The sea queen
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Jezerní královna / The Queen of the Sea |
| Country of production | Czech Republic , Germany |
| original language | Czech |
| Publishing year | 1998 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Václav Vorlíček |
| script | Václav Vorlíček, Miloš Macourek |
| production | Karel Dirka |
| music | Ondřej Soukup |
| camera | Rudolf Blahacek |
| cut | Dalibor Lipský |
| occupation | |
| |
The Queen of the Sea (original Czech title: Jezerní královna ) is a Czech - German fairy tale film by Václav Vorlíček from 1998. The plot is based on motifs from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake .
action
One evening several swans dive down to the bottom of a foggy lake. Underwater they transform into young girls who have to dance in the undersea palace of the mighty sea queen. A girl manages to swim back to the surface of the water, where she instantly transforms into a swan and flies away. When the young Prince Viktor goes hunting with his valet Stefan, he shoots the bird flying by with his crossbow. Hit by the arrow, the swan falls to the ground and turns back into the girl. Viktor is immediately fascinated by the beauty of the young woman. He brings them to his castle and has them nursed back to health there. Although she is mute and cannot tell him anything about her origins, Viktor is determined to take her as his wife.
His father, King Richard, is against the marriage and instead wants to marry his son to the sea queen, who has a great treasure trove of pearls. The sea queen also endeavors to marry Prince Viktor in order to expand her sphere of influence to the land. When she learns that one of her swans managed to escape, she throws the swan watcher to a monstrous fish to eat. However, their devoted servant Rotbart succeeds in kidnapping the girl, who is a princess named Odette, and brings her back to her mistress. The sea queen returns the language to Odette with a magic wand to find out why she fled. As a punishment, Odette now has to laboriously sort pearls in a dungeon. Then Viktor and Odette meet in a dream. There Viktor learns that the Sea Queen has captured all marriageable princesses of the surrounding kingdoms and turned them into swans so that Viktor cannot marry anyone but her. She also regularly abducts small children who have to collect pearls underwater, as the mussels only open a crack overnight and only small children's hands fit in.
Prince Viktor and his servant Stefan finally set out to free Odette, the princesses and the children. When they arrive at the lake, an old woman offers them her help. She wants revenge on the sea queen who turned her husband into a shell. In the palace of the Queen of the Sea, Stefan pretends to be Prince Viktor, while the latter goes in search of Odette as a valet. When he finds her in her dungeon, he gives her a sieve so that she can sort the pearls faster. They meet again in a dream and agree on their escape. When they try to escape, they take a little boy with them who is hiding in a shell and can show them the correct escape route. But Rotbart and his men pick them up. Only Stefan can escape.
When the old woman and the children working underwater rebel against the sea queen, Viktor, Odette and the little boy are set free. All children are now returning home. With the help of the sea queen's wand, Viktor transforms the swans back into princesses and the old woman also gets her husband back. In order to escape from her own dungeon as quickly as possible, the sea queen leaves Redbeard behind, who then falls victim to the huge fish. The sea queen tries to ride away on a horse. Viktor temporarily transforms Stefan into a horse and rides after her. He takes her prisoner and the old woman's husband turns the sea queen into a stone with her wand. Nothing stands in the way of a wedding between Viktor and Odette.
background
The shooting took place from July 26th to September 13th 1997. Was shot on Castle Libochovice , castle Hluboka nad Vltavou and Castle Ploskovice , which can be seen in the film as the Palace of Seekönigin. The Plešné jezero in the Šumava Biosphere Reserve was used as the filming location for the lake, which is the entrance to the undersea palace in the film . Director Václav Vorlíček had previously made several fairy tale films, including Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella (1973), How to Wake Up Sleeping Beauty (1977) and The Fairytale Bride (1979-1981).
The Sea Queen premiered in the Czech Republic on February 26, 1998. On October 15, 1998, the film was also released in cinemas in Slovakia . It was shown in German cinemas on December 9, 1999.
Reviews
The lexicon of the international film found that The Sea Queen " tells a romantic fairy tale based on motifs from the Swan Lake fabric [...] with some fantastically beautiful images and opulent furnishings". Even if the production is complex and has “a top-class cast”, “the children's film still adheres to the conventions of the genre”. The film magazine Cinema said in turn that the film was "[a] n pleasantly old-fashioned". Prisma described The Sea Queen as “one of the usual fairytale films with the usual quality of Czech productions”. It is thanks to a “sensitive director” and the solid cast that “good entertainment for children” emerged in the end.
Awards
The sea queen was nominated for the Bohemian Lion in 1999 in the two categories Best Music and Best Costume Design . At the 1999 Santa Clarita International Film Festival, the production received an award for Best Foreign Film.
Web links
- The Seekönigin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The lake queen at filmportal.de
- Pictures of the film on cinema.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. csfd.cz
- ↑ The Sea Queen. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 19, 2020 .
- ↑ cf. cinema.de
- ↑ cf. prisma.de