The sad mermaid
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The sad mermaid |
| Original title | Русалочка (Russalotschka) Малката русалка (Malkata russalka) |
| Country of production |
Soviet Union Bulgaria |
| original language |
Russian Bulgarian |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 76 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Vladimir Bychkov |
| script |
Viktor Witkowitsch Grigori Jagdfeld |
| production |
Roman Konbrandt Ivan Kordov |
| music | Yevgeny Krylatov |
| camera | Emil Wagenstein |
| cut | G. Sadovnikova |
| occupation | |
| |
The sad mermaid (also: the little mermaid or the little mermaid ; original title: russian Русалочка , russalotschka and bulgarian Малката русалка , Malkata russalka ) filmed the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen The little mermaid . The film, directed by Vladimir Bytschkow, is considered one of the most beautiful fairy tale films from the Soviet Union / Bulgaria cooperation and has been shown repeatedly on German television since 1977. Had its premiere the film in Bulgaria on 17 December 1976 in the Soviet Union in January 1977 in Hungary on 20 April 1978 in Finland on 25 February 1979, in the US in October 1979. In the cinema of the GDR was the movie dubbed in German for the first time on November 18, 1977, after it had already been broadcast on local television on June 12, 1977. It was released on video in 1994. This Russian-Bulgarian film adaptation of Andersen's fairy tale should not be confused with the Czech film Malá morská víla . This equally excellent film adaptation based on the same fairy tale is titled The Little Mermaid in German and was shot in 1976, the same year as The Sad Mermaid .
action
A carriage drives through a wide snow landscape. Five people sit in the carriage. On one side a couple, sadly eyed by the beautiful blond girl sitting opposite, who sits in the middle between a fat, good-natured woman and a hollow-cheeked man, Sulpitius. Then the hollow-cheeked suddenly turns to his beautiful neighbor: "Do you know the mermaids?" - and a knowing look connects the two. Yes the girl knows them. And Sulpitius knows a story in which all five travelers in the carriage met a very, very long time ago, and he begins to tell.
Where the sea is wide and lonely, the mermaids swim in green light and dance their rounds in the water. They swim gracefully like ballerinas with fish bodies and in complete harmony with the watery element. The bearded king of the sea sits enthroned in the streams of water and watches the dance. The mermaids with their long ice-green hair sit on an ice floe and sing. It's getting dark. A large sailing ship approaches. There is a lot going on on the ship. The prince's birthday is celebrated, everyone laughs, shouts, and stamps wild bank songs. Fireworks are lit - the sparks flare wildly over the nightly black water. The handsome prince looks into the sea. What did he see: a face, big eyes, green hair or a dream? He rubs his eyes. He can't remember, but the riddle is the little mermaid, and she saw the prince too and fell in love.
Suddenly the helmsman screams, then the other skippers. You spotted the singing mermaids on the cliff. Superstition and fear create confusion on the ship. The sailors steer against an iceberg, the ship shatters, the mast breaks, The treasures of the people sink into the sea: The sea king now plays the violin of the people to the games of his daughters. Only the little mermaid swims through the night and keeps the unconscious prince above water, brings him ashore and saves his life.
The mermaid has just brought the prince to the safe shore when a group of girls rode by, courtly and gracefully. You happen to see the prince rushing to the beach. The princess wakes him up. He thinks the princess is his savior. The girls bring the half-unconscious prince to their castle.
The mermaid swims after him as far as the human canals. Here romp fair and carnival - quickly decried is a deluded by the people as a witch. The sight of the mermaid only triggers screams and blind hatred for the natural beings. Sulpitius finds the beautiful mermaid sad on the beach - she complains to him that she has to see the prince - that's why she wants legs like people. Sulpitius consults with a landlady - it's the fat woman from the carriage. The landlady is a witch, she can help the mermaid, but she doesn't want to - the mermaid's legs would cause pain, and if she doesn't move the prince to love her, her heart will break. In addition, the witch owner wants to be paid. In this deal she gets the seductive green magical mermaid hair, which is sure to beguile, the witch also wants the beautiful mermaid voice, but Sulptius says a big stop. After a magical night, the mermaid has her human legs.
Sulpitius and the now wheat-blonde mermaid come to the castle. After some back and forth, the doll-like princess takes a liking to the mermaid. What is difficult in the human world, however, is the mermaid trait that the mermaid cannot lie. So the rumor always hovers over her that she is a mermaid. At the ball, the mermaid dances with the prince and then she begins to dance mystically: the princess, the prince, the knight rivaling the prince for the princess’s hand, the entire court, including the witch's landlady who has now risen to countess thanks to her green hair - all are enchanted and watch the beautiful girl dance.
The princess is hosting a tournament. The prince and the knight should compete here for life and death. The winner receives the princess as a wife. The mermaid does not understand the injurious weapons and tries to settle the argument. Even when the princess explains to her: "Our thirteenth century is a cruel time". This little doll, which showed the same favor to both admirers, does not ask why here. Due to a pitfall, the prince is killed from behind during the tournament.
The mermaid despairs over the death of her lover. The witch should help again and should revive him. It can do that too, but unfortunately only in such a way that when the prince wakes up, he no longer has a look at the mermaid and is definitely lost to her. The mermaid agrees. The prince's life is above all else. The prince wakes up the next morning. The circumstances blind him, he believes the artificial princess gave him life through her prayers. He feels obliged to love and marry the woman he believes has twice saved his life.
