#1: Fashion In Film | "CRUELLA" (2021) & the Villain Origin Story

This episode explores the history of Cruella de Vil: one of children literatures most interesting villains, from her origination in Dodie Smith's novel to the newest on-screen adaptation "Cruella" starring Emma Stone as the titular spot.

Elise discusses the character of Cruella de Vil and what Disney's newest version does right, where they might have missed the mark, and why people are interested in the villain origin story in the first place.

Further episode details can be found at ingloriousbaguettes.com.

Podcast cover art by Isis Petit

Transcript

Welcome to the first official episode of the Cinematic Breadcrumbs podcast, presented by IngloriousBaguettes. My name is Elise & I will be your host. This is a podcast all about films – and analyzing them from a historical & cultural context, where I talk about the film itself, as well as its food, fashion, fun facts & more. 

This week were going to be looking at the new Disney movie CRUELLA & the new craze of the Villain Origin Story. 

Though, most weeks I will have a guest come on for the second portion of the show – this week it’s just me, so the verbal essay portion will be a little longer than usual. But I dive into tons of fun background on this character & I think you all will really enjoy – so lets go ahead and get started!

So to look at the movie Cruella, were going to have to start from the beginning. That means were going all the way back to 1896. 

That was the year that Ernest and Ella Smith, a young bank manager and his wife, gave birth to Dorothy Gladys Smith in a house that was called Stoneycroft on Bury New Road in Landcaster England. 

In 1897 Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published as an epistolary novel, meaning the narrative was related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It had no single protagonist, but opened with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian noble named Count Dracula. And Count Dracula became the name everyone knew. What less people know is that the Count had an alias, which was Count De Ville.

Now, Dorothy lost her father when she was young. She and her mother moved in with her maternal grandparents, two aunts and three uncles in a home called the Kingston House which overlooked the Manchester Ship Canal. She went by the nickname Dodie.

Her grandfather was an avid theatregoer, and often prompted long talks with Dodie about Shakespeare. Her uncle was an amateur actor whose projects were usually classified as contemporary drama. Her mother had wanted to be an actress, having once made it as a walk-on extra in a local theater company production. Dodie became a playwright, and later in life when she wrote her autobiography she credits these family members for inspiring her to choose this career.

It was now the early “roaring” 1920’s, and despite coming off of the feminist movement known led by the suffragettes and the bold fashion choices being donned by flapper girls, there was still a long way to go for career women.

Dodie began to publish successful plays, her first being in 1931. She was working at a furniture store to make ends meet, and published the play Autumn Crocus, in 1931 using the pseudonym C.L. Anthony. Its success, and the discovery of her identity by journalists, inspired the newspaper headline, "Shopgirl Writes Play."

She started pumping out plays all to relative success throughout the 1930’s – nearly one per year. In 1934, she was photographed relaxing at home with her pet dalmatian… what for it… named Pongo.

At some point in the next decade or so, Dodie and her husband (whom she married in 1939) hosted a polite gathering at home, which included such names as Joyce Kennedy, who at the time was an actress of modest renown. When she spotted – no pun intended –  the Dalmatian puppy, she blithely commented that “he would make a nice fur coat.” A bit off-color, sure, but spoken with no ill-intent. Though, the evening continued on as usual, her seemingly innocuous remark had planted a seed in Dodie’s mind that would inspire one of children’s literatures greatest villains. 

She went on to write 10 more plays in her lifetime and 11 novels, many of which were quickly getting picked up for the silver screen, further popularizing her stories. But none saw quite such extreme fanfare as the novel she published in 1956: “One Hundred and One Dalmatians.”

Pongo would go on to become – not just the first of at least NINE dalmatians owned by the couple – but also the name for the protagonist of her most famous and beloved novel. But every memorable story has to have a memorable villain. Enter a woman so deranged, so cold-hearted that she wants to make coats from the fur of puppies! Enter Cruella De Vil. A Cruel Devil of a woman.

Beyond being a clever pun for the words “cruel” and “devil,” Cruella De Vil’s name has a few different origins. “De Vil” is also a literary allusion to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the book that came out the year after Dodie was born, whose Count Dracula used the alias Count De Ville. 

Though that’s a very compelling connection, it is also believed that the inspiration for the sur name began in 1939 when Dodie Smith purchased a new Rolls-Royce 25/30 "Sedanca de Ville" motorcar in which she and her pet Dalmatian "Pongo" frequently travelled.

