The Brave Little Tailor (1956)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The valiant dressmaker |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1956 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK o. A. |
| Rod | |
| Director | Helmut Spieß |
| script |
Peter Podehl Kurt Bortfeldt |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Joachim Werzlau |
| camera | Robert Baberske |
| cut | Hildegard Conrad |
| occupation | |
| |
The Brave Little Tailor is a DEFA fairy tale film from 1956. The film, directed by Helmut Spieß , is an adaptation of Grimm's fairy tale The Brave Little Tailor .
action
When Prince Eitel had a tear sewn in his robe, he boasted that he had hunted down two lizards - "two in one stroke" - on the tailor's doorstep . When the little tailor kills seven flies at once, he sets off into the big wide world with a scarf with the inscription “Seven in one go”, accompanied by his little bird, to boast of his deed.
On his journey, the brave little tailor meets a giant. The brave little tailor is supposed to squeeze water out of a stone with his hand as proof of his skills. In truth, the brave little tailor secretly squeezes an old piece of cheese that he took from home and passes the test. When he is supposed to throw a stone so far that it does not come back on the ground, he throws his little bird into the air and thus gives him freedom. When the brave little tailor is supposed to carry a tree trunk, he leaves the supposedly lighter trunk of the tree to the giant and takes over the supposedly heavier tree crown himself.
At dinner the giant tells his brother about the alleged miracles of the brave little tailor. The giants want to kill him in his sleep, but do not notice that he has in the meantime placed a dummy on his sleeping place. As a punishment, he throws pumpkins at the giants.
On his wandering, the brave little tailor comes across the castle of the curmudgeon, whose daughter, Princess Liebreich, has been promised to Prince Eitel. The king is desperate because the two giants destroyed the palace garden. "Ritter Siebenaufeinstreich" is appointed leader of the life guard.
Meanwhile, Prince Eitel gives Princess Liebreich a bouquet of flowers; But she only accepts it when she receives it as a present from the brave little tailor. In order to have a free run for the princess, Prince Eitel suggests that the king send the brave little tailor to the two giants and promise him half the kingdom and the princess as a reward. The brave little tailor throws chestnuts at the two giants sleeping under a tree. They start a fight because each thinks the other is the culprit; this ends fatally for both of them. Since the brave little tailor is believed to be dead, Prince Eitel claims that he killed the giants.
When the unicorn threatens the kingdom and the brave little tailor reappears, the king, on the advice of Prince Eitel, sends him off to fight the unicorn. The princess hangs a red kerchief around him, without telling him that the sight of red paint appeals to the unicorn. The brave little tailor, however, unhooks the breast cloth and irritates the unicorn with it until it runs into a tree with its horn. Now the kingdom is threatened by a wild boar. The brave little tailor drives the wild animal into an empty house and locks it up there. Since the brave little tailor could now demand the wages due to him, the king, princess Liebreich, prince Eitel and the royal court seek their salvation in flight. The brave little tailor takes the place of the king and the daughter of the palace gardener as his wife.
production
The brave little tailor was a pure studio production and the only children's film that director Helmut Spieß made. The film premiered on September 28, 1956 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . Two months later it came to the GDR cinemas. When the main actor Kurt Schmidtchen went to Germany in 1961 , the film was no longer shown in theaters in the GDR from that time.
In the Federal Republic of Germany the showing of the film was banned by the Interministerial Committee for East-West Film Issues in 1957 and was only approved after a renewed examination in 1958. On March 15, 1959, the film also ran in the Federal Republic.
The film was the first of 19 adaptations of Grimm's fairy tales, which DEFA realized until 1990. The script deviated from the fairytale model and, for example, withheld the negative traits of the little tailor that still existed with the Grimms. In addition, the film "Marxist tendencies", such new people as the scheming Prince Eitel and the maid Traute, and with the marriage of the seamstress with the maid Traute and the flight of the nobility from the country also got a new end. Since screenwriter Peter Podehl stuck too close to the fairy tale, the book was finished by Kurt Bortfeldt.
Reviews
Contemporary critics criticized the socialist tendency of the film as an “inappropriate update”: “Isn't there enough deep humanistic content in the old fairy tales that needs to be captured?” Other critics ironically wrote that after the film the Brothers Grimm were probably “trained Marxists” and the film shows “the vulgar application of Marxist principles”, then “all fairy tale characters are roughly classified according to class.” Other critics felt that in the film “the socially critical element of the folk tale was only fortunately expanded and continued [be]". Later critics also called the modernization, especially of the court, easy and cheerful. On the other hand, there were criticisms of the film's aesthetic flaws, such as doing without trick shots and the film's design concept rather experimental.
For the lexicon of international films , The Brave Little Tailor was “a fairytale film created with great effort and with careful decoration [... and] an entertaining, if outdated, fairytale entertainment; To a certain extent, socialist reinterpretations of the fairy tale are recognizable, for example when the king is portrayed as the exploiter and the worker as the liberator - which is already laid out in the fairy tale ”.
literature
- The brave little tailor . In: DEFA Foundation (ed.): The DEFA fairy tale films . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-032589-2 , pp. 36–41.
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 599-600 .
- The brave little tailor . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89487-234-9 , pp. 95-97.
Web links
- The Brave Little Tailor in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The brave little tailor in the online film database
- The brave little tailor at filmportal.de
- The brave little tailor at the DEFA Foundation
Footnotes
- ^ Federal Agency for Civic Education, censorship of DEFA films in the Federal Republic , December 18, 2008
- ^ Günter Stahnke: The current little tailor . In: Junge Welt , October 5, 1956.
- ↑ Horst Knietzsch: The strange fairy tale of the little tailor . In: Neues Deutschland , October 3, 1956.
- ^ Hansgeorg Meyer in: Leipziger Volkszeitung , October 10, 1956.
- ↑ The brave little tailor . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, p. 96.
- ↑ The brave little tailor . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, p. 97.
- ↑ The brave little tailor. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 9, 2017 .