Most of the following listing is based on cast identifications made by the film scholars Georges Sadoul, Jacques Malthête, and Laurent Mannoni.

[1] Méliès modeled the film's visual style on the engravings of Gustave Doré, who had illustrated the story for an edition of Perrault's fairy tales.

)[7] The direct inspiration for the film of Cinderella was probably a stage adaptation premiered in 1896 by the Théâtre de la Galerie-Vivienne and played by the Troupe Raymond at Méliès's own theatre of illusions, the Théatre Robert-Houdin, at Christmastime of 1897.

(His catalogue, by dividing the action into smaller beats, lists twenty tableaux within the film, a generous numbering probably devised for publicity reasons.

[11] It did well both in French fairground cinemas and at European and American music-halls, and inspired Méliès to create other lavishly designed storytelling films with multiple scenes.