AEven a mountain spirit is not always enough for itself. A certain Mehrich deals with the people he meets in his alpine solitude, and when Melisa, disguised as a man, comes to the mine where she wants to work as a miner like her grandfather once did, the ghost takes the opportunity to to question her – he wants to learn everything about human feelings.
The mean twin brother and the mean uncle
Therefore, he meets her in human form or as a force of nature and helps her save Sophia, the princess and heir to the throne of the Alpine country, from the kidnapping that her nasty twin brother Berthold had planned together with their even nastier uncle Rudolf.
The prince cannot accept the fact that the princess is supposed to succeed her father as the firstborn – he is simply “the male successor”, so the throne is his, and Uncle Rudolf seconds: “Sophia is a woman! She’s no good as a regent!” The mountain spirit looks at everything and comes to the conclusion: “Woman or man are the same.”
Fairy tales on ARD
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“The Bartered Princess”
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Video: ZDF, Image: BR/TV60Filmproduktion GmbH/Marti
The fairytale film “The Bartered Princess”, which the Erste broadcasts at Christmas in its “Six in one go” series, was created “freely based on Bavarian legends”, and one would like to know which legends those are supposed to be in order to estimate the degree of freedom , which the authors (screenplay: Su Turhan, director: Matthias Steurer) took.
Who needs a mountain spirit like that?
We are used to the fact that in this series we like to combine fairy tale motifs, which over the years have become more and more loosely connected to the literary models, with much more contemporary discussions. But do we really still need a mountain spirit today to tell us such messages that should not be new to anyone?
Or should we denounce the backwardness of a time that, thank God, has passed, but which at the same time cannot be made historically tangible in any way? This is also a shame because actresses like Judith Neumann shine in the role of Melisa and Ralf Dobrick's camera finds interesting, sometimes exciting images for a somewhat inflated story.
Fairy tales on ARD
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“The Fairy Tale of the Magic Flute”
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Video: ZDF, Image: WDR/Nicole Briese
“The Magic Flute”, this year's other production from the fairy tale film series, has a similarly relaxed relationship to two originals – it is based on Mozart's opera as well as a fairy tale from a collection of Christoph Martin Wieland. Tamino and Papageno are wandering purse-cutters who use the magical instrument to increase wealth – anyone who is forced to dance cannot keep an eye on the stock market.
The film music quotes motifs from the opera, sometimes switching from major to minor, and Marvin Litwak's script emphasizes the action content of the material, so that everything is easy to watch without leaving major traces – after all, you will rarely have experienced Tamina as independent as her that of Harriet Herbig-Matten.
Anna-Lena Schwing in “Rapunzel and the Return of the Falcons” is also not content with waiting for her prince, locked in the tower. The ZDF fairy tale films have always had a weakness for grand gestures, opulent images and massive music, and this one is no exception.
This is paired here with comedy and a sense of happy additions to the fairy tale plot (screenplay: Max Honert), for example by giving the prince a childhood friend who acts as a juggler and voice impersonator and supports the completely unheroic but very much in love prince. That Pip (Tom Böttcher) is the one reason to see the film. The other is the exceptionally evil Queen (Christina Große) as his worthy opponent.
The sold princess runs on December 25th at 3:30 p.m. on Erste, The fairy tale of the Magic Flute on December 26th at 3:25 p.m. Rapunzel and the Return of the Falcons runs on Christmas Eve at 4:30 p.m. on ZDF.
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