Snow White and the Secret of the Dwarfs

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Movie
German title Snow White and the Secret of the Dwarfs
Original title Sněhurka a sedm trpasliku or Snehulienka or Sněhurka
Country of production ČSFR , Germany
original language Czech , German
Publishing year 1992
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK without age restriction
Rod
Director Ludvík Ráža
script Bernd Fiedler
production Marius Schwarz ,
Sabine Tettenborn
music Petr Hapka
camera František Uldrich
cut Gisela Haller ,
Cornelia Berger
occupation

Snow White and the Secret of the Dwarfs (also: Snow White and the Secret of the 7 Dwarfs ) is a fairy tale film from the cooperation between ČSFR and Germany . The first performance took place on November 5, 1992. It was produced by Omnia Film, Munich, and Eurokim, Bratislava, in collaboration with ZDF , Reteitalia and TVE . A DVD was released in 2004 by Media Cooperation One (MC-One). The film is also known under the titles Snehulienka in Slovakia , Sněhurka in the Czech Republic , Blanche Neige in France , Biancaneve in Italy and Snow White in the English-speaking world.

Grimm and Němcová

The film was based on motifs from the fairy tale Snow White by the Brothers Grimm , whereby the contexts of the Snow White fairy tale in the film are expanded by the fool's picture in the Czech Bajaja fairy tale by Němcová or by the Bajaja-analogue gardener picture of Grimm's Eisenhans fairy tale. In Kreutzwald's fairy tale The Princess of the Glass Mountain, there is already this connection between Snow White and the Prince of Fools, but with a different plot. The shape of the fools in the Snow White fairy tale furthermore reflects the fool role in the theater of Shakespeare .

actor

Natalie Minko plays an exuberant Snow White and embodies the Snow White-like border between child and woman. Natalie Minko looks like Roland Risse's Snow White picture that has come to life . Gudrun Landgrebe offers a convincing drama of the most beautiful but self-loving stepmother, who tremblingly fears the loss of the power of her beauty.

action

Departure

The court society has come together to bid a ceremonial farewell. The king goes to war as a crusader . The beautiful little daughter, Snow White, romps on the steps of the throne. Unsuspectingly, the little one wishes to go out into the big wide world with her father. The young jester adds sarcastic wit to the whole thing. The harmless question of who Snow White should play with without a father turns out threatening. The queen is not the real mother. There is almost pity for the beautiful ruler when Snow White publicly reviles her as a stepmother. But the fool is joking. When the king asks the fool for a final private conversation, some things become clear: this fool is a prince. And the king will relieve him of his role as a fool. But Prince Andreas refuses: His heart is here at the court. Snow White's father is very relieved that the prince is still a fool around the defenseless Snow White.

queen

As soon as the king is out of the country, the stepmother shows her true colors: covers are falling, the overwhelming beauty of the queen with her abundance of red hair is openly shining in splendor and glory. Festivals and tournaments are celebrated. Snow White is dancing and playing with the fool. The queen sees the beautiful child angrily. The queen confesses to the fool that she no longer wants to see the face whom she shouts “Snow White”. The princess should no longer enjoy court education. The gorge in the Bärenschlucht is chosen as a tent stay in the wilderness. The fool cleverly knows how to recommend himself as a suitable companion for Snow White with the queen.

Dwarfs

Far away in the empire, meanwhile, dwarves are developing their scientific inventions. You have an important gift for the king - an instrument of truth. In order not to appear despised at court as a little dwarf, they also constructed a messenger for their present - a mysterious black knight in black armor. After this mechanical miracle learns to walk and ride, it is sent to the king with the invention of the dwarves. This only meets the queen, who, however, insists on the handover of the gift in her claim to rule.

