We Are All a Part of the Neverending Story

 Today was another adventure. A quest, if you will. I went to Swansea to see the film The Neverending Story on the 40^th anniversary of its release.

This was an adventure for me because it involved travel and planning. It would not have been possible a year ago. But it is possible now because I am growing and changing and learning independence. Two years ago, the Vue Cinema in Swansea was showing Matthew Bourne’s spectacular version of The Nutcracker in December, and I was DESPERATE to go but I could not conceive of any way to get there. Swansea might as well have been the moon. It felt like the most impossible task. Thankfully my friend Jo stepped up and offered me a lift and I got to go, but I remember being so lost and confused as we walked from the restaurant to the cinema. But then there at the cinema I made my first connection that became the spark of independence for me—I recognized where we were. I had been there before. I could see the Crunchie Bridge and the arena where I had gone to Comic Con in April. I recognized the multi-story carpark that my friend Helen parked in when she picked me up to go to Comic Con. I had just found my first landmark. And so today I used that same landmark as a homing beacon—I confidently walked toward the arena and found the cinema. I even had to time to scout out the location of the hotel I booked to stay in in February when I go see Bowling for Soup and Wheatus. Yup, another adventure to look forward to.

 Now onto the film.

First off, I would like to say that I expected it to be heaving with people as it is summer hols and kids are out of school. I also expected a large population of aging geeks like myself there for the nostalgia factor. Well, there was one of each—a dad about my age and his son. And that’s it.  Also, they shared a popcorn and left half of it (who leaves half of a popcorn that costs an outrageous £6.50??? I had mine nearly eaten by the time the adverts and trailers were done. I wasn’t wasting £6.50 worth of popcorn, My mama didn’t raise no fool.) Sorry, I digress.

 Onto the film.

It was just as good as I remember as the effects—a terrific mix of puppets and animatronics and forced perspective—really held up. Give me practical effects instead of CGI any day. Also did you know that Falkor the Luck Dragon, the Rockbiter, G’mork the evil beast of darkness and the narrator were all voiced by Alan Oppenheimer? He was also the voice of Skeletor from He-Man!! And in the scene in the bookshop where Bastian steals the magic book the grumpy shopkeeper mentions both The Wizard of Oz and the giant squid attacking the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea both which have featured heavily in my life recently.

But the main thing I want to talk about is how I viewed this film through the lens of grief.

The obvious bit to talk about (and the bit that traumatized us all as kids) is Artax in the Swamps of Sadness. The line that really struck me was the line Bastian reads from the book:

Everyone knew that whoever let the sadness overtake him would sink into the swamp.

I think about this a lot. Those early days after Spiderman shuffled off this mortal coil were like drowning in treacle. There were months that I was barely keeping my head above water. It hurt to breathe, and I sincerely just wanted to stop taking in oxygen if it meant that the pain would disappear. But like Atreyu said to Artax: I understand, it’s too difficult for you. People acknowledged my pain (though a few unhelpful arseholes suggested I should be “over it” by now) and when I could no longer bear the weight of grief, I was so lucky that friends and customers and the lovely Welsh community lifted me up like Falkor and cleaned me up and tended my wounds.

It made me really think today because I have lived in the depths of despair, it is very easy to give up like Artax. It takes far more effort to stay and fight and live. And like Atreyu, having lost my faithful companion I know I must still go on my quest. I must still do what I have been called to do—save my corner of the world through Love and Light and not let Darkness prevail. Fantasia still needs me.

When the Rockbiter has that heart-breaking speech, I really felt that.

They look like big, good, strong hands. Don't they? I always thought that's what they were. My little friends. The little man with his racing snail, the Nighthob, even the stupid bat. I couldn't hold on to them. The nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed.

I still carry a lot of guilt that I didn’t see that Spiderman was so ill. Maybe we could have saved him if he just spoken up and told me how bad he felt. The Nothing really did pull him right out of my hands.

I was also struck by the line by Urgl (Engywook’s wife) when she had brewed the healing potion full of nasty bits for Atreyu. She asks him if he is still in pain. He replies that it still hurts a little, but it’s alright. Then she said something that really spoke to me:

It has to hurt if it’s to heal.

Grief hurts. It rips at your heart like G’mork’s fangs. But pain is how we know we are still here. Pain is how we know we have lost something precious. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. Pain lets us know we are still alive. When you cease to feel then you cease to live. My pain was so great because my love was so great. And as awful as it is, you have to go through it. You endure the suffering and the despair, and you keep moving forward through the Swamps of Sadness. That is how you survive. I will always have a dark hole in the centre of my heart, but I am building layers of Light around it to cushion the sharp scratch of grief.  Those people who are the most successful after their spouse dies are the ones that keep moving, keep questing. If you stand still and only dwell on the great injustice of your loss then you risk forgetting what that person stood for, their hopes and dreams. If you can only look backwards then you cannot see how to bring their Light forward, how to continue their hopes and dreams. How to make the world better in their name and carry on their goodness. If you stay in the past, then you will die. I mean, we all will physically die. But your heart will die if you lose hope.

When Spiderman died the world was full of THE NOTHING. Everything looked grey and hazy and had no meaning. All joy was gone.

Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?

G'mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.

Atreyu: What is the Nothing?

G'mork: It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world.

And so, I have made the decision to not let the emptiness destroy me. That I will not lose hope. I will not forget our dreams. I will not let the Nothing engulf me. I will choose to rebuild Fantasia. I will choose to build a good life. I will bring the memory of the past forward and continue questing. I will keep his memory alive and like Bastian I will make many other wishes and have many other amazing adventures before I leave this world . . . But that's another story.

Be Less, Do Less

 Hello lovelies! I am still looking at ways I want to be better in the new year. But as the title suggests I am still rather busy and struggling with time and energy management. 

The problem is that I LOVE to DIY. If I see something in a shop that can be made, then I  make it. I pride myself on making it myself for less. It is one of my superpowers. But I am also TIRED. 

And so part of my resolution this year is that I do not have to do it all, especially if I am doing other creative things. 

1. IT'S OK TO OUTSOURCE

Since the Amazing Spiderman died I have struggled with energy management since it falls to me to do EVERYTHING. I try to do a lot of pre-portioning foods like kale or broccoli so I can just grab-a-green-and-go. I had been using plastic ziplock type bags with a slide lock, but they were wearing out and I didn't want to just keep using and throwing away bags with such frequency (see number 2 on my resolutions today) and so I thought I could make some cloth reusable bags.

