.

Lily James as Cinderella

9. Isouard and Etienne's Cendrillon (1810)

Let's jump back a century or two. Excluding Perrault, this opera, by Nicolas Isouard and Charles Guillaume Etienne, is the earliest Cinderella on this list, predating the published Grimm version by two years. It is therefore presumably based on Perrault, if it is indeed based on any specific literary source. But it begins to differ pretty strongly in some key respects. In particular, it adds a couple new characters.

The first of these is Alidor, the Prince's tutor. Alidor first shows up as a beggar at Cinderella's door. The stepsisters turn him away, but Cinderella offers him charity. Alidor takes note, and when the rest of the family have gone off to the ball, he returns to take Cinderella. Alidor is the Fairy Godmother stand-in, but, by being the Prince's tutor, is allowed to be a bit more involved in the plot beyond his two big scenes, coaxing the characters toward the desired ending. Though he is less of a deus ex machina this way, he is still supernatural, and whisks Cinderella to the palace in her sleep, somehow getting her there before her family has arrived, and provides her with a magic rose that will obscure her identity.

The other major character introduced is Dandini, the Prince's valet. Dandini and the Prince spend much of the opera in swapped roles, with the latter posing as a valet in order to determine which of the ladies are actually good. He knows that they will all be putting on an act when they present themselves to the "Prince," and thus determines to get a sense for their real identities in how they behave toward the "valet." It is in this guise that he first meets Cinderella, when passing around invitations to the ball. This leads to a somewhat more fully-formed relationship between them, and the clinching point is when Cinderella states that she does not wish to marry the "Prince," because she is in love with the "valet."

The midnight deadline is also absent from this version. Instead, Cinderella flees when the Prince proposes to her at the ball. Which he seems to do when he forgets that he is still in disguise, or perhaps he is meant to appear to be proposing on Dandini's behalf as a final test for her. It's unclear. But she freaks out and runs away, leaving a slipper behind, not to mention the magic rose. The rest of the story more or less plays out as expected.

Portrait of Alexandrine Saint-Aubin from the 1810 published orchestral score of Cendrillon

10. Agatina, O La Virtù Premiata (1814)

Isouard's opera proved pretty popular, and a few years later, Stefano Pavesi and Francesco Fiorini adapted it from a French opéra féerie to an Italian dramma semiserio per musica. Agatina is more or less a scene-for-scene recreation of Cendrillon, differing mainly in style and tone, being rather closer to Italian opera buffa than French opera comique. From a story standpoint, however, they are nearly identical. Both even begin with a duet for the two stepsisters, which is interrupted by Cinderella singing a sad song, which in turn is interrupted by the stepsisters telling her to shut up.

The main difference from a story standpoint is that rather than having two magic devices, the slipper is dropped entirely (from the opera, not just Cinderella's foot) and the magic rose is the only object needed to verify Agatina's identity.

There is one other deviation of note, and that is an added scene for one of the stepsisters, right before Dandini's entrance, in which she mostly bosses Agatina around and admires herself in the mirror. I don't know why this is made into a solo for her rather than a duet for her and the other stepsister. Also the scene where the stepsisters are rude to the "valet" is replaced with a scene where the stepfather is the one who is rude. And Alidoro messes with him more. Okay, there are a few small differences throughout, seemingly mostly for comedy's sake.

Lorenza Correa, who played Clorinda in Agatina, O La Virtù Premiata

Portrait by Francisco Goya of all people

11. La Cenerentola (1817)

If you couldn't tell, this is the big one I've been building to. Gioachino Rossini and Jacopo Ferretti wrote their own Cinderella opera not long after these other two, and clearly based on at least one of them. I don't know which was their primary source, or if both were, but the increased focus on comedy as well as the subtitle (Ossia, La Bontà In Trionfo) would seem to indicate to me that they were following more in Agatina's mold than Cendrillon, not to mention the striking similarity in some of the specific text. (In Agatina, the sad song she sings in the first scene begins "C'era una volta un Re." Cenerentola sings "Una volta c'era un Re." I mean come on Ferretti, at least try!)

