The key to happiness

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Movie
German title The key to happiness
Original title Tajomstvo šťastia
Country of production Slovakia
original language Slovak , Czech
Publishing year 1995
length 82 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Jozef Holec
script Olga Lichardova
production Tána Pukalovicova ,
Erika Klementová for Slovenská Televízia Bratislava
camera Marián Minárik ,
Pavol Horecný ,
Martin Roll ,
Vladimír Ondrus
cut Marica Ruzinska ,
Stefan Vanek
occupation

The key to happiness (literally from Slovak actually: “The secret of happiness”) is a fairy tale film from 1995 about a poor boy, a beautiful princess, a golden apple and an evil magician based on the Belarusian fairy tale The Flower of Fortune . The film was made as a co-production between Slovakia and the Czech Republic . The German first broadcast was on April 18, 1998 on WDR television. Polyband created a video with the German dubbed version.

action

wizard

A magician lives above the mountain peaks. Poisonous smoke rises around him. His head is like a golden ball. From his height he gazes cruelly over the countries. Then he sees the beautiful golden-haired princess Alina in his magic pictures in a country. This awakens the desire for beauty in the mighty magician.

Janek

The people deal cruelly with the poor orphan boy Janek. He is hunted and tortured. In their dark superstition, they attribute every misfortune to Janek's presence. When the mountain magician also lets a huge storm break out and a mill wheel falls into the water, the fainthearted agitation against the poor boy does not end.

king

When Alina's father, a good king, goes hunting, the mountain magician causes a black thunderstorm. The king gets lost. He falls into the sphere of influence of the magician, who threatens to press his royal word of honor from him. When the magician receives this word, the cruel shows what he actually wants. He demands the hand of Princess Alina. The royal father is horrified and wants to avert this fate at all costs. The king rides sadly back to his castle. On the way he meets Janek, who helps the king to calm his confused horse. Janek is torn and at a loss. People chased him away everywhere. Janek is also convinced that he is out of luck and only brings bad luck everywhere. The king thinks this is superstition and promises the boy work in the royal mines.

Alina

Alina's joyous reunion when her missing father finally returns home. The living beauty sings, jumps and dances - but strange, the father is depressed. He hides the encounter with the magician. But he begins to restrict Alina's freedom. That doesn't go with the girls jumping field. She is constantly guarded. And then a shiny golden apple forms in the royal garden, which beguiles with its shining shine. Alina is strictly forbidden to come close to this golden apple. Mourning the incomprehensible loss of her freedom, the beautiful takes refuge in contemplation of the shiny apple. That's how she sits one night. Janek appears at the apple tree. He was also drawn to the strange light in the night when he was doing the day's work in the mines. Alina and Janek start a friendly chat. But then they are disturbed. Janek promises to come back the next night and pick the golden apple for Alina.

The lucky stone

Janek works in the mine. Then the shaft collapses. The boy is buried. Rubble and dust cover it. He picks up a stone - it's a wishing stone. An ice-gray old man appears - the spirit of the stone. He explains the meaning of the lucky stone to Janek. With this stone Janek can wish everything for himself, but he can only think of his own happiness. When Janek objects, the old man points out that the other people have hardly thought of Janek's luck either. With the help of the wishing stone, Janek finds himself under the open sky.

kidnapping

While Janek was buried for two days, something bad happened in the castle. When Janek doesn't come back on the second night - as promised - Alina decides to pick the apple herself. This gives the magician power over her and he can kidnap the terrified princess. Desperate and perplexed, the king and fool have to watch the cruel events.

liberation

Janek learns of Alina's fate. With the power of the stone he creates splendid clothes and a horse and offers the king his help. On the top of the mountain near the magician, Janek finds the princess, who refuses to accept the magician, in a golden cage. The girl recognizes him and fears everything for Janek. But the boy can free Alina with the stone, because Alina is his luck. But he must not completely destroy the magician, otherwise the stone power of personal happiness will be exceeded. This would destroy the stone. The two of them ride happily into the realm of Alina's father. The wizard rages behind them. Janek and Alina are in love and are getting married. In order to protect her from the magician, Janek evades all thanks from the king and leads the princess to a beautiful but lonely water palace. The king is happy to know that Alina is safe. Then the magician appears and swears vengeance.

revenge

The sorcerer's malice is not long in coming. He is drawing water from all the king's land. There is a terrible drought. Only in Alina and Janek's castle is there no trace of this. The fool goes to Janek and asks for help. Janek hesitates. He is afraid of losing Alina if he can no longer shine in front of her with the gifts of the lucky stone. Thirst and drought destroy the land. The king confronts the magician - but he only laughs. He wants Alina. Alina learns about the water and the misfortune of the country from a thirsty little girl at the castle gate. She argues with Janek and leaves him at night in a water-laden car. In the desert she meets the streams of refugees dying of thirst.