This was also likely the basis for the cartoon imagery of Cruella's own motorcar in the film version years later.

In automotive coachbuilding, the term "de Ville" originally referenced a vehicle with a separate compartment for the driver or chauffeur, but by the mid-twentieth century (when the book was released) the term was mostly associated with ostentatious luxury. Befitting of the original character of Cruella. 

Cruella De Vil’s entire character is defined by her obscene wealth and privilege.

In the original story, Cruella is depicted as a pampered and glamorous London heiress however, she is also described as the last of her prosperous and notorious family, who appear wealthy but are in fact heavily in debt. 

Dwindling funds could not assuage her obsession with the life of luxury. She becomes so fixated on fur clothing, that she married a furrier and forces him to keep his fur collection in their home so she can wear the pieces whenever she likes.

When Walt Disney read the book in 1957, it immediately grabbed his attention, and he promptly obtained the rights. It would only be a mere 5 years before the animated adaptation was brought to screen, where the cool detachment of the original character was replaced by a crazed mania, in which Cruella only barely clung to a sheen of glamour.

Disney modeled her personality and mannerisms off of Tallulah Bankhead, an American stage and screen actress who is most known for her award winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat.” She had a very distinct Cruella-esque look (including drawn-on arched brows), but she was also known for driving quite manically. “It was during these years that another one of the traits that links her to de Vil emerged: her penchant for driving her Bentley around London at break-neck speed, much like the Disney villain behind the wheel,” wrote Rebecca Cope for Tatler.

Bankhead struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction; she reportedly smoked 120 cigarettes a day and often talked openly about her vices. She also openly had a series of relationships with both men and women.

This is all especially interesting because if you watch closely, Disney uses this narrative to express strong disdain for the unmarried, career driven woman.

The film was released at a time when family values were at the top of the cultural food chain so-to-speak. In the Disney film, we see the dalmatians gathering around the family TV as a nightly ritual, treated with the same level of expectation that gathering round the table to eat dinner had. According to information found in Digital Public Library of America, by 1955, half of American homes had a TV set. There is a clear juxtaposition between the protagonists (Roger, Anita and their dogs Pongo and Perdita) and their modest home life centered around building a family, and Cruella’s ambition and independence.

Even how the two leading women are drawn are starkly opposing: 

Anita’s attractive, soft features rival Cruella’s sharp protruding cheek bones and sallow skin. Anita is mellow mannered & quiet. Cruella is loud, commanding and confident. 

So, it is a big eyeroll, but not surprising, that they would caricaturize such a villain off a woman who was known for not abiding by the rules of society and was unapologetic in her bi-sexuality as well as her mental health, things that sadly, even today, roughly 70 years later, still spawns judgment today.

As Fashion YouTuber explained during her Cruella-focused video, “Disney has told us that a pretty girl can’t do ugly things, and an ugly girl can’t do pretty things.” 

The general practice of drawing villains as hideous is actually a problematic and unfortunate practice because it instills negative associations between a persons appearance and their personality. It teaches us that people who are good looking have better personalities than those who don’t. A concept that experience teaches us is often not true, but worse, it can lead to the demonization of people who look differently.

That being said, it is old news that plenty of Disney’s films include elements which have aged poorly, and this is over half a century old after all, so all things considered, this is all a minor offense. And voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, this Cruella is iconic in her own right – inspiring the silhouette of Marla Singer and the face of Emperor New Groove’s Esma.  

Fast forward 1996, like so many of the most popular animated children’s movies, One Hundred and One Dalmatians saw its live-action remake. This time the costume designers Anthony Powell and Rosemary Burrows created a very campy and almost avant-garde look for Cruella. Played by Glenn Close, Cruella is deliciously over the top. Her flawless presentation masks her maniacal behavior which is somehow even more amplified than the cartoon. 

In this version, Cruella is no longer a desperate heiress, she is a mogul of a haute couture fashion house, "House of De Vil," which specializes in fur couture. She is driven by greed and capitalistic bloodlust for more. It is the perfect and very 90’s update to the original story – modernizing her motivations and embracing the bold, playful, Barbie doll styles of the time.  

Which brings us to CRUELLA – Disney’s newest VILLAIN ORIGIN STORY released with an aggressively commercialized marketing plan, complete with lip servicey “GIRL BOSS”  posters and clothing with Cruella’s self-described “Brilliant, Bad and A Little Bit Mad.” Alright then.

