Fairy Tale and Film

Introduction 
5
altering a vain man’s perception, restoring another’s youth or forcing a 
curmudgeon to relive the same day) requiring flawed men to undergo 
a transition of some kind that will effectively make them lovable. In 
other cases the supernatural is removed altogether, often to avoid a 
sense of hokey-ness or contrivance, bringing events more recognisably 
into this world. Women perilously involved with dangerous men, for 
example, a staple of Gothic melodramas, thrillers and horrors, can be 
traced back to the serial-killing fiend in ‘Bluebeard’ (as well as demon 
lovers found in earlier folk tales) and while less visibly conspicuous 
in modern appearances (or necessarily diabolical) this serves to make 
new versions all the scarier. Although 
The Piano
(Jane Campion, 1993) 
deliberately flags up its connection by including a shadow-show of 
Perrault’s tale, films such as 
Sleeping with the Enemy
(Joseph Rubin, 
1991) or Campion’s later 
In the Cut
(2003) might equally be regarded as 
modern-day ‘Bluebeard films’, playing on the same motif in differing 
ways. In a similar vein, while some horrors make their fairy tale allu-
sions manifest – the wicked stepmother in 
Hellraiser II
(Tony Randel, 
1988) explicitly voices her kinship with the villain in ‘Snow White’ and 
affirms ‘they’ve changed the rules of the fairy tale!’ – other films allow 
us to make connections for ourselves. This brings us to the thorny ques-
tion of interpretation and intention: when is a film a ‘fairy tale film’, 
specifically, and does a film-maker need to be aware of any thematic 
associations for this to count?
Although some films announce their origins via their title, or make 
their allusions clear in other ways, others may be more subtle in their 
influences, or perhaps update an idea without any direct intention to 
be regarded as a ‘fairy tale film’, yet may still be considered as such if 
shown to have recognisable attributes, as a growing number of critics 
have noted. In her publications 
From the Beast to the Blonde
(1995) and 
No Go the Bogeyman
(2000), Warner discusses contemporary cinema on 
a par with art and ancient myth in an effort to understand where some 
ideas have come from and how they have altered. Other scholars with 
an interest in folk and fairy tales have increasingly started to include 
cinematic examples in their discussions, noting that cinema offers 
another medium where specific stories are being retold, often in novel 
and notable ways. Maria Tatar’s 
Secrets beyond the Door 
(2006) makes a 
case for ‘Bluebeard films’ as a distinct genre emerging in the 1940s and 
which is still evident today, as well as publishing recent articles discuss-
ing cinematic and televisual updates of ‘Snow White’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ 
and various female ‘tricksters’ on screen who subvert our expectations. 
Cristina Bacchilega references a few films alongside literary examples in
 

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6 
Fairy Tale and Film
Postmodern Fairy Tales
(1997) and has recently focused more exclusively 
on film, as have a number of other academics in the field, highlight-
ing an area of significant expansion. This growth in critical attention 
coincides with the increasing deployment of fairy tale motifs in cinema, 
what Donald Haase refers to as the ‘continually emergent nature of the 
fairy tale’ (2004: xi), widening the scope of discussion considerably and 
enabling us to evaluate a number of films from a new perspective – 
although what counts as a ‘fairy tale film’ remains a tricky issue.
Continuing the critical questioning begun in