Fairy Tale and Film

Fairy Tale Films
, written while completing 
his own epic investigation, 
The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of 
Fairy-Tale Films 
(2011), he notes the critical neglect the ‘fairy-tale film’ 
has had from film critics, regarding the lack of any entry under this 
heading in 
The Oxford History of World Cinema
(1996) as omitting what 
he (in keeping with Greenhill and Matrix) clearly perceives as a genre 
unto itself (2010: ix). However, different criteria are evidently being used 
to assess films, and while I understand the intention behind construct-
ing a singular generic category, this is quite a recent endeavour, made by 
folklorists rather than film scholars, and not necessarily the only way to 
understand them. 
Accordingly, a key aim here is to situate fairy tale motifs and their 
cinematic examples within the different genres that are conventionally 
used to make and market films, and the analysis is structured accord-
ingly: separating films discussed into recognisable groups such as rom-
coms, crime dramas, thrillers and horror. This approach endeavours to 
widen our expectations about where fairy tale references are likely to be 
found and also makes their breadth of influence on film clear. While 
relating films to certain tale types is agreed to be a helpful means of 

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8 
Fairy Tale and Film
identifying fairy tale associations, there is an additional benefit to 
be had from assessing their wider generic features, as these crucially 
shape the way stories are told and understood. In this regard, although 
Greenhill and Matrix are right to defend fairy tales on screen as being 
‘as much the genuine article as their telling in a bedtime story or an 
anthology’ (2010: 3), the medium in which they are delivered is none-
theless of great significance. Films are an expensive business, and we 
need to be mindful of the bearing this has on what gets made, which 
stories are chosen and how they tend to be interpreted – just as their 
need to market themselves to an audience plays a crucial part in their 
formation and reception. Regarding them simply as a text – to be con-
sidered in like fashion to literary forms – misses this crucial economic 
fact. It is because of their commercial draw, after all, that we are seeing 
a surge of interest in big-budget remakes, a phenomenon we might refer 
to as the 
Alice
effect – hoping to match its billion-dollar box-office draw – 
and although the resulting films are arguably some of the least inter-
esting endeavours discussed here, the motivations underlying them 
remain an important point.
That is not to say that commercial imperatives are necessarily inimi-
cal to creativity, although it is academically unfashionable to say so, 
and a further aim is to challenge the often quite negative conclusions 
drawn by some critics. One of the most prominent and prolific fairy tale 
scholars, Jack Zipes, has tended to be a little jaded in assessing cinema’s 
relationship to fairy tales. Despite acknowledging progressive potential, 
arguing that ‘we use the classical fairy tales in mutated forms through 
new technologies to discuss and debate urgent issues that concern our 
social lives’ (2006: xii–xiii), he is also wary of their ‘civilizing’ function, 
shoring up conformist attitudes and ideologies via what he terms as the 
culture industry. A similar ambivalence is apparent in 
The Enchanted 
Screen
(2011), which discusses early cinema, animation, and cinematic 
examples from both East and West. While Zipes finds some interesting 
cases of innovation, for the most part these are considered exceptions 
to the rule, particularly where Hollywood cinema is concerned. The 
varying treatments of ‘Cinderella’ offer a case in point. Said to be one 
of the oldest tales in existence, and certainly one of the most appealing 
for film-makers – with over 130 different cinematic adaptations to date 
(2011: 174), the tale’s message (popularised by Perrault’s ‘Cendrillon’, 
the Grimms’ ‘Aschenputtel’ and Disney’s film version) is considered to 
be quite negative, essentially advising girls ‘to show off their beauty and 
docility to win the appropriate mate’ (173). Few versions are deemed 
to deviate from this imperative, although one that is particularly 

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