I wanted them to have that food grade wipe clean PUL liner but that stuff is EXPENSIVE. I found a half metre of the fabric on sale for £15 (Ker-ching!) and then I would need to factor in outer fabric, velcro if I chose to add that, plus time and energy. I looked at my life and just thought I can't pull blood from a stone. I am currently making storytelling props for the shop's Youtube Channel and rehearsing my lines, getting ready to film and then edit and there just is nothing left in the creative tank. So i decided to OUTSOURCE. I bought some on Etsy from EMMA MARY BAGS N BOBS. It kind of hurt my heart to let someone else make these, but it would have cost me that much to make them myself and now I don't have to.

They are adorable with cute fabric and are perfect for dividing greens into portions in the fridge. And they are wipe clean as well as washable. 

So what have I been making instead? An apple tree, a baker's oven (complete with felt loaf of bread on a wooden paddle) converted from a Troll Bridge leftover from a previous storytelling  and a piece of cloth that looks both like feather bedding and snowflakes when you shake it. Can you see why I didn't have time to make those bags myself? And that's OK.

These leads me into resolution 2:

2. LESS SINGLE USE PLASTIC AND WASTE

I am already doing that with the lovely reusable bags. However, starting this month there are changes to our waste/recycling collection and I want to improve. 

Previously our collection alternated--one week recycling pickup and the next week black bag non recycled waste pickup. But starting at the end of January, recycling is picked up every week and black bag only every three weeks (basically once a month). Normally, it takes me 3-4 weeks to fill up a black bag. But now I really want to concentrate on stretching myself to see how long I can go before I have to put out a black bag. Can I go six weeks (two pickup cycles?) Can I stretch to nine weeks (three pickup cycles?) 

Our recycling is even better than it used to be. Many more things are accepted locally to fill the blue recycling bags and now large supermarkets like Tesco have collections for things like crisp packets and certain plastic food bags that can't be recycled kerbside. 

I would love to be able to buy more naked fruit and veg, but it is not always available or affordable. Broccoli I can get plastic free, but kale I cannot. Kale comes in a crinkly plastic bag that can't be recycled so I try to use them as a bin liner in the bathroom before it goes into the black bag. 

Also when you try to throw away crinkly plastic bags they will not scrunch. Or rather they won't stay scrunched. This means that they take up a lot of space (very light air-filled space) but space none the less in your black bag filling it up quicker. The trick is take one minute to cut it into strips so it takes up less space. Another trick is to designate one crinkly bag as the "fill bag" and put all your strips into it before you put it in the black bag. 

And the last resolution for the day is:

3. ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES

Let's be honest--the Amazing Spiderman was my EVERYTHING. We had lots of fun experiences over the years, but now I need to do them differently. Now I do them on my own (which is not as bad as i thought it might be. I was afraid I would look like Billy-No-Mates, but truthfully--nobody cares) and some I do with my FRAMILY. 

I got some birthday and Christmas money and so I have bought myself tickets to have a variety of experiences throughout the year. I will see three NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE at the cinema by myself (The Crucible, Othello and a play called Good starring David Tennant) and two comedians at the LYRIC THEATRE (Rich Hall and Mark Steel) with my Stand Up Comedian Friend (and Spiderman's former supervisor) Bettina. I also have tickets to see the Peatbog Faeries in concert. I have tickets to Swansea Comic Con with my Geek Friends the FT Gang and have already started going out with my Cinema Friend Pearl--we went out on Monday night to film club at the Lyric to see The Muppets Take Manhattan. 

That's all I have time for today as I need to finish making props so i can go and do a dress rehearsal for the storytelling. 

I hope you have lots of fun this year and don't feel like you have to do it all by yourself. 

Fairy Tale Friday--Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney, 1937)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

We are to the end of our Fairy Tale Friday look at Snow White. Today we will look at the 1937 Disney film. Chronologically, it should have come earlier, but I wanted to save it for last due to its significance. For many of you, this film was the gateway to a Disney obsession. While I can agree it was visually spectacular (and it truly is—when you think of all those choppy/jerky Betty Boop cartoons, they were only a few years before this) I have never liked the passivity of the heroine waiting (and doing nothing but housework and sighing) until her Prince comes.

The following information all comes courtesy of Wikipedia:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was to be the first full-length cel animated feature in motion picture history. His brother and wife tried to talk Walt out of it. He had to mortgage his house to help finance the film's production, which eventually ran up a total cost of $1,488,422.74, a massive sum for a feature film in 1937. But it clearly was worth it as it was a massive success.

The film itself was released in Los Angeles in 1937, followed by a nationwide release on February 4, 1938. This was one year before The Wizard of Oz. Some interesting Oz trivia: The voice of Snow White Adriana Caselotti had an uncredited role in The Wizard of Oz. She provided the voice of Juliet during the Tin Man's song, "If I Only Had a Heart", speaking the line, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" More Oz trivia: (because I will shoehorn Oz into any conversion) the slinky wicked queen in her cowl and crown was an early costume design for the witch in Oz based on the success of Snow White. Gale Sondergaard did a screentest as a slinky sexy witch but opted out when they decided to make her ugly.  

It was nominated for Best Musical Score at the Academy Awards in 1938, and the following year,  Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar for the film. This award was unique, consisting of one normal-sized, plus seven miniature Oscar statuettes.  

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the National Film Registry. Whether I like it or not, it is a game changer. 

Another bit of interesting trivia: The dwarfs’ names were chosen from a pool of about fifty potentials, including Jumpy, Deafy, Dizzey, Hickey, Wheezy, Baldy, Gabby, Nifty, Sniffy, Swift, Lazy, Puffy, Stuffy, Tubby, Shorty, and Burpy.

Below is a summery courtesy of Wiki. I will insert comments and video clips into it.

Snow White is a lonely princess living with her stepmother, a vain Queen. The Queen worries that Snow White will be more beautiful than her, so she forces Snow White to work as a scullery maid and asks her Magic Mirror daily "who is the fairest one of all." For years the mirror always answers that the Queen is, pleasing her. Note: I admit I did not re-watch this one in its entirety, but I have no memory as to where her father is meant to be. I presume dead. The film opens with an illuminated manuscript which basically says exactly what Wiki does above but mentions her father not at all.  

One day, the Magic Mirror informs the Queen that Snow White is now "the fairest" in the land; on that same day, Snow White meets and falls in love with a prince who overhears her singing. Note: I do remember being in awe of the mirror but think Snow White herself was a bit of a drip.

Watch the Magic Mirror scene here: 

Here we also see Snow White in her very ragged dress (well done) and a pair of rough wooden clogs that don't make a clip clop noise which annoyed me. She is so good and sickly sweet it made me feel like I might go into a diabetic coma. Also all those pigeons would be crapping all over her wishing well if this was real. She does seem to have quite a lot of lippy on but then so does the Prince. 

