Fairy Tale and Film

Enchanted Screen
as a delineation between the ‘conventional’ 
and ‘experimental’ (2011). Greenhill and Matrix are more circumspect, 
affirming that conflicting opinion is inevitable, with every film open 
to question and reassessment, claiming ‘its metaphorical flexibility 
means that viewers can return at different times and receive different, 
sometimes even contradictory impressions of the film’s meanings and 
intentions’ – only to add ‘nevertheless, we suggest that within the genre 
of the fairy tale film – apart from Disney – experiments, departures and 
innovations predominate’ (2010: 17). This positive claim (their caveat 
aside) largely stems from a desire to disprove negative evaluations of 
fairy tale films as ‘at best, diversionary kid stuff, or at worst utterly facile 
predictable disposable low-culture trash’ (22), understandably seeking 
to legitimate their investment in a frequently maligned subject.
6
Not 
only do fairy tale films have greater diversity than we might assume, 
they argue, but they have greater depth also, contending that we are 
seeing more fairy tale films made for an ‘adult’ audience (pointing to 
the fact that many films discussed in the collection are certified PG 
and above). In their view this entails sexual, violent and supernatural 
themes that mark a return to their folkloric roots, citing ‘contemporary, 
sometimes radical, and innovative’ film-makers such as Guillermo del 
Toro, Neil Jordan and Tim Burton as heralding a bold new form of fairy 
tale film (9). 
Ethan Gilsdorf similarly notes a resurgence of darker fairy tale motifs 
in film, yet perceives an accompanying degree of reassurance, partly 
‘because we know these stories in our bones’, assuming nostalgia to 
be key to their appeal (Gilsdorf, 2013). While an older audience has 
evidently been targeted by the industry, many films are intended to 
appeal to an adolescent audience, rather than an ‘adult’ one, influenc-
ing the age given to on-screen characters and the scenarios they are 

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Introduction 
11
placed in. Teens have become a key market for fairy tale films, receptive 
to wry revisions such as
 Ella Enchanted
(Tommy O’Haver, 2004)
 
and 
10 
Things I Hate About You
(Gil Junger, 1999) as well as angsty treatments 
emulating the 
Twilight
saga, including Catherine Hardwicke’s 
Red Riding 
Hood
(2011). As for a return to ‘edgier’ folkloric features, there is often 
a tendency to provide a sweetener of some kind, to avoid giving us too 
bitter a pill, with commercial incentives still evident. Even auteurs such 
as Guillermo del Toro and Tim Burton, who have undoubtedly helped 
to improve the critical cache for fairy tale films, might be accused of 
trading on their established reputations to cash in on the trend for spec-
tacular remakes, their names (already used quite cynically to ‘present’ 
films they did not direct) attached to a number of upcoming projects. 
Herein lies another layer of complexity for fairy tale films: not only the 
breadth of potential examples, but the differing markets they are aimed 
at. An online list of the ‘50 Greatest Fairy Tale Movies’ (published in 
2012 by 
Total Film.com
) reiterates this diversity, including some quite 
oblique examples we might not consider to have much to do with fairy 
tales. The list is highly subjective (
A Tale of Two Sisters
ranks at no. 49 
while 
Hook
, 
Aladdin
and 
Beauty and the Beast
all make it into the top 5), 
yet while the compiler’s comments betray a preference for fairly sappy 
productions,