Forest

In the forest of Bärenschlucht, Snow White leads a happy life full of games. She learns to distinguish bird calls. Fool Andreas teaches Snow White to bake pancakes. Snow White is thoughtful - she is right to be suspicious of the stepmother's comforts. But otherwise she is wide awake: Snow White recognizes the completely unnatural dignity and energy of Andreas. During the blind man's cow game, the two recognize their love, which is sealed by a magical kiss.

mirror

In the castle, the black knight opened the gift from the dwarves to the queen. It's a truth mirror. The mechanism is centered in a sunflower crowning the mirror. Once a week the ruler can ask a question of the truth in the mirror. But the only truth that interests the beautiful woman - trembling eagerly - is the question of the power of her beauty: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful in the whole country?" The queen is addicted to the confirmation by the mirror with the answer: “Queen you are the most beautiful in the whole country.” The black, always armed knight is also drawn into the maelstrom. Instead of following the command of the dwarves to return to the dwarven kingdom immediately, the mysterious one pleases himself in tournament victories in honor of the evil queen. When the fool Andreas appears at the queen's court, the ruler sees something new: In Andreas' amorous eyes and on his kissed lips, the envious woman first reveals the growing beauty of Snow White. And the mirror confirms: "Queen, you are the most beautiful here, but Snow White is a thousand times more beautiful than you."

The black knight

When the envious woman knows about Snow White's beauty, she sends the black knight to Bear Canyon to kill the heir to the throne. The knight arrives at the camp, stuns Andreas, kidnaps the princess and finally wants to kill the girl in the forest. But the enigmatic knight is like a mixture of man and machine. When Snow White begs him, he pityingly lets her run away and returns to the queen with a hunted game. Here the knight tries to manipulate the mirror. The mirror says mechanically "Queen you are the most beautiful in the whole country". But the queen overhears him while screwing around. And she learns from the mirror that Snow White is alive and staying with the seven dwarfs.

The inventor

After a long walk through the wilderness, the girl has come to a strange place. Here is a person - at first glance it appears to be Andreas, but it is a mechanical doll. Startled, the girl flees into the abandoned house. Everything is strange here. Futuristic mechanics, technical constructions, water beds. The princess messes up a lot, bakes pancakes and eventually falls asleep. Snow White got into the dwarf's house. This is where the tinkerers and hobbyists are at home. Always in search of virtues, the dwarves feel called to come closer to the truth with mechanical technology. The dwarfs are astonished to find Snow White asleep. The happy little princess brings the all too tidy dwarf world into a vortex.

Snow White's mother

From the dwarfs, Snow White learns the story of her real mother - and the story of the snow, blood and ebony miracle of her birth. The precocious dwarfs warn Snow White about the stepmother. The stiff truth claim of the dwarfs, however, calls for contradiction. With a mechanical doll of the dwarfs, an artificial replica of the evil queen, Snow White is supposed to learn to guard against the enemy.

attacks

The queen sets off to the dwarf country dressed as a Chinese trader in a poisoned bodice. Meanwhile, Andreas finds the Black Knight in a strange condition. He is always oiling his knee joints. Then he collapses. The mechanics are broken, cogs break and Andreas helps a little dwarf out of his armor. Denying his form, the eighth dwarf enjoyed his success at court as a black knight. Remorseful, he sets off with Andreas to save Snow White from the Queen's intentions to murder. The attack with the bodice is thwarted by the seven dwarfs, but the queen is already on the move with poison and apple. Andreas and the dwarf's path runs underground. A corridor collapses and buries the eighth dwarf, but he pushes Andreas on alone. But when Andreas finally gets to the dwarfs, Snow White is poisoned and lies in the glass coffin. The prince keeps watch in mourning. He wants to touch Snow White one last time. He pulls her out of the glass, she spits out the apple and lives. Happy they fall into each other's arms. In the meantime the queen has again taken up her position in front of her mirror. Horrified, she sees the mechanics of the Black Knight scattered on the ground. Mad, she smashes the speaking mirror sun. Then the flaming hair of the beautiful burns to ashes, a priest leads the wicked away to a remote monastery.

Truth and mirror

Prince Andreas and Snow White say goodbye in the dwarf world. The truth was not in a straightforward, reflective answer. This insight leads the dwarfs to their dogmatic error of mirror construction: The truth lies in oneself and in living with one another. In this sense, the prince can play one last fool's game with his puppet mirror image constructed by the dwarfs. Snow White, adorned with the blood-red glitter of the dwarfs, and her Prince Andreas sailed on the mirror-smooth river, accompanied by the returned king, towards the truth of their happiness.