The jealous Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her. She further demands that the huntsman return with Snow White's heart in a jewelled box as proof of the deed. However, the Huntsman cannot bring himself to kill Snow White. He tearfully begs for her forgiveness, revealing the Queen wants her dead and urges her to flee into the woods and never look back. Note:  I liked that the Queen presented the Huntsman with a box with a heart with a dagger through it for a lock that she must have either just had laying about as a sinister object or had it specially made for just such an occasion as this. 

It is nice to see the Huntsman’s reluctance. Several films, he is in cahoots with the Queen (or under her spell sexually) It does feel very sinister seeing the sunlight glint off his knife and his shadow fall over her as he creeps up to kill her. The lost in the woods scene also made an impression on me as a child. I found it very frightening and disconcerting.  

Watch it here: 

What I noticed from re-watching this scene is that she has changed clothes. She has been a scullery maid in literal rags with wooden clodhoppers on her feet but a moment ago, but to go out and pick flowers in the woods she gets spiffed up in the dress we think of as a Snow White dress (no holes) and heeled shoes (no clogs). That makes no sense. 

 Lost and frightened, the princess is befriended by woodland creatures who lead her to a cottage deep in the woods. Finding seven small chairs in the cottage's dining room, Snow White assumes the cottage is the untidy home of seven orphaned children. Actually, the cottage belongs to seven adult dwarfs—named Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey—who work in a nearby mine. Note: Here we have the famous Heigh-Ho song. Many years ago we had a cassette of weird and wonderful cover versions of Disney Songs and there was a great, gritty cover of the Heigh-Ho song by Tom Waits. (would you expect anything less?) Listen to it below:

 

 Returning home, they are alarmed to find their cottage clean and suspect that an intruder has invaded their home. The dwarfs find Snow White upstairs, asleep across three of their beds. Snow White awakens to find the dwarfs at her bedside and introduces herself, and all of the dwarfs eventually welcome her into their home after she offers to clean and cook for them. Snow White keeps house for the dwarfs while they mine for jewels during the day, and at night they all sing, play music, and dance. Note: I know cooking and cleaning are important, but why does it all fall to her? Their house was a mess when she arrived and then they happily go on being lazy now that they had a dolly bird to pick up after them. Even as a child I felt like she aught to make them do their share of the work since they lived there too. Also as a child you think "wouldn't it be great to have woodland animals help you do your chore," but as you get older all you think is, "that is so unsanitary." 

Watch Whistle While You Work here:

Meanwhile, the Queen discovers Snow White is alive when the mirror again answers that Snow White is the fairest in the land and reveals that the heart in the box is that of a pig. Using a potion to disguise herself as an old hag, the Queen creates a poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into the "Sleeping Death," a curse she learns can only be broken by "love's first kiss," but is certain Snow White will be buried alive. Note: I find this scene genuinely scary, even now. I have seen many transformation scenes, but this is one of the best. I love the way the spell was cast--both with witchy stuff and science (she has a whole chemistry lab in her lair). I love the bit in the transformation where her hands grow old and a flash of lightning reveals the bones inside for a brief moment. Also, the way lightning makes the potion go from still to sparkling made me laugh.

Watch (and shudder) here:

While the Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away, the animals are wary of her and rush off to find the dwarfs. Faking a potential heart attack, the Queen tricks Snow White into bringing her into the cottage to rest. The Queen fools Snow White into biting into the poisoned apple under the pretence that it is a magic apple that grants wishes. As Snow White falls asleep, the Queen proclaims that she is now the fairest of the land. Note: Trust the animals. They can see through her disguise and try to peck her death in a scene reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock. The thing that made me laugh out loud though, was in between all the fuzzy forest creatures there were a pair of vultures sitting in a tree. Then the old hag pulls a Sanford and Son, and clutches her chest and fakes a heart attack.  Snow White is so gullible here and simple-minded, it makes my head hurt. The old hag is clearly using her evil voice in between bouts of her old helpless lady voice, but our heroine does not pick up on those subtle clues. 

Watch the poison apple bit here:

 The dwarfs return with the animals as the Queen leaves the cottage and give chase, trapping her on a cliff. She tries to roll a boulder over them, but lightning strikes the cliff before she can do so, causing her to fall to her death. Note: Though I am all for restorative justice in my real life, I find I really like a sense of punishment and justice in my fairy tales. This is a great “gets what is coming to her” ending. The vultures are here again and she runs away, gets trapped on a conveniently place cliff top situated in running distance of the forest, and tries to use leverage to release a boulder down on the dwarfs below. Instead, lightning cracks her cliff and she falls into the abyss with the boulder falling on her instead like Wile E Coyote. 

The dwarfs return to their cottage and find Snow White seemingly dead, being kept in a deathlike slumber by the poison. Unwilling to bury her out of sight in the ground, they instead place her in a glass coffin trimmed with gold in a clearing in the forest. Together with the woodland creatures, they keep watch over her. A year later, the prince learns of her eternal sleep and visits her coffin. Saddened by her apparent death, he kisses her, which breaks the spell and awakens her. The dwarfs and animals all rejoice as the Prince takes Snow White to his castle.

Watch the ending here: 

That is the last of the Snow Whites. However, I will treat you next week to one last Snow White. A hilarious comedy song I stumbled across whilst writing this last post. Stay tuned next week for death by fruit.

 

Fairy Tale Friday--Snow White and the Huntsman (Charlize Theron, 2012)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

We are nearly to the end of our Fairy Tale Friday look at Snow White. Today we look at what was advertised to be a feminist film version of our tale entitled Snow White and the Huntsman starring Kristin Stewart as Snow White and Charlize Theron as the stepmother.

I can see why they promoted it as a feminist film—they tried to make it have overtones of women in power but in my opinion, it misses the mark. It opens with the powerful witch Ravenna (who sounds like she should have raven hair, but she is blond) tricking her way into the King’s heart. We see her tied up in a shack as if she is being held prisoner, but it is in fact all a ruse. The first glimpse we see of her is her bare foot in a shackle. My first thought was “How big are her feet??” and the answer is (according to Google) size 9.5 which feels very impressive since I am a size 3.5. But once she is back in the palace and all dressed up and out of her captive rags, she looks quite beautiful. She seems quite sweet, with a hint of nervousness as if she is worried what the country will think of her as she was only a poor captive who is marrying the King. This, in my opinion, in Theron’s best acting. Because on their wedding night she goes full on “evil voice” and announces that all men do is use, abuse and discard women. That happened to her before and she won’t let it happen again. Then she pulls out a huge bloody dagger and stabs him in the heart and she locks the young Princess in a dungeon. After that, Theron is either doing her whisper evil voice or shouty evil voice. It is a wonder she stayed so slim with all the scenery she chewed. Some of the makeup and effects are pretty good. We see her in various stages of old age makeup as her powers wax and wane. Sometimes she is young and fresh and bathing in some sort of milky liquid that looks suspiciously like paint and stealing the looks of young girls (played by Lily Cole) and sometimes she is all wrinkled and writhing on the floor in a weakened state of misery. The magic mirror was also interesting—a brass disc that turned into the melty men who oozed out of it and spoke to her.