Just as Agatina reduced the number of magical objects in its plot by one, La Cenerentola drops magic altogether. Alidoro is no longer a Fairy Godmother stand-in at all. He is entirely an agent of the Prince, going around from house to house in his beggar disguise to try and find for the Prince a bride of true moral character. Cinderella, of course, passes the test, and so Alidoro pulls all the strings for her. And he doesn't need magic to whisk her away to the ball, because he can simply give her a dress and a carriage -- as the Prince's tutor, he has resources, and a license to use them as the Prince has specifically tasked him with helping to find a bride. In between, there is even a scene where Alidoro attempts to force Don Magnifico's hand in letting Cinderella go to the ball with no trickery whatsoever, which serves the purpose of the lentil or dress episodes in showing all reasonable courses of action being exhausted before turning to magic. And even having already cut out the magic and making Alidoro flow logically from the plot, the extra scene is still added, only increasing Alidoro's prominence in the plot and further reducing the deus ex machina-ness of his next appearance. How Cinderella ends up getting to the ball in the opera is not contrived in the least. The character who makes it happen is established early, along with his reasons for intervening. His continued presence follows logically from his stated purpose, and he does not resort to heretofore unmentioned magic to achieve his aim. Point four thoroughly resolved, not to mention points five and six, as there is no midnight deadline, and, since Cinderella has no reason to run (therefore no reason to lose a shoe) the identifying article is changed to a pair of matching bracelets, of which Cinderella gives the Prince one, with the express purpose of identifying her later. (See: Active choice made by Cinderella to advance the plot; This is in the James Lapine or Douglas Carter Beane vein we've seen before.)

(Note: Because Alidoro has no magic in this version, he cannot get Cinderella to the ball before her stepfamily arrives. Because Ferretti was actually paying attention, this means La Cenerentola actually has some more substantive structural changes to account for Cinderella arriving after everyone else.)

As with the operas it is based on La Cenerentola has Cinderella meeting the Prince earlier, when he is disguised as his own valet to invite everyone to the ball, and they have the best meet-cute in all of opera. Here, Dandini proposing to her at the ball is much more explicitly a test of character, to make sure she is actually in love with the "valet." Unlike other versions, Cinderella does not have any sustained interaction with the "Prince" at the ball, which significantly lessens confusion.

There is one new contrivance that is unique to this version, though, and that is that the Prince does not launch a large-scale search for the mysterious woman at the ball. (Though he does sing an aria about doing so.) Instead, the final scene is facilitated when his carriage happens to break down in front of Don Magnifico's house, and so he stops in and happens to spot the bracelet on Cinderella's wrist. This is actually stronger from an identifying-Cinderella standpoint, but weaker in that it relies on the carriage breaking down at the exact right moment. Some productions have tried to stage in the implication that Alidoro somehow sabotaged the carriage in order to make sure it would break at the appropriate time, but I like to think that the Prince is actually smarter than he lets on. It's made clear in an earlier scene that he knows Don Magnifico is hiding something about Cinderella, and he also knows that Alidoro has told him he will find his bride in the house of Don Magnifico. By finding an excuse to drop in on Don Magnifico unexpectedly (key word "unexpectedly" -- after all, if the visit was planned, a chorus to introduce him would be the formal process), he raises the chances of running into the mysterious servant girl from the first act who is very obviously Magnifico's third daughter who isn't dead. None of this is explicitly in the text, but it is clear that neither the Prince nor Dandini nor Alidoro believe for a moment Magnifico's deflections in the earlier scene when grilled about his third daughter, and the Prince is furious at seeing Cinderella mistreated. The only reason they keep quiet at the time is to not give away their disguises.

The disguises are a key part of La Cenerentola, and Dandini is a more prominent character here than he was in Isouard or Pavesi's versions. He has scenes where he updates the Prince on how poorly the stepsisters are behaving, and a memorable duet with Don Magnifico in which he reveals the entire ruse when the ball is over. I mentioned when discussing the Douglas Carter Beane version that there was one item on this list where themes of democracy would not clash horribly with the general overtones of monarchy present in most Cinderellas, and this is it. It does not go so far as to make any meaningful class commentary on its own, but if you wanted to adapt a Cinderella that did, this might be a more effective starting point than the Perrault.