Staging of the three mirror worlds

Court and vanity

At the beginning of the film, the theatrical court ceremony around the throne presents itself like a backdrop . The rough walls show sparse Gothic tracery , but the colors are also reduced and are reminiscent of Piet Mondrian's dictum that only the basic colors red , blue and yellow could determine a person's mentally appropriate equipment. In the spirit of the Maltese crusaders, the court society is entirely in the Snow White colors of black and white with a little red, while the windows light up in pale blue and pale yellow, like light Art Nouveau glass. The color distribution shows a certain affinity for trendy Snow White pictures, e.g. For example, on the Snow White pictures by Willi Planck , on the mosaic-like pictures by Franz Jüttner , on Disney's blue-yellow Snow White costume and on Bess Living's glassy backgrounds. The film images, however, awaken such memories without sacrificing the minimalist film aesthetics of Snow White and the secret of the dwarfs even for the trendy Snow White image . The costumes are based on the Burgundian court fashion. After their gray shells fall, the beautiful red dress and the wonderful red hair of the stepmother in particular unfold an explosive shine in the barren environment, while Snow White's dress - as with Franz Jüttner, white and simple - is entirely in the service of a lily-like grace.

nature

The opposite world to the courtly stage is a forest and river landscape. Here green dominates and here is also the Bear Gorge, where Snow White and her Bajaja prince fall in love.

Dwarves and machines

Another pole is the futuristic science fiction world of the inventor dwarfs. The dwarf house as the world of the utterly different is filled with technical constructions, artificial human- imitating dolls and strange mechanics. The dwarfs sleep in turquoise waterbeds . The enthusiasm for technology of the seemingly rigid, truth-priestly dwarfs has something dead about it. In the futuristic, the old image of the ghostly dwarf world with its proximity to the underworld, from whose glassy mountain kingdom only Snow White returns. The artificial humans constructed by the dwarfs in the form of the stepmother and in the form of Prince Andreas reflect the mirror motif of the fairy tale. The artificial dolls themselves move the dwarf world into the atmosphere of dark inventions by artificial people at ETA Hoffmann and Villiers de L'Isle Adam

Mirror ways

The threefold experience of mirroring - the first in the envious vain gaze of the stepmother , the second in the hybrid art man of the dwarfs - closes in the third in the redeemed image of nature, the mirror in the water: The final image shows how Andreas, Snow White and the King in the mirror game drive away from water and light on the river.

Fabric and symbols

Moon and carbone stones

An important leitmotif in the film is the parable image of the moon for Snow White. The moon appears white and red against a black night sky and in its three forms: increasing, decreasing and full. The jewelry of Snow White with red stones is also profound, which cannot be purple rubies due to their blood-red color. Snow White wears garnet stones , hot also Bohemian Garnet and Arthurian cycle of legends be compared with the drop of blood of Christ: in a Czech version of Snow White from Moravia , where Snow White and the Marienkind occur in a fairytale mixed form, Snow White receives a grenade string and exceed thus risking their lives, the taboo , but on the other hand it also comes to itself.

Snow White and Prince Fool

The course of the plot is essentially based on the Snow White fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm . However, the mystery of Snow White's birth is only told in retrospect by the dwarfs. An important difference to the Grimm version is the introduction by Prince Fool Andreas. The love between Snow White and Andrew can grow through the presence of the prince, which explains its importance for Snow White's rescue. With the figure of the fool, fairytale motifs by Božena Němcovás Prince Bajaja are actually mixed into the Snow White fairy tale. And this is also confirmed here by explicit film quotes from the Prince Bajaja film adaptation: Here as there, the blind-cow game is the key to the knowledge of love, and in both films a prince in the disguise of a fool grows beyond himself . The connection between Snow White and an unjustly mocked young prince draws on Kreutzswald's fairy tale How a King's Daughter Sleeped for Seven Years and on the Swedish folk tale The Princess on the Glass Mountain . However, the course of action in these fairy tales is different. In Kreutzwald, the fairy tale begins with Snow White's apparent death, from which she is then freed by a Prince Bajaja by climbing the Glass Mountain, and the Swedish fairy tale initially determines an Eisenhans story . In the film, however, the vivacious fool is there right at the beginning of the Grimm fairy tale and on guard against the intrigues of the stepmother.