And all this plus the horrifyingly cringey trailer all deterred me from wanting me to watch it at all, honestly, because it looked like it was going to be one long eyeroll. But refreshingly it’s not!

The newest “CRUELLA” directed by Craig Gullepsie of I, Tonya, starring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson, is actually really good! It’s thoroughly entertaining – the use of fashion is really fun and the plot cleverly turns the age-old story on its head. I enjoyed it a lot! So keep that in mind when I go into this next part…

I just completely disagree with the need for this version of Cruella. And partially that is because it feels like the ever-growing trend to do villain origin stories lands somewhere between a cheap money-grab and misaligned with the true essence of the character. They aren’t actually bad, they are just misunderstood!

To me, the best part of Cruella De Vil is how unapologetically sadistic she is. Dodie Smith’s original Cruella De Vil is a perfect monster because she is so thoughtfully written. To her core, she is insatiable in her pursuit of opulence. And what better way to show that thirst, that indulgence than by having her stop at nowhere – not even at KILLING PUPPIES – to get it. 

So I guess, from the get go, having a movie that is seeking to rewrite her motivations, and develop a character that is just as grandiose, but not because she is not bad, just misunderstood, just feels like it is so far from the core of Cruella De Vil as a character that it should just be a separate movie entirely. 

This brings me to my next point, in this version, her style veers entirely away from the bougie “old Hollywood” glamour and sprints in a completely new direction. And worst of all, there is NO FUR!

In Disney’s production notes, they wrote: “In our film, the character Cruella does not in any way harm animals… Cruella doesn’t share the same motivations as her animated counterpart.” It feels like Disney was walking on egg-shells due to the higher-level awareness that people have today surrounding the use of animals to create fur, which I understand – as a big corporate company like this, it is easier to be as non-problematic as possible – but it doesn’t really make sense because people were not really aware of the issues around using real animal fur until years later than this time period. This is meant to be set in the 1970’s and anti-fur campaigns didn’t start to become popular until the late 1980’s and 1990’s, after celebrities started to get involved. 

Further, the aesthetic that they chose for this Cruella is very rebellious anti-establishment punk. Rightfully for this decade, they chose to mimic the fashions of Vivienne Westwood. She wears a lot of edgy looks that by todays standards could also be thought of as the precursor to goth or scene culture. And the costume designer for Cruella (Jenny Beavan) – who arguably had the most important job on the set because the entire story is told through fashion – did an incredible job of creating looks that pay homage to not only Westwood, but also other key players in the 1970s high-fashion world of the time like Nina Hagen, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Every single look she created was impressive in its detail, statements and design. There are roughly 47 looks for Cruella alone for the film!!

My issue isn’t Beavan’s impeccable work here. It’s Disney’s choice to make “punk” the aesthetic for the film because it does not fit any version of the character. 

Even with the re-written more sympathetic Cruella, she is an artist. Her rebellion comes from her inability to contain her creativity, nothing else. As Angelica Jade Bastian wrote for Vulture, “Cruella is indicative of the culture it pretends to critique. Its central character is a white woman whose concerns and politics begin and end with herself. She’s a girl boss pretending to fight against the powers that be. She doesn’t want to overthrow the Establishment so much as become it. Cruella takes one of the richest narrative archetypes — the madwoman — and whittles her down into a glossy, hollow, capitalism-approved monster fueled by girl-boss politics. It has nothing to say about how women move through the world.“ Fashionable cold-hearted socialite who becomes obsessive in her creativity does not align with the rebel-with-a-cause attitude, that erupted from a lack of material wealth. Ripped jeans became a fad after the band The Ramones wore them because they were unable to afford new ones. Safety pins were used to hold jackets together after they ripped. In another article, by Little White Lies, Hannah Strong commented: “There’s something a little grim about co-opting the imagery of a movement that developed out of dissatisfaction with politics, capitalism, and restrictions on personal freedoms in order to sell the story of a woman whose entire personality is that she wants to turn dogs into coats, though it’s hardly surprising.”

I know this is nitpicky when it comes to things being problematic on-screen, but it is just worth acknowledging because I was disappointed in the choice to utilize this as Cruella’s aesthetic, as it seemed like Disney just felt like doing it, instead of really contemplating what makes sense for the character. Also, I don’t love the monologues she gives about herself to spoon-feed the audience her intentions as opposed to just coming up with better writing to convey such things. And it GRATING every single time Emma Stone obnoxiously says the word “psycho” – it’s at least 3 times too many. And the needledrops become tiresome and overwrought pretty quickly.