Kristin Stewart who has been held in a dungeon for at least a decade and has lank greasy hairy and a dirty face and a tatty dress also has the most perfect blindingly white Hollywood teeth which were really distracting. All the dwarves (we will get to the problem with them in a minute) have various shades of “lived in” teeth. But she who has been held prisoner, suffers no decay. In the scenes where she has escaped and is getting increasingly muddier and dishevelled she still manages a subtle bit of lipstick. If her lips had been that shade the whole film you might think it was just rosy lips not lippy, but because several times she doesn’t have it on it is noticeable.

The problem with the dwarves is that they hired actual dwarves to do all the body shots (who were uncredited in the credits) and CGI’d full sized actor’s heads onto their bodies. ‘Nuff said.

Here is a summary by Wikipedia in which I will insert some comments.

While admiring a rose blooming in the winter, Queen Eleanor of the kingdom of Tabor pricks her finger on one of its thorns. Drops of blood fall onto the snow, and she wishes for a daughter as white as the snow, with lips as red as the blood, hair as black as a raven's wings and heart as strong as the rose. Note: One of the good things about this film is the cinematography. There are great scenes, including this one, of black trees, grey skies, white snow and blood or scarlet banners in a visual contrast. I liked how the blood active “plipped” and splashed onto the snow.

She gives birth to a daughter, Snow White, but falls ill and dies several years later. After her death, Snow White's father, King Magnus, and his army battle an invading dark army of demonic glass soldiers. Upon rescuing their prisoner Ravenna, the King becomes enchanted with her beauty and marries her. Note: The glass soldiers who shatter into shards of jet quartz are a decent CGI effect, but were a predicter of how many other noisy battles I would have to sit through. The King sees a shack where he finds Ravenna all shackled up and helpless with her size 9.5 feet. He is enchanted by her beauty but also he probably liked the feeling of being a rescuer/protector of women because they are the weaker sex.

Ravenna is in fact a powerful sorceress and the Dark Army's master. On their wedding night, Ravenna confesses there was a king much like Magnus that hurt her. She declares she cannot be a weak queen and kills Magnus before taking over the kingdom. Snow White's childhood friend William and his father, Duke Hammond, escape the castle but are unable to rescue her, and she is captured and locked away in a tower for many years. Note: Before Ravenna took over, we saw several childhood scenes between William and young Snow. They were best friends, playmates and probably promised in marriage to each other to seal a future alliance. There is a scene of them climbing an apple tree and him teasing her with an apple before biting it himself which is undoubtedly foreshadowing.

Watch the wedding night stabbing here: 

Tabor is ruined under Queen Ravenna's rule. She periodically drains the youth from the kingdom's young women in order to maintain a spell cast over her as a child by her mother, which allows her to keep her youthful beauty. Note: I was a little confused by this flashback scene—it may have been because I was worn out from all her evil voice shouting, but as best as I can understand, raiders were coming to their village to take pretty girls away (it was hard to tell as there was a long scene of banging/clanging sword fighting going on while they were talking) and her mother gifts her the gift of eternal youth so that she can somehow grow up and use that as a strength to defeat men. Who knows. But there was a nice echo in the magic potion of dropping three drops of blood into a milky cup which resembled the opening scene with the Queen pricking her finger.  

When her stepdaughter Snow White comes of age, she learns from her Magic Mirror that Snow White is destined to destroy her unless she consumes the girl's heart, which will make her immortal. Ravenna orders her brother Finn (Note: who has the worst bowl cut ever) to bring her Snow White's heart, but Snow White escapes into the Dark Forest, where Ravenna has no power. Note: The dark forest is like being on LSD. You hallucinate all sorts of scary stuff like tree branches turning into black snakes or birds trying to peck out your eyes after breathing some sort of swamp gas.

Watch the magic mirror scene here: 

Watch the dark forest drug trip here:

 Ravenna makes a bargain with Eric the Huntsman, a widower and drunkard, to capture Snow White, promising to bring his wife back to life in exchange. The Huntsman tracks down Snow White, but when Finn reveals that Ravenna does not actually have the power to revive the dead, the Huntsman helps Snow White escape. Finn gathers a band of men to find her, and the Duke and William learn that she is alive. William leaves the castle to find her, joining Finn's band as a bowman. Note: Despite being a drunkard who is dirty and dishevelled, Chris Hemsworth managed to look sexy in a rugged way with matching perfect teeth to Snow White. I guess only dwarves don’t have a dental plan.  

The Huntsman and Snow White leave the Dark Forest, where she saves his life by charming a huge troll that attacks them. They make their way to a fishing village populated by women who have disfigured themselves to make themselves useless to the Queen. Note: This bit was an interesting feminist concept to be judged by your character instead of appearance but would have liked to have seen it given more depth. Also, it stars Rachael Stirling (daughter of Diana Rigg) as the lead disfigured woman with some scars on her face but not really enough to make her that hideous.

 The Huntsman learns Snow White's true identity, and leaves her in the care of the women. He returns when he sees the village being burned down by Finn's men. Snow White and the Huntsman evade them and meet a band of eight dwarves. The blind dwarf Muir perceives that Snow White is the only person who can defeat Ravenna and end her reign.

As they travel through a fairy sanctuary, they are attacked by Finn and his men. Note: The fairy sanctuary is every bit as twee as you would expect—colourful creatures, hazy lighting, moss growing everywhere, twinkly fairy lights and a pure white stag with antlers so big he would never get in your front door if he came to visit in place of the more obvious white unicorn that is tamed by the pure female heroine.

Watch the white stage scene here: 

A battle ensues during which Finn, his men, and one of the dwarfs are killed, while William reveals himself and joins the group on their journey to Hammond's castle. Halfway there, Ravenna disguises herself as William and tempts Snow White into eating a poisoned apple. She flees when the Huntsman and William discover her. Note: This scene was great. I loved that it was the Queen disguised as William not an old crone that gave her the apple. She takes it from him as it harks back to a flirtation that had when she was a tomboy up a tree with him as children and it is truly a surprise when it turns out to be the witch.

Watch the poison apple scene here:

William kisses Snow White but she does not wake up (though no one notices the tear that comes from one of her eyes). Her body is taken to Hammond's castle. The Huntsman professes his regret for not being there to save her, as her heart and strength remind him of his late wife, Sara. He kisses her and does not notice a second tear fall from one of her eyes, as his kiss was second of true love needed. Snow White awakens and rallies the Duke's army to mount a siege against Ravenna.