salvation

Janek ponders. Then he makes up his mind and gets the hidden lucky stone from his vaulted cellar. When he is about to leave, he realizes that Alina is gone. Janek rides to the wizard. He feels safe and believes in the power of selfishness. The stone spirit also warns: Janek will lose everything that the lucky stone gave him. But Janek is determined. Then the gray old man says that this shows that he gave the lucky stone to the right person. Janek now understands the task, which has now also been confirmed by the stone spirit. But the road to happiness of helpfulness could only lead through Janek's own experience. Janek destroys the wizard with the stone and collapses in his old rags at the reawakened spring. It starts to rain. Man and nature awaken to new life. Alina also recognizes and at the same time is afraid for Janek. She rushes to the mountains, finds the sleeping man and kisses him awake. When he sadly explains to her that he has now lost all the stone gifts, she laughs happily and says, which says everything: "I hope you don't think that I only loved you because of the stone."

actor

Princess Alina is played by Jana Holenová , who starred as the fairytale princess in the second Czech film adaptation from 1985 based on Hauff's The False Prince . Karel Greif played next to the outstanding portrayal of Janek in the Czech-German film The Frog King, the servant and friend of the presumptuous prince.

material

The film tells the Belarusian fairy tale Die Glücksblume , but touches on various other fairy tale motifs: The beginning of the film shows the initial situation of the Slovak fairy tale The Dragon Bride . The golden apple comes from the fairy tale Berona by Božena Němcová , in which the Grimm's motif horizon is varied from The Water of Life and The Golden Bird . However, in these fairy tales the apple - if it is golden - is of rather good significance. The golden apple encourages great things in Berona in The Water of Life , but also in Eisenhans . These kinds of apples stand on the horizon of the sun-like auspicious apples of the Hesperides . In the story of Janek and Alina, however, the apple is fatefully comparable to Snow White's apple and the apple seduces Alina to misfortune, just as the desire for the golden ball seduces the princess in the Frog Prince . The golden-headed magician with his golden apple has quite sunny aspects, but he only unites the hostile possibilities of the scorching sun. As in Storms Regentrude, the land and the rivers dry up and all water disappears. Here, human experiences are reflected, such as those made in prehistoric high culture in the Sahara . The drought destroys life - comparable to the destructive lack of salt in the fairy tale film The Salt Prince . Again in close relation to the grim fairy tale The Water of Life is the knowledge of the fairy tale film of the vital importance of water. The film motif of the Glückstein is linked here with self-awareness. Similar to how stones are interpreted by Novalis in The Apprentices at Sais . In addition to these aspects, there are connections in the plot of the film to Božena Němcová's fairy tale The Clever Princess , in which the theme of the poor boy's love for a beautiful princess and the energetic liberation from evil magic is depicted. In addition, the contrast structure of happiness in the fairy tale film shows a level of meaning from the French fairy tale Unlucky Bird and Lucky Child by Richard Volkmann-Leander . The inseparability of happiness and helpfulness determines the content of the key to happiness fairy tale film and is comparable in Prince Bajaja .

Locations

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Die Glückblume as Fairy Tale No. 34 on pp. 319-320 in Belorussische Volksmärchen , ed. LG Barag translated by Hans Joachim Grimm; Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1970.
  2. ↑ The lucky flower tells the fairy tale of little Janko. He and his mother live in the greatest poverty - nothing will succeed until Janko serves seven years with a magical old man who promises to show him the way to happiness: And after the long probationary period, Janko receives a flower of luck. With the help of this flower, which fulfills a similar function as the lucky stone in the film, Janko can free the king's daughter from the clutches of an evil magician - Janko finds his happiness in love and gains wealth. However, when he wants to share it with his impoverished mother, she is no longer alive after long years of searching - this pity motif makes the pity motif with the thirsty land from the fairy tale appear horizontal.
  3. ↑ This magical fairy tale, probably from the Pavol Dobšinský collection , can be found in Slovak fairy tales , pp. 65–74; retold by Robert Michel and Cäcilie Tandler; Wilhelm Andermann Verlag; Vienna, 1944, but here later the brother frees the captured princess.
  4. ^ Božena Němcová: Berona . In: The King of Time - Slovak Fairy Tales . Translated from the Slovak by Peter Hrivinák, Bratislava 1978, pp. 103–112.
  5. ↑ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm : The water of life and the golden key . In: Children's and Household Tales, collected by the Brothers Grimm . Edited by Carl Helbling in two volumes, Manesse 2003, Vol. 1: ISBN 978-3-7175-1162-5 and Vol. 2: ISBN 978-3-7175-1164-9 .
  6. ↑ Cf. Karl Kerényi : The Echidna, the snake of the Hesperides and the Hesperides . In: The mythology of the Greeks - the gods and human stories . Vol. I., pp. 46-48; Unabridged edition from November 1966, published by Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag in the twenty-third edition, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-30030-2 ; see. Karl Kerényi : The apples of the Hesperides at the deeds of Herakles in The mythology of the Greeks - The stories of heroes . Vol. 2, pp. 139-142; Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-30031-0 .
  7. ^ Božena Němcová: The wise princess . In: Božena Němcová and Karel Jaromír heirs : fairy tales . Translated by Günther Jarosch and Valtr Kraus Albatros-Verlag, Prague 2001, ISBN 80-00-00930-7 , pp. 108-114.
  8. ^ Richard Volkmann-Leander : Unlucky and lucky child . In: Reverie at French chimneys . Albert Langen-Georg Müller-Verlag GmbH, Munich, Vienna 1973, ISBN 3-7844-1530-X , pp. 101-116.