Le roi des aulnes

A worried father carries his dying boy through a marsh to find a doctor to help him. The boy sees visions of fairies dancing, and the dread Elf King.

It's based on Goethe's ballad, turned into a lieder by Schubert. The dancing fairies are optical printed amidst the rocks and rills. It's an attempt to maintain silent techniques in the sound era to present something silent films never could: dance. Because the fairies cannot appear except briefly and often individually, it doesn't work as a ballet, and its attempt to merge high art with the mass entertainment that is film was not commercially successful. It's a good swipe at the effort, though, and remains an interesting bypath.

Le Roi des Aulnes, aka The Erl-King, is an early piece of French cinema about a father on horseback with his son riding through the forest to get the ailing child to a doctor. Apparently in delirious, the boy starts seeing fantastical images - fairies, magical toads and the Erl-King - which his father explains away as clouds, the wind and just nature around them. Well, all the visions are portends - and I'll stop there.

The movie is ok if obviously rather dated having come out in 1931. Yet, even for that time, this type of mythical film making has been done so much better. So, unless you love ancient French cinema, you should pass on this film.

Goethe, fantasy elements, special effects ala 1931, and cinematography out in the woods at night ... hey, I'm in. The effect of the sinister erl king and his scantily clad fairies is achieved using overlays which don't always work perfectly with the underlying images, but convey the ethereal sense of the story and its spooky danger, and visually the film is beautiful. I liked reading Goethe's words at the outset but I'm not sure about the choice of telling the entire story this way, since we then know what's coming, and it's already pretty simple. However, there's something truly charming and poetic about this fairy tale set to early celluloid, and it's well worth spending 45 minutes on. It makes me wish Marie-Louise Iribe had made more films as a director.

Le roi des aulnes (1929)

*** (out of 4)

A young boy and his father are riding a horse when the boy falls off and is severly injured. The father must get his child to a doctor and their journey leaves the boy near death and this is where he begins to see various items including The Erl King.

This film was directed by Marie-Louise Iribe and it's one of those movies that I admired much more than I actually enjoyed. By saying that I'm certainly not saying that this is a bad movie because it isn't but at the same time there's certainly more style than substance here, although I'm pretty sure that's what the director was going for.

The most striking thing about this film are the images, which really do leap off the screen. The boy witnesses all sorts of things from frogs to angels and various other creatures and the way they appear on the screen was quite striking and it is these images that keep you glued to the film. There really isn't much of a story on display here as that obviously took a back seat to the special effects.

Fans of the surreal will certainly want to check this 45-minute film out. Again, there's really not much of a story but the land of fairies makes for some great effects.