The dwarves infiltrate the castle through the sewers and open the gates, allowing the Duke's army inside. Snow White confronts Ravenna, but is overpowered. Ravenna is about to kill her when Snow White uses a move the Huntsman taught her and mortally wounds Ravenna, defeating her for good. The kingdom once again enjoys peace and harmony as Snow White is crowned queen. Note: I was disappointed that she didn’t end up marrying the Huntsman as I was hoping this was a tale of bridging the class divide. But we know from the sequel (which bears quite a resemblance to Frozen) that she marries William.

For a laugh, watch an Honest Trailer here for the film and the sequel:

 

 

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for our penultimate blog about Snow White where we look at the Disney film.

 

Fairy Tale Friday--Mirror Mirror (Julia Roberts, 2012)

 Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

Today we look at a lushly costumed version of Snow White starring Julia Roberts entitled Mirror Mirror. I liked it because it was funny and the effects like the magic mirror were different than we have ever seen them—the mirror is like water and the stepmother steps through the liquid reflection and then emerges from a lake on the other side. There is also some interesting puppetry and stop-motion animation which lifts this film from the ordinary. The most striking aspect of the film were the stunningly outrageous costumes designed by Eiko Ishioka who created costumes for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This film was her last film, and she was nominated posthumously for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Most importantly, there is a strong and capable Snow White who learns to fight as well as having a strong moral centre.  This film was directed by Tarsem Singh who also directed the video for R.E.M.’s Losing my Religion. In an interview he says that he wanted the film to reflect that the stepmother was not bad, just terrible insecure.

Acting is interesting in this—Lily Collins (daughter of Phil Collins) tries hard to be both beautiful and have spunk. Armie Hammer (which just sounds like slightly off product placement for Arm & Hammer) is the prince who also has spunk and a bit of a twinkle and gets to play a dog. Julia Roberts has a lot of charisma and an accent that seems to fluctuate—she sounds posh and sort of British but then slips in to sort of nasal American when being sarcastic. But her timing is impeccable.

Thanks to Wikipedia for a summary in which I will insert comments in.

Note: This film begins with a stunning stop-motion animation with the baby being born and the wife dying in childbirth. We see the father raising the daughter and then remarrying. We see the new wife giving them matching crescent moon necklaces (this will be important later, oh best beloved) and lastly we see him go off to fight…where he was never heard from again so presumed dead. Watch the stunning animation here: (in the film it has a sarcastic voiceover from Julia Roberts but I like this silent version with a musical underscore better)

LINK TO VIMEO OPENING ANIMATION

A widowed King marries an evil witch named Clementianna, the most beautiful woman in the land. One day, the king leaves to fight an evil Beast that resides in the forest, but never returns; Clementianna rules in his absence, while confining her young stepdaughter, Snow White, to the palace. Note: We see here that she has kept her stepdaughter confined physically in the palace and mentally by belittling her in that mean girl way through humiliation which is always underscored with jealousy. There is a great scene of a game of human chess with the players all wearing fantastic hats all made like giant ships perched on bewigged heads. Here an older rich man tries to woo the stepmother, but she is having none of it as she wants a handsome toyboy not an older sugardaddy.

10 years later, Snow White desires to explore the kingdom and sneaks out. Walking through the forest, she meets the visiting Prince Andrew Alcott, who has been robbed by a band of Dwarves; she and the prince become smitten with each other. Snow White arrives in the town, and finds the people are destitute due to the Queen's heavy taxation. Note: She remembers the town when her father was alive as a place all in colour where people were always dancing and singing, but now it is all in sepia and everyone is poor due to the high taxation rate of the stepmother to fund her lavish lifestyle.

Meanwhile, Clementianna is introduced to Alcott and plans to marry him for his wealth. Note: There is a great scene where the stepmother goes through several torturous beauty treatments (many of which are real treatments) to look her best for the ball. Watch it here:

Clementianna throws a ball to woo the Prince, and Snow White secretly attends, planning to ask the prince to help her restore the kingdom. Note: It is a costume ball and the costumes are astounding. It is an animal theme, and the costumes are so ridiculously extravagant and yet you cannot stop looking. There is also a hint of Cinderella as she runs away from the ball. Watch it here:

The Queen notices them dancing and orders her manservant Brighton to take the princess into the forest and feed her to the Beast. Brighton leaves Snow White in the forest, and she flees the Beast, collapsing at the door to the Dwarves' hideout; the dwarves take her in and introduce themselves as Grimm, Butcher, Wolf, Napoleon, Half Pint, Grub, and Chuck. When Brighton collects more taxes levied by the Queen to pay for her expensive parties, the Dwarves rob him. Snow White takes the money and returns it to the townspeople, crediting the Dwarves, whom the people hail as heroes. Note: It is said that the Queen drove away anything deformed or ugly and so the dwarves were banished to the forest for being different and that the townspeople fear them due to their disability. They live as highwaymen in the woods and have created these enormous accordion pleat springy acrobatic trousers that make them look like fierce giants. Snow White gives them the credit for stealing the money and returning it to the village so that the townsfolk will see them as kind and not something to be afraid of. See them in their springy trousers here: 

Clementianna informs Alcott that Snow White is dead. Note: Here we have a scene where Julia Roberts gets to be prickly and funny. After the Prince confesses that he thinks Snow White is the most beautiful, she callously mentions she has been killed by the beast and tries to propose marriage. Watch it here:

When the Prince finds out that the bandits have robbed Brighton, he goes after them. In the forest, Alcott discovers that Snow White is alive and in league with the Dwarves, who have trained her in combat. Each believing the other to be in the wrong, Snow White and Alcott duel. Alcott returns to the Palace defeated and informs the Queen that Snow White is alive. Note: There is a montage where she learns to fight in her big white dress and then she gets a makeover and gets some snazzy wide legged trousers and a sword. Watch the fight scene here:

Clementianna enters her Mirror House, within which lives her reflection, the Mirror Queen. Clementianna has the Mirror Queen temporarily turn Brighton into a cockroach, and requests a love potion so she can make the prince fall in love with her. The potion turns out to be a 'puppy love' potion and the prince becomes devoted to her like a puppy dog. Under this spell, the prince agrees to marry her. Note: This scene is hilarious. It must have been so fun to film.

Using dark magic, the Queen attacks Snow White and the Dwarves with two giant marionettes; but Snow White defeats them by finding and cutting their strings. Note: This scene was incredible—the way the magic was wrought, the puppetry, the execution of the fight. It would have only made it better if Ray Harryhausen had some it as stop-motion animation. Watch it here:

On the day of her wedding, Clementianna arrives to find that Snow White and the Dwarves have robbed the party and abducted the Prince; for her inability to handle bandits and for lying about Snow White's death, the aristocrats demand the Queen be deposed. Back in the forest, Snow White manages to break the spell on Alcott with a kiss. Note: A nice gender swap twist here with her having to kiss him to break a spell. She is a bit nervous as it is her first kiss and despite wearing thick burgundy lipstick throughout the whole time she has been out fighting with the dwarves in the woods she suddenly needs makeup. Her lips go pale and one of the dwarves gives her some natural makeup by rubbing a strawberry that has miraculously grown in the dead of winter onto her lips and she is back to her deep burgundy lips.

