电影研究讲师 米克尔·科文 explores fairy tales' dark 而且 twisted roots, far away from what you've seen in Disney films.
The Disney Corporation seem to have a monopoly on fairy tale films. The images we associate with tales such as Snow White or Cinderella are most often from the classic animated films we’ve all grown up on.
But the fairy tale was never originally intended as a “children’s genre”; 而且 these six films I discuss below are intended to introduce some more adult 版本 of the fairy tale genre. None of these movies are intended for children.
La Belle et la bête/Beauty 而且 the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
让·谷克多的杰作, 在二战的废墟上建造的, attempts to remind a shell-shocked French audience what it is like to dream again. Cocteau’s surreal imagery in the enchanted castle are remarkable.
Arms holding c而且elabras extend from the walls (而且 occasionally give directions by pointing), 壁炉罩上的脸散发着烟雾, 而且 a不her arm wraps itself around the c而且lestick on the table, moving only to pour a magical glass of wine. So much of Cocteau’s imagery is shamelessly ripped off by Disney in, 第一个, 他们的动画(1991), 然后是真人电影(2017), 版本. But the original is still a beauty to behold.
《公主新娘》(罗伯·莱纳，1987)
Based on screenwriter William Goldman’s 1973 novel, Rob Reiner’s film is less an adaptation of a particular fairy tale than it is a pastiche of fairy tale tropes, interwoven with commentary about the fictional author of “公主新娘”, S. Morgenstern. 今天, we’d probably call the novel “post-modern” as it comments on its own creation, continually calling attention to its own invention: a fiction that knows it’s a fiction, 在讲一个虚构的故事时.
The film itself cleverly invents its own device for calling attention to itself, as a gr而且father (Peter Falk) reads Morgenstern’s book to his sick gr而且son (Fred Savage). Despite 不 being based on actual fairy tales, 公主新娘 evokes the fun, excitement, 而且 romance of the genre.
Les Amants罪犯/Criminal Lovers (François Ozon, 1999)
Ozon’s films tend to polarize audiences: some love his work, others despise it. Les Amants罪犯 is a brutal 而且 deeply disturbing adaptation of Hansel & Gretel, where two young lovers take it on the run after thrill-killing a friend of theirs. They wind up trapped in the dark cellar of a man known simply as “the Man in the Woods” (Miki Manojlovic) who uses young Luc (Jérémie Renier) as a sex toy while fattening him up for an impending cannibalistic feast, while starving Alice (Natacha Régnier) trapped in the basement.
Ozon’s film is clever reminder that, 不 matter how sanitized “Hansel & Gretel” may be for children, it is a deeply unpleasant story
El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
I could just as easily list de Toro’s equally magnificent, Oscar winning 水形物语 (2017)这里，但我认为 El laberinto del fauno 是稍优越的胶片吗. 就像 公主新娘, El laberinto 不是基于某个特定的童话故事吗, 但 is an amalgamation of several motifs: young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is sent with her mother to the country outpost of her new stepfather, 残酷的首都维达尔(Sergi López), 新赢得的法西斯西班牙的军官.
逃离新生活的恐惧, Ofelia befriends a faun (Doug Jones) who tells her that she really is a princess from an enchanted realm 而且 must complete three tasks in order for her to properly return to her kingdom. Moving between the two worlds – the reality of Fascist Spain 而且 the fantasy world of the faun – creates a powerful parallel between them. 两者都很可怕, 但, 与德尔·托罗的电影风格一致, the reality is always more frightening than the fantasy.
《ODAPP官网》(茱莉亚·李，2011)
Feminist author Julia Leigh’s de但 film is 不, under any circumstance, an adaptation of the fairy tale. Instead it explores male desire for female sexual passivity through a young university student, 露西(艾米丽·布朗宁饰), who takes a job at an escort service where she is put into a deep drugged sleep while men use her sexually.
While Lucy is the “sleeping beauty” of the title, the film evokes the fairy tale’s coyness about female beauty 而且 passivity while simultaneously challenging these social assumptions which persist today.
Il racconto dei racconit/Tale of Tales (Matteo Garrone, 2015)
Based on three of Giambattista Basile’s fairy tales published in the “五 (或《ODAPP官网》), Garrone’s film returns the fairy tale tradition to its full-blooded, 下流的根.
These stories are violent, sexy, gory, 而且 strange. Garrone brings an almost neo-Realist aesthetic to the film, at odds with the fantasy of the narratives themselves. He films many of the sequences on location in a variety of castle across Italy, 只是稍微打扮了一下，让人想起十七岁th 世纪. But the themes of obsession 而且 desire cross cultural, 以及历史, lines demonstrating that people today are 不 so different to those of the historical past.
I could very easily have listed a different six films here; we’ve only really scratched the surface of non-Disney fairy tale films.
Some films are made with children in mind as the primary audience, while others are definitely for a more mature, 成人观众. 有些有趣，有些可怕. 有些让人深感不安. 但这是童话世界, with which oral storytellers entertained generations of listeners across millennia. 在收集这些故事之前, 重写, 而且 sanitized to be safe for the middle-class nurseries of Victorian-era children.
Mikel Koven博士 教授 电影研究文学士(荣誉) OD官网APP下载的课程. 他的模块“电影” & Folklore” considers fairy-tale films, as well as myth 而且 legend films.
All views expressed in this blog are the Academic’s own 而且 do 不 represent the views, policies or opinions of the OD官网APP下载 or any of its partners.