Because the Prince spends most of the opera in disguise, all the power in this opera is consistently held by characters who either are, or are pretending to be, of lower station. (Cinderella, the Prince disguised as the valet, Alidoro disguised as the beggar.) The characters who are pretending to be noble and refined (Dandini and Magnifico) are portrayed as buffoons -- albeit Dandini is a buffoon for the forces of good. An extra comic scene is added where Magnifico has additional titles conferred on him just to make a fool out of him. (Note: The Facebook messenger notification sound used to sound exactly like the opening of this aria. As a result, I used to have it stuck in my head all the time.) The persistent class comedy is one of the elements of La Cenerentola that makes it tonally distinct from every other Cinderella on this list. But it is not a random addition either. It is a natural extension of the plot, thematically tying together the previously independent plot devices of Fairy Godmother In Disguise and Prince In Disguise, is consistently carried out through the entire opera, and gives La Cenerentola not only a distinct identity, but a strong one.

La Cenerentola is, to my mind, the strongest adapted dramatic version of Cinderella on this list. Every change made to the standard story either makes the story tighter, more consistent, or disparate elements thematically linked, all while  consistently playing to the established strengths of early 19th century Italian opera. In some ways, it might feel more like an opera buffa that happens to have the plot of Cinderella than it does a "real" Cinderella opera, but, as has been revealed by this list, there is no "real" Cinderella, and the basic plot can be used as a jumping off point to tell all kinds of stories, be they comedy, romance, fantasy, or what have you. La Cenerentola keeps all the essential Cinderella story beats while throwing away so much of Perrault's iconography, but it is in the service of a hollistically strong, and constantly entertaining opera.

Frederica Von Stade and others in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of La Cenerentola

One Last Thing

You might have noticed that there is one Cinderella-related nitpick that I have elected to ignore. And that is, "Why doesn't the Prince just recognize her face?" Which is a nitpick that (though it might actually be the most realistic part of the story) is largely based on a misunderstanding, at least when talking about versions based on Perrault.

In the Perrault version, the Prince is not actually present for the shoe test. Why should he be? It is easier for him to send his lackeys around door to door, even if this means he can't verify the mysterious princess's identity himself on the spot. This is only said vaguely (at least in the translation I'm using), but made clear in that after she tries on the slipper, Cinderella is brought to the Prince, indicating that the Prince wasn't already in the room. An offhand line implies that the Prince actually does recognize Cinderella's face, he just didn't want to go around door-to-door checking.

(Sidebar: If the Prince was smart, he'd have a plaster cast made of the slipper in order to replicate it so that he can send multiple parties out at the same time. I choose to believe that this implication is why the slipper is usually made of a hard material like glass or gold -- have you tried to make a plaster cast of fabric? I haven't, but I can't imagine it's easy or particularly useful.)

Needless to say, this is less than ideal in most stage versions of Cinderella, which opt to have the Prince be the one to oversee the shoe test personally, because it just makes more sense to have him right there for the final scene. Since stage productions of Cinderella largely predate film versions, this may be why most of the movies follow suit -- although the 1950 Disney movie notably does not. (Technically the 2015 one doesn't either, but it's worse in other ways.) This is actually one element of the story the Grimm version makes weaker, by not only having the Prince not recognize Cinderella's face, but having him not even recognize that the two stepsisters aren't who he's looking for when they chop off bits of their feet to fit in the slipper. It is only when he notices the blood in the shoe that he figures out what happened. Grimm's Prince is really bad with faces, but at least Perrault's Prince has some sort of excuse.

In general, whether or not the Prince recognizes Cinderella's face is a nitpick tied directly to how contrived the slipper test itself is. In some cases, it can be quite reasonable to suppose that the Prince might not remember Cinderella's face, or that he at least would want to double check. Maybe it was a masked ball. Maybe she was only at the ball for a few minutes. Maybe, she looks a bit different cleaned up and dressed for a ball than she does right after cleaning the fireplace. Some versions have the Fairy Godmother indicate that whatever magic is in effect will also obscure Cinderella's true identity. And depending on which adaptation you are viewing, any one or more of these might be in effect.

But if none of these explanations suit you, I have one more: I submit that the Prince does recognize Cinderella when he sees her face, but he has her try the shoe on anyway because he understands the importance of two-factor authentication. This is why in my new version, Bluetooth Cinderella, Cinderella's shoe will send a push notification to her phone whenever someone tries it on. If that's not a modern spin on an old classic, I don't know what is.

Cinderella - Advocating for good security practices since before 1697

Painting by Frederic Theodore Lix