Fairy Tale and Film

The Red Shoes
– one of the oldest films on the list – makes it 
in at no. 1 on the grounds that it ‘contains everything a good fairy tale 
needs: a beautiful young heroine, a tragically fateful twist, and a sinis-
ter edge a mile wide’; ultimately approving the fact it is ‘an unsettling 
affair, as classic tales tended to be’ (Wales, 2012). Given the predomi-
nance of feel-good films on the list (admiring features such as costumes 
and catchy songs) the criteria suddenly seem to shift with this final 
admission, yet even this apparent inconsistency reveals why fairy tale 
films are so intriguing – because they can incorporate so many different 
features and have attracted such a range of responses. 
Although often unfairly regarded as children’s entertainment, ‘diver-
sionary kid stuff’ as Greenhill and Matrix put it, films utilising fairy 
tale motifs attest to a range of interests and intentions, from examples 
aiming to be ‘family friendly’, those targeting a teenage market and 
some with a more mature audience in mind. As an illustration, we 
might consider the vastly different approaches taken to a single source. 
Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ is barely recognisable 
in both Disney’s animated version 
The Little Mermaid 
(Ron Clements 
and John Musker, 1989) and 
Splash
(Ron Howard, 1984), both of which 
allow their heroine a happy end with her human ‘prince’, while Lars 
von Trier’s 
Breaking the Waves
(1996) may be read either as a parody of 

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12 
Fairy Tale and Film
Andersen’s tragic tale – highlighting the extent to which the heroine’s 
naïve romanticism (and faith) cause her undue suffering – or as a misog-
ynist vehicle that delights in her masochism.
7
Although more faithful 
to the source in terms of its unhappy ending, von Trier’s distinctly more 
‘adult’ approach affirms that intensifying sexual and violent elements 
does not necessarily result in a positive viewing experience (confront-
ing critical assumptions that fidelity to a tale, including a willingness 
to retain an unhappy ending, should be deemed an attribute). In fact, 
Ponyo
(Hayao Miyazaki, 2008) is, in some ways, a far more progressive 
adaptation in allowing its heroine to not only survive, but making her 
responsible for her own transition to human form, staked as a protest 
against her controlling father rather than romantic devotion. Ponyo 
keeps her voice, increases her mobility (becoming a creature of both 
land and sea) and ultimately maintains a connection to her roots – 
although her extreme youth also removes any sexual dynamic with 
the film’s hero, reducing a point of identification with older viewers.
8
Another attempt at giving the tale a positive spin, M. Night Shyamalan’s 
Lady in the Water
(2006), was critically lambasted, yet Greenhill and 
Matrix consider it ‘a postmodern engagement with Hans Christian 
Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” that amplifies the ancient supernatu-
ral power of the sea nymph so she is no longer a tragic romantic figure 
but instead humankind’s savior’ (2010: 14). The fact that said ‘nymph’ 
spends most of the film crouched naked in a shower, while Shyamalan 
places himself in the self-aggrandising role of the ‘Writer’ who will 
save us from ourselves, is evidently not considered problematic to this 
progressive reading, exemplifying that what we perceive in a film – and 
approve or otherwise – is always going to be fairly subjective, just as 
film-makers will be drawn to a fairy tale motif with what are liable to 
be hugely contrasting aims.
We might consider, for example, the theme of childless parents whose 
wish comes true in the form of a magical child, and appraise two con-
trasting cinematic interpretations of this idea. Fairy tales tend to treat 
this motif as a bittersweet tragedy, often making the parents’ happiness 
fleeting. Examples include a child made of snow who cannot outlive 
the winter, typically dying with the heat of the sun or close proximity 
to a fire. (The Inuit tale, ‘Blubber Boy’, collected by Angela Carter, offers 
an interesting adult take on the theme when a girl creates a lover from 
whale blubber who is similarly doomed to perish with heat – adding an 
explicit eroticism to the tragedy.)
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The magic child motif is reworked in 
Disney’s 
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
(Peter Hodges, 2013) which pro-
vides a sentimental idealised notion of child-rearing when an infertile 

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Introduction 
13
couple write a list of desired attributes for their child and bury it in the 
garden, only to see the results embodied in a strange boy who comes 
the next day, with leaves growing around his ankles. Although Timothy 
cannot remain with them, their time together affirms their nurturing 
skills and their dream is finally realised through fostering a real child. 
Czech director Jan Svankmeyer’s
 Little Otik
(2000) revisits the theme of 
a child created from its parents’ wishes, yet gives it a far more sinister 
edge. In the source tale, ‘The Wooden Baby’, a child is born from a log 
of wood that is sung to life with a lullaby, only to wreak havoc for its 
parents through its insatiable hunger, feeding on neighbours until it is 
eventually destroyed. As Zipes notes, the parents in the tale never again 
wish for a child, and although he equates the theme (in the film ver-
sion) with rampant consumerism in modern Czechoslovakia, we might 
equally understand it as a rare admission of the hardship and sacrifice 
that parenthood involves, using black comedy to suggest that child-
lessness, contrary to conventional wisdom, may actually be a blessing 
(2011: 353). If Timothy is the best child imaginable, a literal dream come 
true, Otik is the worst, presented as a terrifying threat to the parents’ 
lives, yet although it is tempting to argue that these radically different 
treatments typify a commercial studio offering against that of an East 
European auteur, it is simplistic to claim greater worth for either film,