Frog Prince (1991)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Žabí král / Frog King |
| Country of production | ČSFR , Germany |
| original language | Czech |
| Publishing year | 1991 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Juraj heart |
| script | Bernd Fiedler |
| production | Roman Bartoníček |
| music | Zdeněk Merta |
| camera |
Jiří Macháně , Vladimir Krepelka , Vladimir Murat |
| cut | Jan Svoboda |
| occupation | |
| |
Froschkönig is a Czechoslovakian - German fairy tale film by Juraj Herz from 1991 with Iris Berben and Michael Degen as the royal couple and Michal Dlouhý and Linda Rybová as the prince and princess. The plot is based in a modernized form on the fairy tale The Frog King or the iron Heinrich of the Brothers Grimm .
action
A king and his queen have three daughters. According to the prophecy of a fairy, a monster would rise out of the water and flood the whole country with a flood of tears if the king's daughters did not walk in the order of their birth and every 13 months before the altar. The eldest princess is already married, the marriage of the second-born is imminent. Numerous aristocratic guests arrive for this occasion. Including a prince who has already broken the hearts of several ladies. He has heard that the youngest of the three princesses is particularly beautiful. However, this is anything but interested in marriage. She would much rather be a man, which is why she always walks around dressed as a boy. Her behavior also leaves a lot to be desired, which is why her tutor Hippolytus urges the king and queen to be allowed to draw up a strict education plan for the princess. But the royal couple are still indulgent.
The prince arrives at the palace for the wedding ball. Rose, the princess's maid, has a joke and describes the princess to Heinrich, the prince's servant, as an ugly girl with a big nose and a limping gait. The prince is accordingly surprised by the lovely appearance of the princess when she splits his arrow while archery. In a subsequent hunting party, they ride side by side to the benefit of the royal couple. In a remote forest, the prince wants to kiss the princess. However, she slaps him in the face and rides away. Meanwhile, the prince sits down at the foot of a fountain that is fed by a small waterfall in a ravine. When he falls asleep, the fairy of the fountain appears. She announces that she will turn him into a frog if he breaks another heart or if just another tear is cried for him. Only the love of a faithful woman can then redeem him. When the prince wakes up, he thinks he has only had a bad dream and therefore does not take the fairy's words seriously.
Back at the castle, the princess is still outraged that the prince wanted to kiss her. Rose finally makes it clear to the princess that she has fallen in love with the prince. As a result, the princess is changed. At another dance rehearsal, to everyone's astonishment, she appears in a white dress. At the wedding ball she again agrees to dance with the prince. A countess, who had hoped the prince would ask her to dance, looks on in disappointment. When the prince wants to kiss the princess in the garden, she runs away again. The next day the prince is drawn back to the well in the forest. Surprisingly, the Countess also arrives there. Spurred on by their pointed remarks, the prince falls back into his old self as a womanizer and gives her a kiss. The princess, who has followed the prince, sees how he kisses the countess and runs away crying. When the prince drinks from the well, the fairy appears and pushes him into the water. The prince instantly transforms into a large frog. When he does not return to the castle, the princess reproaches herself for always harshly rejecting him. Still, she believes that one day the prince will come back to her. She therefore rejects any other prince who is presented to her as a potential husband.
Just before the 13 months have passed since the wedding ball, the princess, as so often before, goes to the fountain in the forest with a golden ball. When she accidentally throws the ball into the well and starts crying, the frog appears. He brings the ball back to her from the bottom of the well, but demands something in return. He wants to dine next to her in the castle, sleep in her bed and receive a kiss from her. The princess gives him her promise and hurries away with the bullet. The frog enters the castle's fountain through a river and as a stowaway in a carriage. When, on the evening when the 13 months are over, the people with torches and pitchforks in front of the castle demand that the princess be forced to marry in order to avert the prophesied calamity, the frog appears before the people and the nobility. He demands that the princess keep her promise. She gives in, lets him dine next to her and leads him to her bedchamber. There she forces herself to kiss the frog. At that moment, lightning flashes over the lock and the clock strikes midnight. The frog has become a prince again. Fireworks begin and the people cheer. The next day, the prince and princess happily drive away in a carriage.
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The shooting took place in what is now the Czech Republic , where, among other things, the Buchlovice Castle was used as a location.
Froschkönig was shown in Germany for the first time in November 1991 at a film festival in Essen . On December 25, 1991, the film was first broadcast on German television by ZDF . The fairy tale film was released on DVD on August 19, 2004.
Reviews
According to the lexicon of international films , Froschkönig offers mostly "boring entertainment". The scenes are "too clean and clear [...] to be able to atmospherically capture the essence of the fairy tale". Prisma described the fairy tale film adaptation as “good takeaway food” that could come up with “well-known cast”. It is also to be appreciated that the film was made as a co-production with the Czechs, "who have set standards in children's and fairy tale films". For TV Spielfilm it was a "[m] odernized, but loveless retelling of the Grimm fairy tale". TV Movie , on the other hand, rated the film as "[m] odern funny" .
The theologian and psychoanalyst Eugen Drewermann found the scene in which the princess throws the golden ball against the mirror and it splinters into thousands of pieces, better psychologically presented than that scene with the Grimms. In his opinion, it is not the image of the frog that has to be destroyed, but first and foremost the image of the princess, since she only played everything for the frog. She has to change herself and should no longer see herself as “the King's daughter”.
Web links
- Frog King in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Frog King at filmportal.de
- Pictures of the film on cinema.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Iris Berben, Christoph Amend: One year - one life . 1st edition, Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-596-19540-4 , p. 109.
- ↑ cf. csfd.cz
- ↑ cf. maerchenfilm.info.
- ↑ a b Frog King. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 19, 2020 .
- ↑ cf. prisma.de
- ↑ cf. tvspielfilm.de ( Memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ cf. tvmovie.de ( Memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Eugen Drewermann : Landscapes of the soul or: How we become man and woman. Grimm's fairy tales interpreted in terms of depth psychology . Patmos Verlag, 2015, p. 511.