Snow White encounters Clementianna, who sends the Beast after her. Prince Alcott tries to save Snow White, but the Beast captures her. However, the Beast hesitates in killing her and Snow White sees that it wears a necklace with a moon charm on it similar to the one the Queen wears. Snow White cuts the necklace off, breaking Clementianna’s spell, and restoring the Beast to its true form: Snow White’s father. Clementianna begins to age rapidly; the Mirror Queen explains this is the price for using dark magic.

Grateful to Alcott for his assistance, the king agrees to let him marry Snow White. At the wedding, a hooded crone appears and offers Snow White an apple as a wedding gift. At first, Snow White accepts the apple; but, as she is about to bite it, she realizes that the crone is Clementianna. Snow White cuts a piece from the apple and gives it to Clementianna, who reluctantly accepts it. The Mirror House shatters declaring it Snow White's story after all. Snow White and the Dwarves live happily ever after. Note: But not before Snow White and her friends break out into a Bollywood style closing number to a film that has not been a musical. I know. I am as puzzled as you are. Watch it here:

Bonus points if you noticed her Louisiana College coloured wedding dress. 

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for another film version of our classic tale.

 

Fairy Tale Friday -Snow White: A Deadly Summer (Maureen McCormick, 2012)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week because Halloween was Saturday, we decided to watch a horror film version of our classic fairy tale entitled Snow White: A Deadly Summer. I will be honest, this should really be titled Snow White: A Deadly Dullness, but we got a few (unintentional) laughs out of it.

It does bear some resemblance to our fairy tale. There is a young girl named Snow (a nickname she acquired because of a snowflake blankie she had as a baby), a clueless father, a stepmother who wants the father all to herself who talks to both her bathroom mirror and a small compact mirror so she can be evil away from home, seven “friends” and some woods.

Basically the plot is this: Teenage Snow (played by Shanley Caswell) is an unconvincing tearaway whose is doted on by her father Eric Roberts who you might remember as the Master in the Paul McGann’s eighth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who. Perhaps he regrets overacting in that and has decided to underact here to make up for that performance. Here, he appears to be played by a sleeping plank of wood phoning in his performance from a payphone from the 1980s. The stepmother Eve (geddit…like Eve with the apple)  is played by none other than Marcia Brady herself Maureen McCormick. She convinces her husband to send Snow away to a boot camp for delinquent kids that she seems to suspiciously know way too much about. Snow and the seven other campers are picked off one by one by a stranger (or is it??) in a hoodie in the woods and then ends with the most unbelievably trite “I cannot believe they went there” ending.

It is meant to be a horror film, but it is remarkably bloodless. It is full of continuity errors as well as cheap effects and costumes.  Supposedly it had a $1,000,000 budget which makes me wonder what they heck they spent the money on. All of the night scenes that happen in the woods for several days in a row show the same shot of a full moon partially covered by a rabbit shaped cloud and then all the all the actual night scenes with dialogue were filmed in the daytime with an unconvincing blue filter. If I were not teetotal, seeing that same full moon for several nights on the trot would have made an excellent drinking game.

It is a modern story, so no need for period costumes. No need for any costumes really. All the delinquent kids look like they were told “wear some jeans and a black t-shirt” because everyone looks like they dressed themselves. For the killer, just put on a hoodie.

It was directed by David DeCoteau who directed such classics as Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and my personal favourite 90210 Shark. Need I say more?

There wasn’t a cohesive summary so I have combined details from 2 reviews (COMINGSOON.NET and TAILSLATE.NET) which I will insert comments into. 

This Snow White is a rich girl named Snow Hoffman who is acting out because she doesn’t like her father’s  new wife, Eve. Apparently, she is a delinquent who is out of control. The audience only sees her as an unknowing accomplice to a stolen joyride with her boyfriend where she shouts “Woooo!” a lot. Eve wants Snow out of the picture, so after the troubled teen is party to grand theft auto, Snow’s father agrees with Eve’s suggestion of a 4-week discipline camp. She suggests this not because she cares anything for the girl’s well-being, but because her paranoia – represented, how else, by talking to herself in the mirror – has taken control and she needs to eliminate the threat. Note: I’m assuming Hoffman is her surname, since a sign reading it hangs up in her home—but Hoffman was also the surname used in the Sigourney Weaver version. Also, their house is just that sort of “we have so much money we have lots of white furniture we don’t clean, we just replace when it gets dirty” sort of look about it, including the most bizarre sculpture of a piece of driftwood wearing red high-heeled shoes. We see Eve giving herself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror (I mean we’ve all done that, right?) but her reflection talks back and tells her that she will never be truly loved unless Snow is out of the way. Every time she talked to herself we shouted “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” which also would have made an excellent drinking game. Maureen McCormick tries here—she does have a go at doing “crazy eyes” but I really miss the confidence and spunk she had as Marcia Brady.

Dragged off in the middle of the night, Snow then finds herself at Camp Allegiance along with seven other campers (Snow White and the Seven Delinquents). In charge is ex-Navy SEAL Colonel Hunter who takes great pleasure in whipping spoiled, selfish teens into shape to turn them into well-behaved and productive members of society. His plan for this is by having them do tons of push-ups and jumping jacks and some light manual labour. Unfortunately they will also be killed one-by-one. Note: Yes, this boot camp sends thugs to drag your wayward child away in the night while you sit on the white sofa and drink chardonnay and try to look like you are vaguely upset that your only daughter is being roughly manhandled, but instead look like you were thinking about what might be on television tonight. These are also the least impressive group of bad kids I have ever seen. They remind me of those Trixie Belden girl detective books where Trixie puts on mascara and eyebrow pencil as a disguise and no one recognises her because she looks like a “bad girl.” It is like what Jack Webb from Dragnet thought hippies were like. They are the least convincing, most bland white-bread “have you ever even MET a teenager???” group of kids I have ever seen.  They all are supposed to be bad-ass with excessive drinking and drug taking and car jacking and thieving, but they all look like they’d be too afraid to do any of those things. It reminds of this boy I knew at summer camp who, in an effort to try to be cool, endlessly whittered on about “having  a nic fit” (as if he were suffering from withdrawals from nicotine) which was just sad and laughable. There is one girl in the film who has a flask of brandy she stole from her mother to show she is heavy drinker from which she occasionally takes a tiny swig. She has some sort of twitchy heroin withdrawal for half a minute as well. We have been watching episodes of Law and Order from the mid  90s on DVD and let me tell ya—those kids know how to look tough and street smart. That TV show puts this film to shame.