In their defense, if they were going to make a story that depicts her from a sympathetic lens, they were going to have to change a lot of the core characteristics that make her who she is. They succeed in making a completely new story that re-introduces the elements we know, but flips the narrative behind them – the black & white hair, the dalmatian coat, the Hell Hall mansion, her henchmen - Jasper & Horace. It is fun to watch and catch details that you recognize and see the clever ways the writers were able to twist them. 

Sidenote: do we think that there is the beginning hints of a future romantic relationship with Jasper or do you think that Disney will keep Cruella’s romantic affairs more elusive so that she can be the queer icon that many are suspecting her to be? DM your thoughts to @ingloriousbaguettes on Instagram if you have any!

The story is compelling as well, bringing about a far more villainous villain to counter Cruella’s quote unquote madness. Emma Thompson’s Baroness electrifies the screen, with STUNNING looks that mimic the shape of classic Hollywood glamour with beehive up-do bedazzled with jewels, perfectly tailored gowns with a mermaid silhouette and the long cigarette older. She’s fabulously evil – a stone cold, narcissist who will dispose of anything or anyone that inconveniences her. She is actually how Cruella should be.

That’s what gets me to my final thoughts. What I would have done differently. I know I am not in any position at all to act like I have expertise on costume design, but these are all just my opinions – what I would have liked to see from a Cruella origin story.

Instead of taking such a far departure from the core of the original character, I would have loved to see them lean into Dodie Smith’s Cruella more than the two other on-screen versions ever did. When we look back at what I discussed at the beginning of this episode, there were so many elements of the original character that were left behind when the animation came to be, and the animation is what became Cruella to all of us ever since. Dodie’s Cruella became simply a footnote. But let’s reflect on the traits that could have been brought back, which I think would have been really fun to explore if you are going to bother with a revamped Cruella.

She’s a pampered and glamorous London heiress who is the last of her prosperous and notorious family, appearing wealthy but is actually heavily in debt. “She was wearing a tight-fitting emerald satin dress, several ropes of rubies, and an absolutely simple white mink cloak, which reached to the high heels of her ruby-red shoes,” Smith wrote in the novel. She got expelled from school when she was younger for drinking ink. Her mansion was originally called Hill Hall, but villagers were aware of the suspicious activities that were happening there by Cruella’s ancestors, and began to call it Hell Hall as a warning.

What an interesting story already!

It’s mid 1960s or mid 1970s, whichever. Featuring –  A family with power and notoriety, who – behind the curtain – is fighting to maintain their wealth, with no leg to stand on if it disappears. A little Succession, a little Schitt’s Creek… 

Then, we introduce Cruella. She’s brilliant, bad and a little bit mad. Just kidding, but she is brilliant. And she’s always been bad. She was raised that way. She doesn’t play by the rules, she’s cut throat, ruthless and desperate. 

She is icy, calculated and strategic with all of her interpersonal relationships and her ambition is insurmountable. I picture Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” – never seen without a decedent get up and a woe is me attitude. I picture Anna Wintour – ruling the fashion world with the stoicism, poise and emasculate fashion sense that only exists on screen.   

She is lofty. She is incredibly put together. She is sharp. And she is EVIL. 

This is interesting to me. This is a character that makes sense. This is a character that has a moral compass so inextricably tied to her hierarchal prestige that she is can’t see beyond that. All bets are off. I want to see an anti-hero movie. I want to see a movie where we don’t necessarily sympathize, but we can’t help but enjoy her sadistic games. 

A dark comedy with a decadent lead. This isn’t so far off from the 2021 Cruella we ended up with, but I just wish they had found a way to stay a little bit more true to the source material. 

There has been a recent history of revitalizing iconic villains with their own origin story to explain away how they got the way that they are and to ask the audience to understand them. Some work and some don’t, but I think that as a practice the idea of taking something successful and squeezing every potential storyline out of it for more profit rubs me the wrong way. I am going to quote Hannah Strong again here, when she said, “It seems unlikely that anyone would watch Glenn Close’s gleefully unhinged performance as the fashionista pursuing a Dalmatian-fur coat in Stephen Herek’s 1996 film and think, “I wonder what deep-seated trauma is hidden beneath that monochrome bonce”, but that’s where we’re at with Hollywood storytelling nowadays.”

