Fairy Tale and Film

Rear 
Window
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) a young woman uncovers a wife killer 
in her fiancé’s neighbouring apartment and puts herself at considerable 
risk by entering his home to retrieve the evidence. Equivalent daring is 
demonstrated by Lila (Vera Miles) – the younger sister in 
Psycho
(Alfred 
Hitchcock, 1960) – described by Carol Clover as a ‘spunky inquirer’ who 
dares to enter the ‘terrible place’ (1992: 39), confronts a male monster and 
lives to tell the tale – thus paving the way for what she terms as ‘the Final 
Girl’ in slasher films, a figure chiefly distinguished by her ability to face 
a monstrous killer and survive. Although forced to undergo a traumatic 
experience akin to the wife in ‘Bluebeard’ – encountering various forbid-
den chambers and witnessing the horrific sight of corpses within – these 
intrepid females are also allowed to triumph, and ‘beauty bests the beast’, 
as Clover puts it. Aspects of ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ are also touched 
upon in these films, with gruesome motifs such as a severed hand with a 
ring (which lands in our heroine’s lap in the tale and is used to condemn 
her betrothed) anticipating the gore that would come to define the genre. 
Unlike ‘Fitcher’s Bird’, there are no magical resurrections for female vic-
tims, yet we are granted a heroine to be proud of in the Final Girl, who 
is set apart from her peers in interesting ways, not least in refusing to be 
a victim.
5
Unfortunately, later films allow male murderers to carry on 
killing unchallenged while ostensible Final Girls are killed off: a develop-
ment some have discerned as a feminist backlash yet which could equally 
be prompted by a desire to shock by breaking established ‘rules’. The 
heroine of Wes Craven’s 
Scream
films (1996–2011), Sidney Prescott (Neve 
Campbell), is one of the last conspicuous examples of the Final Girl, con-
fronting every killer hiding behind the Ghostface mask – whether it be 
her first boyfriend or a member of her own family (in the last instalment 
a female cousin, aiming to achieve fame through victimhood, is behind a 
new spree of killings). The lack of gender specificity among the franchise’s 

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100 
Fairy Tale and Film
villains may up the suspense factor, affirming that serial killers can be 
male and female, yet for the most part horror cinema continues to depict 
monstrous males threatening female victims.
6
Although detractors may 
criticise this aspect, one could argue that it reflects a genuine tendency, 
with brutal acts of male violence against women regularly reported in 
the news, reminding us of the disconcerting reality that hovers around 
‘Bluebeard’ and the legacy it has enjoyed. While Tatar excludes horror 
films from her discussion, preferring the Gothic thriller as an immediate 
parallel, arguably any film concerning a male killer and a woman in peril 
is equally pertinent, particularly where desire and danger are conflated 
within the narrative. 
The Piano
( Jane Campion, 1993) provides an interesting variation on 
a classic theme. A period piece, albeit with a very modern perspective 
on female sexuality, the film gives us a revised version of the ‘Bluebeard’ 
tale, told from the wife’s perspective.
7
An arranged marriage takes place 
at the turn of the eighteenth century and a mail-order bride leaves her 
native Scotland with her young daughter to live with a stranger in New 
Zealand. A play version of ‘Bluebeard’, watched by the family near the 
start of the film, foreshadows the bride’s impending betrayal. Ada (Holly 
Hunter) is marked by her defiance (not least in having a child out of 
wedlock and her refusal to speak), and although she has no say in this 
marriage her unwillingness to subject herself to her husband’s author-
ity soon becomes evident. Her piano accompanies her journey and is 
clearly of great importance to her, yet her husband, Alasdair Stewart 
(Sam Neill), dismisses its worth and sells it to a neighbour, Baines 
(Harvey Kietel). Ada’s attempt to reclaim it, piece by piece, initiates a 
series of lessons with Baines that becomes a secret love affair. The illicit 
union formed between an unconventional woman unwilling to accept 
constraint and a Western man with Maori tattoos suggests a meeting of 
kindred spirits, yet this is not achieved without cost and it is notably 
the wife who must pay. As Tatar notes, while her husband is cold and 
controlling, ‘the woman who marries him is also not a model of heroic 
behaviour’, particularly in placing her own desires before her family 
(2006: 126). Stewart may be cast as the villain of the piece – a quintes-
sential colonialist with axe permanently in hand (vainly attempting to 
control the sinewy New Zealand landscape and eventually used to muti-
late his wife, cutting off a finger after discovering her infidelity) – yet 
Ada invites trouble by putting her feelings for Baines before anything 
else, including her daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), who serves as the 
bloodstained key in this scenario, informing Stewart of her mother’s 
infidelity. Although admirable in many ways, in pursuing a passionate 

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Demon Lovers and Defiant Damsels 
101
affair with Baines, and ignoring the strictures of her time, Ada alienates 
her daughter as a result, allowing their close bond to be abruptly severed 
when a man comes between them. However, while the film punishes her 
transgression in some ways it also allows Ada’s survival and enables 
her rebirth, finally relenting to speak – as her closing voice-over tells 
us – rather than relying on her piano to express herself. Passionate and 
proud, refusing to subject herself to any sense of wifely duty, we may 
not be given a ‘model of heroic behaviour’, but her uncompromising 
conduct is itself an act of considerable courage.
8
Jane Campion would return to similar tropes in her modern-day 
thriller 
In the Cut
(2003) – which adapts Susanna Moore’s novel and 
again highlights the influence of the ‘Bluebeard’ tale. Reworking 
elements of 
Looking for Mr Goodbar
(Richard Brooks, 1977), a teacher 
embarks on a dangerous voyage of sexual discovery, becoming involved 
with a policeman who appears to be responsible for the deaths of several 
women in the area. Like Bluebeard’s wife, Frannie (Meg Ryan) gets into 
trouble by looking: voyeuristically gazing at a sordid sexual exchange 
in a bar stairwell that makes her a potential witness to a murder. The 
woman she watches becomes a serial killer’s first victim (with body