HANSEL AND GRETEL (1954)

During Thanksgiving week, I try to review some movies that remind me of the movies I grew up watching on TV on Thanksgiving, when local stations and networks would preempt soap operas and show cartoons and fantasy movies. Though I don't remember seeing this one, it did apparently get regular airings during the holiday season in the 1960s. This is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1) it's not just a version of a classic fairy tale, it’s an adaptation of a 19th century opera by Engelbert Humperdinck, and 2) it's the first feature-length stop motion animation movie. The familiar story is given some twists here and there. Hansel and Gretel are the children of a broom maker and his wife who live in a forest. While the father is trying to sell his wares in a nearby village, the mother has left the children alone to attend to their chores. But when she comes home, she finds them dancing and singing, and she scolds them, sending them into the woods to pick wild strawberries. When Father comes home, having sold all his brooms, he is worried about the children getting lost in the same woods where a "child-gobbling" witch lives, and he and Mother set out to find them. But night falls and Hansel and Gretel sleep in the woods, visited (at least in their dreams) by the Sandman and some protecting angels. In the morning, they find the witch's home, transformed by magic into a gingerbread house, and when they try to snack on it, the witch appears and ties up Hansel, intending to fatten him up and cook him up in the stove. ("I love little boys full of almonds and raisins—succulent!" says the witch.) where he will come out as a gingerbread boy. Of course, the children turn the tables on the witch and are happily reunited with their parents.

This was advertised on release as being enacted by "electronic" puppets, but the only "electro-" thing about them is that the figures were electromagnetically attached to the bottom of the set, and the animators came up from trap doors to move them. PR for the movie at the time claimed that the puppets were capable of hundreds of facial expressions, though the faces of the children are pretty much stuck into smiles, no matter what awful things are happening. The film seems to have done well at the box office. The 3-D sets are more impressive than the puppets, though one has to remember that this was a pioneering film in the genre, and the opera aspects feel more dated now than the look of the film does. Much-loved opera comedian Anna Russell is in fine form as the witch (here named Rosina Rubylips); actress Mildred Dunnock does the non-singing role of the mother, and singer Constance Brigham does the voices of both Hansel (too gruff) and Gretel (a bit too childish).  The children are accompanied by a goose and a very small bear, though they don't add much to the story. Even the angels don't seem relevant to the story. There is a fun moment when the children are dancing at home and two large wooden benches also dance, looking like prototypes of the Gumby character who would become a TV star just a year later. Enjoyable as a throwback to simpler times when kids' movies didn’t have to bear the brunt of being tentpole attractions. [YouTube; the print is good but the colors are washed out.]