Fairy Tale and Film

In the 
Cut
provides room for thought, flirting with masochistic impulses yet 
ultimately fighting to save herself. Progressive potential is discerned in 
these resistant figures, while also noting an evident double standard in 
cinema’s attitude to violent women. The chapter includes a brief assess-
ment of films that ask us to pity wife killers, such as Christopher Nolan’s 

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18 
Fairy Tale and Film
Memento
(2000) and 
Inception
(2010), and considers their relationship to 
Gothic romantic figures. Why female writers and directors have been so 
drawn to ‘Bluebeard’ is considered towards the end. Are such projects 
intended to warn women about the hazards of a potentially fatal attrac-
tion, extolling female self-sufficiency as the only means of survival, 
much like the folk tales they emulate? And do they suggest, quite cyni-
cally perhaps, that we have not progressed much, given the apparent 
inevitability of violent men, as well as the failures of a social system that 
women cannot rely on for protection?
Chapter 5 takes us into the murky world of horror, and specifically 
the dangers located in the family home – a theme popularised in tales 
such as ‘Snow White’ and ‘Donkeyskin’. The opportunity is used to 
question psychoanalytic readings of abusive parents in fairy tales (typi-
cally viewed as Oedipal dramas transferring the child’s animosity onto 
mothers and incestuous desire to fathers), evaluating the ‘knowing’ 
redeployment of such theories in films like 
A Tale of Two Sisters
(Ji Woon 
Kim, 2003) and its US remake 
The Uninvited
(The Guard Brothers, 2009). 
Examples are cited that seem to invert Freudian interpretations of fam-
ily discord (often repeated in the fairy tale), including the tendency 
to reprieve abusive fathers from blame while falsely accusing mothers. 
Asian horror seems especially astute at such debunking and is admira-
bly unafraid to approach conventional tropes from a new perspective. 
Dumplings
(Fruit Chan, 2004) presents its ogre-ish women as man-made 
monsters who simply fulfil patriarchal demands, just as the monstrous 
children in films like 
Rungu
and 
Ju-on
are a reflection of their ‘damaged’ 
upbringing. The motif of child victims of abuse, reborn as supernatural 
avengers, is found in tales from many cultures, including ‘The Juniper 
Tree’, yet far from offering any sense of assurance, the appeasement of 
unhappy spirits is often tentative, with a number of examples discussed 
in which the supernaturally reconstructed family is shown to be far 
from ideal, suggesting continued conflicts and uncertainties that deny 
easy resolution.
The final chapter looks at the array of postmodern devices used in 
adapting fairy tales for a modern, more cynical, audience, asking if 
tactics once used as a means of dismantling classic tales – including 
dramatic role reversals and extensive rewrites – have genuine grounds 
for being considered experimental or innovative, particularly given a 
tendency to be used in questionable ways. The fact that fairy tales have 
long been subject to revision is noted, with reference made to various 
literary examples, including experimentation by the seventeenth-
century French writers of the 
Contes de Feés
and subsequent innovations 

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Introduction 
19
by figures such as Angela Carter and Gregory Maguire. Films discussed 
include revised versions of ‘Snow White’, ‘Rapunzel’, ‘Hansel and 
Gretel’, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, question-
ing the extent to which parody and playfulness have superseded the 
ability to take anything seriously, and contrasting positive and negative 
evaluations to ask what constitutes a radical rewrite today.
The genres have been chosen because of their thematic resonance 
with fairy tale tropes, demonstrating the persistence of identifiable 
motifs and their engagement with contemporary concerns. As is appar-
ent from this overview, I have tried to avoid simply including films that 
I ‘approve of’ in some way, including examples that may contradict a 
point in order to make clear the underlying ambiguities of any group 
of films. Restrictions of space have required me to be fairly selective in 
terms of the number discussed and the degree of detail provided, yet 
all are assumed to be familiar films (or are otherwise easily available) 
with the accompanying aim of encouraging the reader to contribute 
their own awareness and understanding to the critical evaluation made. 
Although I have endeavoured to marshal a convincing argument I don’t 
expect my views to be unquestioningly accepted but hope instead to 
fuel further discussion and consideration of key ideas. I have also opted 
to assess popular well-known examples simply because I feel many such 
films merit attention yet appear to have been critically overlooked, 
seemingly on the basis of their popularity, with the attendant assump-
tion that crowd-pleasers are inherently conformist vehicles, without 
any other aim than making money. Sadly, snobbery and elitism are as 
prevalent among folklorists as film critics, which is particularly surpris-
ing given an oft-voiced interest in uncovering progressive potential in 
tales. This kind of criticism is regrettably quite common, appearing to 
lose sight of the fact that a major incentive in relating films to fairy 
tales is their applicability as barometers of widespread concerns. Marina 
Warner puts the point eloquently in reminding us that ‘cinema desires 
the audience’s pleasure and consciously observes its possible constitu-
ency, its tastes and interests, as a storyteller in the bazaar responds to 
its audience’ – negating popular cinema thus precludes our ability 
to denote prevailing attitudes, as well as significant changes.
11
The intersection of films and fairy tales is a subject that has long been 
a fairly exclusive preserve (limited to contributions to specialist jour-
nals such as