However it can be done well. The Deadpool movies were a hit & popularized the character in a way that would have never happened otherwise. Maleficent was fine – but the actual story of Sleeping Beauty and the animated character of Maleficent was unmemorable enough from the start - that creating a movie to re-evaluate her perspective and existence was able to be interesting. The Joker despite all its attempts and the praise of many, was abominable and pointless and completely underutilized the magnitude of that character – but that is a whole episode of it’s own. The point is – the villain origin story can be done – but it is much more difficult to do it with a character that is beloved for being evil. That is named after the Devil.

Yall know my favorite thing to provide is the FAX – so here are some miscellaneous fun facts about the 101 Dalmatians franchise:

1.    In the animated version, “The One Hundred & One Dalmatians” — a man named Bill Pete was the storyboarder & this is sort of like the modern director, but for animation. Dodie Smith actually felt that Bill Pete had improved upon the book, a rare compliment, and many say that he found a way to get a true human sensibility in the drawn characters and broke new ground for Disney’s animation department in its grittiness, lack of musical storytelling and disruption of formula.

2.    Ken Anderson was the art director & he helped give it the unpretentious, unique and cool tone that has caused it to feel so memorable even today. Walt Disney hated is touches to the film, though, and made it well known. It wasn’t until Anderson was on his death bed, that Disney finally acknowledged that what he did for the film was actually the reason for its success.   

3.    Mel Evan wrote the memorable Cruella De Vil song, and there is actually another song, he wrote about her which is catchy and more upbeat, but he changed to a more blues sounding tempo which he felt better fit the character.

4.    All the spots were hand drawn to have roughly 32 spots for accuracy.

5.    Spots = stylized and were used throughout the film in puns (they were the smoke out of the train, they were the music notes, etc.)! It’s playful expression of the animators

6.    Lilyput magazine cameo — a graphic design magazine 

And that’s the tea for this episode featuring the new film Cruella about Cruella De Vil. 

Before we go, and to top off todays episode, here is a list of other names for Cruella De Vil that maintained the word English wordplay despite the translation.

-          In Bulgarian, her name is (Kruela De Vil), but some properties use her translated name, (Zlobara De Mon)—"Zlobara" meaning malice, spite, or malevolence.

·         In Dutch, the name remains 'De Vil'. By coincidence, the Dutch verb for 'skinning' is villen, and vil is the conjugation of this verb for the first person singular.

·         In the French translation of the Disney animated movie, she is referred as 'Cruella d'Enfer'—literally meaning 'Cruella of Hell' or 'from Hell'.

·         In Hungarian, her name is Szörny (SOO-OR- NEE) Ella (meaning Ella Monster) in the books and Siorniella de Fraz (Monsterella de Fright) in her Disney appearances.

• Szörnyella (SOO-OR-NEE-ELLA) de Frász (FR-AS)

·         In Italian, she is called 'Crudelia De Mon'—a pun on crudele ('cruel') (crudellay) and demone ('demon') (daaaay-money)

·         In Polish (among other translations), the character is known as 'Cruella De Mon'—a play on the word 'demon'.

·         In both Spanish and European Portuguese, the name remains 'De Vil', but instead of representing "devil", it represents words for "from vileness" or "from villainy."

·         In Ukrainian, her name is La-yuuuu-taila De Vil or Yaa-vole (Lyutella De Vil), puns for the words for cruelty and devil.

And last note – specifically in the film Cruella, as she is raised by her biological family in the other versions, her given name is supposed to be Estella von Hellman at birth, and then her adoptive name is Estella Miller. But her nickname is Ella… which you might recognize from the beginning of this episode as 101 Dalmatian author Dodie Smith’s mother’s name. Do we think Disney made this connection on purpose, or was it just a coincidence? Hard to say – but a super fun little breadcrumb none the less. 

The sources to this episode will be found in the description for your reference.

Next week we will be continuing the costume series with the film “What A Way To Go!” the 1964 comedy starring Shirley MacLaine, and other stylish hidden gems. The films that we should be reminded of at Halloween parties to this day, but somehow went on to be generally forgotten. And paying homage to their existence.

Hopefully you are enjoying kicking off the show with a Costume series – I figure it’s the perfect time to review some of the most iconic costumes on film leading up to next months treasured holiday… Halloween!

If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends and subscribe to the podcast! Tune in each week and help build this community of film lovers. You can find me at ingloriousbaguettes.com or @ingloriousbaguettes on Instagram. Thanks for listening! Have a great week.