The prince marries the princess - on the night of the wedding party the mermaid will break her heart and she will have to die - unless someone sacrifices himself for the girl. The little mermaid dances and hopes nothing. Then someone comes with a mask and challenges the prince to a fight, the prince is not a prince, but the one with the mask is the rightful prince. In the fight the challenger is hit, he sinks and is recognized: It is Sulptius who sacrificed himself for the mermaid.
The mermaid now lives on and does good, but she is entranced like an unattainable ideal for the prince. The prince realizes what to look for, but it's too late.
And again we find the five travelers in the carriage - centuries later. The couple is the prince and his doll. And Sulptius and the fat woman speak comfortingly to the blond beauty, the little mermaid.
Locations
The filming locations of The Sad Mermaid with corresponding sea and beach landscapes are in Bulgaria and in Batumi in Georgia , while the production took place in the Nu Boyana Film Studios and in the Gorki Film Studios .
music
The catchy music of the film - stylistically between the Preludes by Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin and La Mer by Claude Debussy - was composed by Yevgeny Krylatow . The music in the atmosphere of the Andersen fairy tale reveals the deep abyss between the natural and human worlds. While the sea music accompanies fluent and symphonic accompaniment, the shipmen making music also appear rustic and wild, and even compared to the soft water mermaid music, the dance music in the royal palace sounds artificial and choppy.
material
The images of the fairy tale film are characterized by fairy tale illustrations from Art Nouveau: In particular, the mermaid illustrations by Iwan Bilibin , Arthur Rackham , Paul Hey and Edmund Dulac have come to life here. Arthur Rackham's illustrations for Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Undine have also entered the visual film aesthetic. The mood of the film is very close to Andersen's mermaid fairy tale. However, there are some differences between fairy tales and film in the immediate course of events: The framework story in the carriage is fictitious in the film. In the film, the world of the mermaids and the sea king is less organized in a human-hierarchical manner than Andersen portrays - in the film this world remains a secret, a beautiful, but misunderstood way of nature. In the film, the witch belongs to the world of the land and the people, in Andersen it is a sea witch. Russalochka does not lose her voice with the witch - as with Andersen - but her magical green hair. When the girl's heart threatens to break, there is no request from the other sea mermaids to kill the prince to save the mermaid. However, the mermaid also saves the prince's life twice in the film: in the sea she protects him from drowning - as with Andersen - after the fight in the tournament she ensures that he is resurrected - the tournament is exclusively a film invention. The sacrifice of Sulpitius is a further filmic fairy tale supplement - while at the end the ideal form of existence of the little mermaid as a good air spirit corresponds again to the Andersen fairy tale.
synchronization
The German dubbing was done in the DEFA studio for dubbing in Weimar . Klaus Marschke wrote the dialogue . Gerhard Paul took over the direction .
| role | actor | German speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Mermaid | Viktoria Novikova | Elke Wieditz |
| princess | Galina Artyomova | Roswitha Marks |
| Sulpitius | Valentin Nikulin | Horst Kempe |
| Witch / landlady | Galina Woltschek | Brigitte Kreuzer |
| Knight, opponent of the prince, persecutor of the mermaids | Stefan Ilijew | Dieter Leinhos |
| Skipper | Mikhail Pugovkin | Horst lamp |
Reviews
“On the way in a stagecoach, a man tells a girl the fairy tale of the mermaid: The mermaid falls in love with a human prince who is not worth her love; after all, a fatherly protector saves them from dying by his own death. A multi-layered, poetic fairy tale film that accuses the cold heartedness and greed of the human world and pleads for love and understanding ... "
literature
- Hans Christian Andersen: The Little Mermaid in Collected Fairy Tales ; ed. and partly retransmitted by Floriana Storrer-Madelung; with an afterword by Martin Bodmer; Vol. 1, manesse-Verlag, Zurich 2002; ISBN 9783717510147
Web links
- The Little Mermaid at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The sad mermaid in the online film database
- The sad mermaid in the lexicon of international films
- The sad mermaid on kino-teatr.ru (Russian)
- The sad mermaid 9 film photos on fdb.cz
Individual evidence
- ^ The sad mermaid In: Eberhard Berger, Joachim Giera u. a. (Ed.): 77 fairy tale films - a film guide for young and old . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-362-00447-4 , pp. 205-208
- ↑ see the list under fairy tale film : Czech fairy tale film: The Little Mermaid and under the Czech film itself: The Little Mermaid
- ↑ Iwan Bilibin's illustration for Andersen The Little Mermaid from around 1920: Mermaid with a statue on the seabed
- ↑ Arthur Rackham, illustrations for Andersen's Little Mermaid from around 1905: two color images and four vignettes
- ↑ Paul Hey: The Little Mermaid - illustration from around 1920: a picture - oil on canvas
- ^ Edmund Dulac's illustrations for La Petite Siréne - Illustrations from 1911: six color illustrations
- ↑ This hair sacrifice is made by Andersen's mermaid sisters to the little mermaid. They give the sea witch her hair to get the senseless magic knife to save the little mermaid.
- ↑ The sad mermaid. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on December 27, 2017 .