But someone else is cutting in, killing the campers one by one (or two at a time when the chance presents itself). For some reason, Snow has dreams that predict these deaths. Not that this extraneous ability helps anyone all that much, other than providing a convenient excuse for badly shot murder scenes. The kills are just as poorly handled. They all happen in broad daylight. They’re all bloodless. The staging suggests a director who has never been behind a camera before. Note: This director has been behind a camera before but judging by the type of film he normally makes (soft porn to cheap schlock horror) staging doesn’t seem to matter. The slutty girl (There always is one. Here she looks like a bargain version of Mean Girl Regina George) gets strangled by her own gold chain, but the body has no markings or bruising on the neck. The smart one who is only pretending to be a wayward teen and is secretly an undercover reporter gets it in the shower and then appears as if someone wiped a french fry with ketchup on her face. On and on it goes. The schoolgirl detective one tells us that at this very same camp 30 years ago in 1987 a terrible murder happened, and the murderer escaped and was never seen again. Cue ominous music. There is also a scene where our protagonist is rescued by a wild woman with snaggly teeth who has been living in the woods in a little hut in easy walking distance from the main camp that the police have failed to notice for the last 30 years. She was there at the camp and a mean girl named Eve (Shock! Horror! The same as her stepmother!) murdered her boyfriend because he looked at another girl and then blamed her, so she ran off to live reasonably nearby as a wild woman. So now we know that the Hoodie Murderer is her STEPMOTHER! Gasp!!! We have the only scene actually shot at night where the stepmother gets a pep talk from her compact mirror and then lowers her hood and tries to kill Snow while her new delinquent boyfriend and the wild woman (who now has perfect teeth) fight her off and throw her over a cliff.

And then we have the ending. The terrible ending. The terrible-horrible-no-good-very bad ending. The ending that must be the first thing you are taught at film school not to use—it was all a dream. Because it turns out that  everything Snow had experienced had been a nightmare caused by a drug overdose. Regarding Eve, her father reveals to Snow that Eve committed suicide after being told that he wouldn't abandon Snow for her. Just like at the end of the film (not the book!) of the Wizard of Oz where they gaslight Dorothy into believing it was all a dream, she sees all the other “delinquent” kids, who were actually just kids in a psychiatric hospital and recognises them from her dream. Now they are all wearing jeans and white t-shirts to prove they are in a different setting than black t-shirt survival camp. Then the nurse comes in and SHOCK! HORROR! She looks just like her stepmother. She also has a hugh-jass needle because needles are scary, kids!

Comingsoon.net says And whoever said this movie is like “Children of the Corn Meets A Nightmare on Elm Street” needs their head examined and I would agree. Also the cover art features Snow in a sexy white dress covered in blood, red stilettos which would be impossible to wear in the woods and an axe which never features in the film.

Overall, this was terrible. But it did give us a few unintentional laughs.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a more conventional film starring Julia Roberts as the stepmother.

Fairy Tale Friday--Blancanieves (Maribel Verdú, 2012)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week we look at a cracking Spanish version made in 2012 that is the most original take on Snow White I have ever seen. It is set in 1920s Seville and centred on a female bullfighter. Did I also mention it is a silent black and white film? As a vegan, I was a bit worried about the bullfighting bit. I will admit, the film made it look more noble than it really is, but some of that is the time this was set in. It is a period piece after all. But it is clear from the filming and confirmed by the helpful “Making Of” extra that many of the scenes of bullfighting were filmed with Blancanieves and the bull acting separately and then the footage of the bull was overlaid on her as we view close ups of her face and the spiders on her eyes I mean long eyelashes and her swishy cape.

 The film was written and directed by Pablo Berger and was truly mesmerising to watch. According to trivia on IMDB, it was shot on colour film stock and desaturated to black & white in post-production.

The acting is superb. Both young Snow White and older Snow White are very good. Especially the younger version played by Sofía Oria. This was her first acting role and she had no prior experience. Her acting is natural and spontaneous. The older version played by Macarena García mostly just had to look wide-eyed/doe-eyed with moist slightly tearful eyes. The star of the film however is the great Maribel Verdú (you may recall her spectacular turn in Pan’s Labyrinth). Her face is so mean and her acting so good at conveying villainous feelings through the medium of silent film as she glares smoulderingly from beneath a black lace veil. The other star of the show is Gallo Pepe the rooster who wears a jaunty little spotted neckerchief and is young Carmencita’s only childhood friend and meets a sticky end from her evil stepmother Encarna. Which is a great name as it includes the word carna which refers to meat.

I could not find a cohesive summary and so I have combined two different summaries which I will insert comments into. The first is a review by ROGER EBERT  and the second is a blog by SPANISH CINEPHILIA    .

The story opens with a famous matador, Antonio Villalta, who is filled with swaggering ego. All goes wrong for him. He is paralyzed in the ring, and his beloved wife dies in childbirth. Their daughter, Carmen, is raised by her grandmother until her death. Antonio unwisely marries the heartless Encarna, his former nurse, who wants only his money and ignores him as he sits in a wheelchair in his room. Note: There is so much to unpack here. Antonio is very pious. He spends ages praying at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary before he goes out to kill a bull. We see his manager/friend roll his eyes at the amount of time he takes to pray. A local paparazzi with his enormous camera with a magnesium flash like the one below tries to get a photo but is rebuffed.

Antonio waves to his very pregnant wife in the crowd and shouts, “This one is for you and our unborn child!” Later, at the end of all the cape swishing when it is time for the bull to die, the relentless paparazzi sneaks over and manages to get a photo just as the bull is about to be slaughtered, but being a magnesium flash it goes BANG which distracts the matador long enough for the bull to gore him and him make him a paraplegic. Then his wife goes into early labour and after a very bloody birth (thankfully…I can’t abide scenes of birth where there is no blood) she dies and he cannot bear to look upon his daughter who is named Carmencita after her mother Carmen who had been a very dramatic flamenco dancer before her untimely demise. You meet Encarna here who is his nurse, and you can see the greed and long range planning on her face as she sees him paralysed and hears that his wife has just died. You see her making up her mind and then butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth as she nurses him back to health. We see her feeding him like a baby bird and him becoming more and more dependant on her. We also meet Carmencita (little Carmen) with her grandmother and her best friend Gallo Pepe the rooster. There is a scene of her being fitted for a communion dress and her effervescence shines through as she cannot help but dance around with joy. All she wants is her absent father to come to her big day at church, but he does not come. She feels unloved, but she does not know he is sat alone in his wheelchair completely neglected.

