The film became a critical success garnering the best reception for a Disney animated film since "Dumbo". In a personal letter to Walt Disney, director Michael Curtiz hailed the film as the "masterpiece of all pictures you have done." Producer Hal Wallis declared, "If this is not your best, it is very close to the top." Mae Tinee, reviewing for the "Chicago Tribune", remarked: "The film not only is handsome, with imaginative art and glowing colors to bedeck the old fairy tale, but it also is told gently, without the lurid villains which sometimes give little lots nightmares. It is enhanced by the sudden, piquant touches of humor and the music which appeal to old and young." "Time" wrote that ""Cinderella" is beguiling proof that Walt Disney knows his way around fairyland. Harking back to the style of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), a small army of Disney craftsmen have given the centuries-old Cinderella story a dewy radiance of comic verve that should make children feel like elves and adults feel like children."