L'oiseau bleu

In 17th and 18th Century France, fairy tales were not puerile stories for the kiddies, but well-paying literature with an aristocratic audience. We still know the name Charles Perrault, who wrote tales like "Cinderella" from old folk tales. Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy is not so well remembered -- possibly because her name is harder. She wrote "The Blue Bird", the charming fairy tale that once upon a time every child knew and that this elaborately produced, stencil-colored Pathe two-reeler in the Chapter Heading style of movie making is based on.

It's quite beautiful to look at. The copy I saw had almost all of its color intact and the print was, with the exception of perhaps half a minute, quite viewable. The sets were elaborate and the costumes looked impeccable. Unfortunately, like anyone who goes to his first performance of Grand Opera with no Italian or ballet without research or this movie, if you don't know the story in detail already, all you know is well, one thing has happened, and now everyone is running around. It's very pretty. And three minutes later, you know another thing has happened and people run around some more and that's pretty too.

It's a style of movie-making that works with deep cultural roots, on subjects everyone shares. That's why it vanished so quickly when Griffith and others began to regularize the film grammar that George A. Smith had begun around the turn of the century, with occasional backsliding for Biblical epics. For today, though, let's start with the original source material, which is quite lovely. In French, if you know the language or a good translation if you don't. May I suggest Andrew Lang's 19th-century series of fairy books?