Her maternal grandmother teaches her to dance flamenco.  When her grandmother passes away, Carmen is sent to live with Encarna. Note: At the party after her first communion, when the child is hiding under a table because she is so sad that her father did not come to her big day, her grandmother entices her out and they do a raucous flamenco dance with lots of hand clapping and then suddenly the grandmother falls dead of a heart attack which is a terrible thing to happen, but especially on the day of your first communion. There follows a great scene where Carmencita’s white communion dress is slowly lowered into a tin washtub and when removed is dyed black for mourning clothes.

  Encarna forbids the child from ascending the stairs to the first floor – where her wheelchair-bound father lives.  Carmen is forced to sleep in a squalid outbuilding, and to work relentlessly on the estate. Note:  We see Encarna cut off Carmen’s black curls giving her a haircut like a boy to try to humiliate the girl. There is a really good montage of her working and you see the struggles of a real life nine year old as she attempts to do the tasks.

 One day, she decides to defy her stepmother and venture upstairs because Gallo Pepe has escaped. The child observes Encarna dominating the household's chauffeur in classic boot-and-whip style.  Note: Yes, we see the fabulous Maribel Verdú doing quite a bit of dominatrix stuff. There is a later scene where she is being painting in her hunting clothes with her dog and she insists that the chauffeur strip down to his underwear and wear the collar and lead of the dog as the painter shrugs his shoulders as if to say, “Rich people. What are they like?” While searching for Gallo Pepe, Carmen finds her father stuck in his wheelchair.

 Carmen and her father develop a close bond: he teaches her the art of bullfighting; and she dances flamenco for him.  Encarna discovers this betrayal and slays Carmen’s pet chicken Pepe. Note: This is a horrific scene where Encarna invites Carmen to dine with her for the first time and says “Would you like some PEPEry chicken?” and then plays it off like she meant the spice not the bird, but then she lifts the domed lid off the platter and you see poor dead Gallo Pepe complete with his neckerchief. This puts little Carmen off chicken for life. We then have a transition which is beautifully filmed where young Carmen is pegging out the wash and pretending the laundry is a  swishy cape and then she becomes older Carmen who looks remarkably like Marcella Detroit from the band Shakespears Sister.

 Fed up with caring for her invalid husband, Encarna hastens his demise by pushing his wheelchair down the stairs. Note: There is a scene after his death where they dress his dead body up in his bullfighting costume and they take comedy photos with his dead body.  She then arranges for her lover the chauffeur to attack the now teenage Carmen in the woods. In a brutal attack he strangles her, tries to rape her then drowns her. Left for dead in a nearby river, Carmen is discovered by a troupe of dwarves, Los Enanitos Toreros. They are bullfighters who travel between cities and look like characters out of a Tod Browning film. As she has no memory of who she is they name her Blancanieves, como la del cuento’ (‘Snow White, like her from the fairy tale’). Note: Here the dwarves are more like rodeo clowns. They have a comedy act where they bullfight a calf. They also have some distinct characteristics—there is the cross dressing one, the eye patch one, the kind handsome one (who becomes a sort of sweetheart to her) and the angry, sullen one with the pencil moustache who resents her plus two more who didn’t seem to have a distinguishing characteristic. They take her on the circuit with them.

When Pencil Moustache dwarf  is wounded, she leaps into the ring and distracts the bull, using the matador skills she learned from her father which makes him resent her even more. Eventually she, too, becomes a famed matador. An unscrupulous agent named Don Carlos gets her to sign a contract that says: "Blancanieves gives exclusive lifetime rights to Don Carlos for all properties, present and future." This will be her undoing. Through them, she rediscovers her knowledge of bullfighting.  She begins performing with them, becoming famous in the process. But she still doesn’t know who she is. As the story unfolds, Encarna becomes aware of the true identity of ‘Blancanieves’, and attempts to poison her with an apple following a victorious performance in the Plaza de Toros in Seville Note: There is a terrific montage of Encarna posing for the 1920’s Spanish equivalent of Hello! Magazine where they take pictures of her in her show-home in a variety of extravagant costumes with outrageous hats. She is told that she will be the cover article with her fancy clothes in her fancy house, but instead Blancanieves makes the cover and is their headlining feature while Encarna and her house are relegated to the back pages and the photo they chose doesn’t even feature her face. In her rage, she clouts her lover over the head with a statuette and then pushes his body in the pool. It is here she vows to kill Carmen at the arena in Seville where she receives top billing. At the arena an old friend of her father speaks to Carmen and says how proud her father would be and as she is on her way out to fight the bull, her memory comes flooding back and she knows who she is. Her stepmother is in the audience and watches her beneath a black lace veil. Pencil Moustache dwarf, who is still mistrustful of her, in a fit of anger switches the signs for the bulls so instead of a calf, the meanest bull is sent out to meet her. With the memory of who she is and her heritage now restored, Carmen swishes her cape and fights the bull and then at the end the audience waves their white hankies—the sign that the bull should be spared, so no blood will be shed that day. The audience are throwing coins and flowers and hats into the arena. Like a snake, Encarna slithers down with the apple and bumps into Pencil Moustache dwarf. She haughtily dismisses him calling him Tom Thumb as she picks up the apple she dropped. She offers up the apple to her stepdaughter, hiding her face behind the veil. We see Carmen take it—there are heart stopping moments where she puts it to her mouth, but then stops to wave to the cheering crowd. Then she bites and falls down dead. Suddenly Pencil Moustache dwarf knows exactly who did this shouts the Spanish version of “J’accuse!!” and they are after her. They chase Encarna into the shed with the meanest bull who gores her to death. Here is where you want a happy ending—the stepmother is dead, surely Carmen will wake up and marry Kind Handsome dwarf? But alas, not so. The unscrupulous Don Carlo owns her body due to the contract she signed, even in sleeping death. Here she becomes like Sleeping Beauty. A side show freak, lovingly tended by Kind Handsome dwarf.

 Slipping into a coma, the girl continues to function as a spectacle.  Patrons pay a small fee to be able to kiss her on the lips, in the hope that she will awake.  The film ends with Kind Handsome dwarf kissing Carmen on the lips: the camera closes in on the corner of her eye, detailing a tear brimming at its edge. Note:  This ending had me in floods. As you see the dwarf who truly loves her have to watch her violated over and over for the price of a coin it breaks your heart. Her hair has grown out quite long to show the passage of time. He is still devoted to her, but how his heart must ache. At the end when the tear comes out—is this an autonomic response or is she aware of everything that happens and cannot move to do anything about it?

This film affected me greatly. The style and cinematography was brilliant and the story fresh and original. You can watch the whole film below, but the title cards will be in Spanish (though you can follow it well enough without them.) But if you don’t have time or the inclination to watch a full length silent film just watch the ending which you can see here:  

The ending. *SOB*

 

The whole film:

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a horror film version starring Marcia Brady.