one film which seems to be pretty unknown amongst the american and Uk population is
"3 gifts for cinderella"..a czech movie from 73....different to the common cinderella this cinderella is emancipated, can shoot and many other things better thn the prince...
In this version, the prince must actively pursue the young woman who is a skilled sharpshooter prone to wearing hunting outfits. Cinderella also has three wishes at her disposal, gained from three magic nuts.
it has tht charm only czech fairytales from the 60/70 ties can spread..i have rarely watched any of this typical fairytales cause as a child this princess dream nver appaeled to me but this i loved since a child
It is shown on TV around Christmas time every year in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Norway.
I can strongly advise to watch it
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f7XWEgVc7w&feature=PlayList&p=5645306CAE10A6C4&index=0&playnext=1
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCNcC1FC0Ok&feature=PlayList&p=5645306CAE10A6C4&playnext=1&index=1
part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKZP56uZr4w&feature=PlayList&p=F5D90CE5312A1DBA&playnext=1&index=2
part4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSFOD0fqo4
part5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPeaP613X2U
part6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPeaP613X2U
part 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1uZdjF9K60&feature=PlayList&p=F5D90CE5312A1DBA&playnext=1&index=1
there is a fanpage tranlated into english
http://www.dreihaselnuessefueraschenbroedel.de/htmls_e/index.htm
The following interpretation comes from Dieter Matthias, akad. Oberrat at the faculty of educational science at the University of Cologne. Extracs of his article
"Stop waiting for the fairytale prince!"
are repeated here, published in the periodical "Praxis Deutsch" issue 143, Friedrich Verlag, May 1997, pp.48 - 55 (translated by Kathrin Richter)
"If fairytales are "keys to the world" and orientation for young humans..., they can influence the process of finding one's identity, which always is a proces of finding one's sex, too. ...It has been proved, that film and TV seduce their young viewers to take over roles. Especially in constructing the social categories "woman" and "man" media often use traditional female and male clichés. ... Besides more or less trivial fairytale film adaptions (...) however there are those, who narrationaly and filmtechnically break up the better known and traded pattern and present changed identification offers. Three Nuts for Cinderella belongs to this rare kind of fairytale movies...
Three Nuts for Cinderella draws the figure of a selfconscious, "emancipated" Cinderella. ... (Libuse Safrankova) (...) convincingly and inviting to identification plays a warmth and selfconsciousness radiating brave and smart Cinderella, who competently defends her personality against stepmother and -sister, but also from the prince and finally makes him court her, after she has demonstrated her self-confidence. She is an autarkic fairytale character full of youthful grace, not trying to please any man nor entering the stage from his perspective. ...
Compared to Vorličeks Cinderella .... Grimms' Aschenputtel is a substancial colourless figure. ... Not much more emancipatedly created is the literal model ... of ... Božena Nemcová ... . Here Cinderella is, like at Grimms' - a girl tormented by the stepmother released by a prince. ... Thus the director could not take the emancipatoric tendencies for his filmic drawing of Cinderella from the Pattern. Those he supposedly took from the author's biography, i.e. above all of the repute she enjoyed in socialist Czechoslovakia and from others of her works. ...
Interesting on Vorličeks film adaption is te fact, that the new idea of a girl, Cinderella personifies, can only be kept up in the context of a change in the other roles' profiles, especially of the male counterpart, the prince. In the film ... the prince appears as a swinging, still a little clumsy young man, detesting the constraints of courtly life and courtly education and wanting to come loose from them. He escapes the restricting walls of his home into the snowy wood, away from the dusty lessons of the private tutor and the formalisms of the dancing instructor. The prince's figure personifies no masculine power- or dominance-behaviour: Such a prince cannot release Cinderella, but he- as well as Cinderella - brings along conditions, which let foresee, that the future connection between both of them will be formed by independence and equality.
Control structures are drawn in this film adaption exclusive cartooningly. They are only binding upon those who believe to be able to profit from them, e.g. the vain stepmother and her daughter. Farmhands and maids of the farm laugh at the prince, when he comes to look for the true bride with help of the shoe. Spontaneously cheerful peoples' mockery befall him, even when everybody knows, whom they face. Such a presentation was a custom with almost all fairytale films from socialistic countries.
In the following the author describes different possibilities how to employ the film within the german lesons in school. Here extracts from the first conception: comparison of the woman- and man-image at Grimms and Vorlicek.
... Pupils detect, that Cinderella takes over role characteristics which are considered masculine within our society, e.g. when wearing man's clothes (motive of changing sex) and shooting. ... But this is no "emanzipatory" drawing of the heroine. Cinderella, in order to obtain approval and respect from the prince and his companions, has to let herself in for the rituals and customs of a men's society. From the nut she obtains men's clothes, i.e. a hunter's dress, to be able at all to match with the prince and put herself onto the same level.
In the whole film Vorliček goes far beyond competing with the "manly" by drawing the heroine as a strong young woman, totally independent from judgement of male and female authorities being completely herself. ... The arrival of the royal family together with the prince does not at all impress her and does not stop her from rather riding into the wood and shout for inner joy into the winter air.
She also does not want to be loved on account of her beauty (veil before the face while dancing; puzzle) and be taken as a bride by the prince, but to be asked, if she wants him. Cinderella also does not want to let herself find at the end and carry home like a bag, but to walk towards the prince voluntarily, to let her inner discover by him and to share her freedom with him (ending scene with riding into the wood, togetherm but both with an own horse; ...)
Pupils recognize, that actually no Disney-prince [translater's annotation: in the original text it says "Cinderella-Prinz", this would have lead to misunderstandings within the translation, so I chose "Disney-prince", because this it what Mathias referes to] in gala-uniform fits to this Cinderella, who - like at Grimms - only at the ball appears as dancer and assume, that for this reason Vorlicek characterized the prince as a cheerful young man trying to break the court's rules. Only by taking to his heels from his private tutor he gets the chance to meet Cinderella. His boyish, carefree manners make him, unintentionally, get her the magic nuts which the farmhand delivers to the heroine and which bring both together. However, it becomes clear, that the "childlike" in our society usually is granted to the masculine, to the "child within the man".
All women, also the queen, here are the stronger figures. At the same time pupils find out, that the changes in both figures in contrast to the familiar profiles of fairytale characters - "soft-focusing the boy's figure" and "emanzipation of the girl's figure" - finally make it possible, diferent from the Grimms' version, to stage the connection of two independent humans, who find themselves equivalent."
