Tales From Europe (Children; 4 separate DVD releases)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Films:
Story of Little Mook (1953)
C+
Singing, Ringing Tree (1957)
C+
Golden Goose (1964) C
Devil’s Three Golden Hairs (1977)
C
They may have been Communists, but they had children to
raise too. First Run Features’ initial
offerings in the Tales From Europe series were issued in 2000 as an
attempt to see if there was a market for classic tales from the vaults of DEFA,
which contains a catalog made during the reign of the now-defunct East
Germany. Watching these films reminded
this critic about how bad films aimed at a children’s Audience could get. Here, the films start out at least seriously
done and watchable, then start to get really bad, only remaining viewable in
their desperation to be like American entertainment.
Story of Little Mook is the best here, based
on Wilhelm Hauff’s tale of a tormented old man who has children all over town
harassing him, until he surprises them with the story of the surreal adventures
of a young boy, and what he does after his father passes away. It looks mostly like Columbia Picture’s Sinbad
or Jason and the Argonauts features of the time, but is not as
good. At least it is done with some
intelligence and, not surprisingly, runs the longest at 96 minutes.
The Singing, Ringing Tree wants
at times to be the Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger classic The Red Shoes
(1948), but is no match. Nevertheless,
the tale of a prince going after a self-centered princess, then turning into a
bear makes for some good viewing (though one also cannot stop thinking of Jean
Cocteau’s 1948 classic Beauty and the Beast). This one runs 70 minutes and is the first of these last three
that all happen to be based on Brothers Grimm works.
The Golden Goose starts out with some promise,
but goes into decline in its long-than-it-feels 64 minutes. Those who only know about the title animal
laying golden eggs will find other aspects of the story obvious, but the
filmmakers just cannot seem to resist making this far sillier than it needed to
be. Looks like Saturday Mornings on
American network TV was already shaking up the East Germans, then they had to
figure out The Beatles!
The Devil’s Three Golden Hairs is
easily the worst of these, at times unwatchable, in witch a young teen makes a
deal with the Devil, but Satan looks more like a Sid & Marty Krofft design
that would never make the cut. It is
almost embarrassing how bad and silly this gets. What were they thinking?
The conclusion is amazingly dumb.
The image on all four DVDs is similarly average, though
there are some slight letterboxing bars on The Devil’s Three Golden Hairs
that we could maybe describe as 1.4 X 1.
Perhaps the film was more widescreen, but no framing was going to save
it. Though efforts at times was made to
give rich colors to the productions, the bad East German color stocks are not
holding up well, and these transfers are third generation all the way. Much restoration needs done on these
films. The German, English, French and
Spanish tracks (no subtitles or close captions are offered) are listed as 1.0
in every case but the English on The Golden Goose, but they all turn out
to be Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. Once
again, the dubbing gets worse as you get to the newer films. The Singing, Ringing Tree makes the
smartest move by having an English narrator over the German speaking
parts. There is background noise and
hiss throughout all four films, another aspect of them that needs serious work. All four DVDs offer the same “theatrical
trailer”, though who knows where it played, but it does suggest more of these
films are (or were) on the way.
The only other extras, besides foldouts
inside the DVD cases with brief print info in all four languages are short
films. Story of Little Mook offers the amusing Mr. Daff is Taking Pictures,
a more recent color short in which the Little Tramp/M. Hulot-type character
goes motion picture film shooting, which makes a mean, egotistical bus driver
suddenly become nice. This was so good,
First Run should do a whole DVD of just that, and the short has better picture
and sound than the feature. Singing,
Ringing Tree offers Sunday, set in a
future police state with a nice twist at the end that makes its point. Golden Goose offers The Solution and Devil’s Three Golden Hairs offers Consequence, which are watchable, but
needed translations they do not offer.
All in all, this is a set only for the curious or parents
who do not think their kids will mind the many quality issues. For literary fans, they will even be curios,
but there is not much point to catching them otherwise.
- Nicholas Sheffo