Reviews

“Disappointing remake of the fairy tale about Snow White, the seven dwarfs and the intrigues of the evil stepmother, provided with an overly constructed philosophical superstructure. The joy of storytelling rarely flares up, the actors play wooden, the set is loveless. ” Lexicon of international film

literature

  • Božena Němcová : Prince Bajaja. In: Karel Jaromír Erben , Božena Němcová: fairy tales. illustrated by Josef Lada , translated by Günther Jarosch and Valtr Kraus. Albatros-Verlag, Prague 2001, ISBN 80-00-00930-7 , pp. 86-95.
  • Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm : Snow White . In: Carl Helbling (ed.): Children's and house fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. two volumes. Manesse, 2003; Volume 1: ISBN 3-7175-1162-9 and Volume 2: ISBN 3-7175-1164-5 .
  • How a king's daughter slept for seven years. In: Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald : Estonian fairy tales. Translated from Estonian by Ferdinand Löwe. Perioodika Verlag, Tallinn 1981, DNB 830995838 , pp. 161-171;
  • Snow White and the twelve miners. In: Samo Czambel (ed.): The golden woman. Slovak fairy tale collection. Altberliner Verlag, Berlin 1979.
  • The princess on the glass mountain. In: Nordic folk tales. 1st part: Denmark / Sweden. translated by Klara Stroebe. Eugen Diederichs-Verlag, Jena 1922, pp. 262–275;

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Roland Risse (1853–1887): Oil painting: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; from 1868. (Oil on canvas, 68.5 × 104 cm.) surlalunefairytales.com
  2. ↑ Willy Planck (1870–1956): Six pictures of Snow White : 1.  Snow White's mother sits at the window and pricks her finger . 2.  The wicked stepmother in front of the mirror . 3.  Snow White kneels in front of the hunter and asks for his life . 4.  Sleeping Snow White is found by the dwarfs . 5.  The wicked stepmother brings the poisoned apple to Snow White . 6.  Snow White comes back to life . - eu.art.com. The pictures were taken around 1899.
  3. ↑ Snow White Pictures by Franz Jüttner: The Stepmother and Snow White in the Forest
  4. ↑ Bess Livings: Snow White, surlalunefairytales.com
  5. ↑ Ludvík Ráža is a purist of fairy tale films: In barren landscapes, the viewer's gaze is directed entirely to the representation of the plot: Ludvík Ráža prefers such rough backgrounds in his fairy tale film The Seven Ravens
  6. ↑ cf. z. B. the motif of the dwarfs in the underworld in Die Unterirdischen. In: Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald : Estonian fairy tales. translated from Estonian by Ferdinand Löwe. Verlag Perioodika, Tallinn 1981, pp. 236–242 or the Snow White variants in which the king's daughter sleeps in a mountain of glass like in a mountain that has been consecrated to the dead. For the latter, see Ernst Böken: Snow White Studies - Seventy-five Variants in the Stricter Sense. Leipzig 1910.
  7. ↑ z. B. think of the androids from ETA Hoffmann The Sandman or Villiers l'Isle Adam The future Eve
  8. ↑ There can only be an error in the synchronization process of the film
  9. ↑ Kurt Derung: Märchenlexikon.at - A Snow White variant in “Czech from Moravia” shows this figure: It is “connected to the Marienkind , orphan girl among the robbers, finds a dusty crucifix in the forbidden room , denies it to the old woman, receives one Grenade cord ; Ring, shoes, hairpin. "
  10. ↑ Snow White and the Secret of the Dwarfs. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  11. ↑ The otherwise very qualified film comments in this encyclopedia are unfortunately very inaccurate in this case - the echoes of modernity in Snow White and the mystery of the dwarfs are misunderstood as loveless equipment - as if every fairy tale film had to appear in Victorian velvet and silk costume. The assessment criteria sound arbitrary and obscure this interesting possibility of a Snow White interpretation. On the other hand, there is actually something that can be criticized in this film adaptation of Snow White: The stepmother's attack with the poison comb is omitted, which makes the end of the film appear to have been knitted with a hot needle. Even the all-too-punctual appearance of Snow White's father when the danger has been overcome seems a little arbitrary. Mixing up garnet and ruby ​​is a gross mistake that can distort the meaning; and the final music with the song This is Heaven by Kristine Frey, which doesn’t want to fit in the slightest with the consistently medieval-looking score by Petr Hapka , should seem contemporary, but remains a strange stylistic break . - These elements explain the harsh criticism that Snow White and the Secret of the Dwarfs had to accept.
  12. ↑ Here, as in the film, only two temptations by the evil stepmother appear - first Snow White is poisoned with a comb and then the deceptive apple follows - the Grimm episode with the bodice is missing. In the film, however, the action with the comb is omitted.