So: there is a Folk Opera episode entitled Thumbelina in the Bamboo Tube. This is Nang Ut, who is closer to Doll i’ the Grass than she is to the Thumbling tale type. I was pleased to find this with subtitles in English (and lots of other languages, but mostly English). Two fairies are nearly sentenced to death for the crime of falling in love (“the grave sin of flirting!!!”), but instead they are sentenced to be reborn as mortals. Both will suffer before finding each other again, but the girl in particular will be born poor with “a tiny and hideous appearance” and will have to labor in the fields and sleep in a bamboo tube. She’ll become beautiful when someone compassionate loves her. The man, reborn as the (very pretty, very makeup-wearing) third son of the Emperor, is choosing a wife. She must be beautiful, educated, skilled, and well-mannered, as she will be First-rank Princess Consort. (I don’t know why, since he’s the youngest.) There are some princesses waiting for him to choose one of them, but he doesn’t want to marry just for beauty, and tells his father that he has to turn them all down. Most of the princesses accede to this, but the Princess of So is furious. She is invited to stay, however, because her country’s very powerful and they don’t want to anger her. She’s in love with Third Prince, and his brothers and their consorts want him to marry her. They begin to plot together. Meanwhile, the prince prays, and has a vision of his beloved from his past life. They had a previous affinity in Paradise. “A predestined marriage with karmic obstructions.” I thought these two were arrested for falling in love. “The watermelon field is my home.” Little Thumbelina is my name.” Okay! She fades away. He’s distraught. His servants run in, saying she’s here, but it’s actually just one of them dressed up as a woman. (This is our comic relief, guys.) They beg the prince not to punish them because they were just trying to cheer him up. He tells them to just come along as he travels out to look at flowers. They sit down by a field and the now-thirsty prince sends his two servants to find water. They argue with each other and pray for rain (comedy alert). PLEASE STOP SINGING AND GET TO THE PLOT. Then they find watermelons, and when the prince comes to see what’s taking them so long, they give him a melon. However, right after they split it open, he says they must find the owner. It’s not a wild melon because there’s a proper garden with rows. (Yes, after they start breaking open watermelons, he notices this.) The owner, Third Prince assumes, must be a kind-hearted, industrious and beautiful girl. The servants point out that it could just as easily be an old lady. The prince says they have to find the owner and pay for the melon. The prince thinks she must be hiding and tells the eunuchs to head back. Just then, they hear a voice calling out. The voice belongs to a tiny girl, set up in a weird-looking tiny bamboo hut chair thing. Sorry for the low quality, but what is that?
She asks them to pay for the melon. At first the servants can’t find her because she’s so small; then they’re terrified, thinking she’s a demon, and faint dead away. The Prince comes looking for them, again, and is also frightened by her appearance. “Yes, I’m a freak and I’m ugly. That’s why I keep myself in the forest, befriend trees and plants, rest in the green bamboo tube at night, labor to grow melons during the day and live alone; such is my ill fate.” The prince quickly feels sorry for her and asks her story. She explains that her mother died in childbirth after seeing her child so small. The girl’s father abandoned her in the melon garden and became a monk. The prince decides to marry her and take her home, and she rides to his palace inside his long sleeve. Rumors spread that the prince has taken a wife. Princess So is not happy that he scorned her in favor of an ugly, finger-sized woman, and a peasant to boot. In conference with the older princes and their wives, it is suggested that Nang Ut is a fiend who will destroy the dynasty. However, they reassure themselves that she can’t possibly have the virtue and beauty required of a princess. They speak to the emperor and empress and arrange a contest. The prince is frightened that Nang Ut can’t possibly cook a meal. “Little One, you can’t even hold a pot. How can you cook? You’d get burnt as soon as you went to the kitchen.” Honestly, they are really cute together in this scene. She jumps onto his hand to say goodnight. There is lots of singing. (It is a musical.) After he goes to bed, Nang Ut prays (“Help me out of this karmic obstruction!”) and a fairy appears (why? Who is this? What’s going on?). The fairy gives her a jewel. Nang Ut passes it on to the prince; at the contest, he cracks the jewel open and it creates a tray of amazing food. The fairy also intervenes in the contest by making the other wives’ meals less tasty. This strikes me as cheating, but Nang Ut wins. The prince tries to say that Nang Ut doesn’t care about being First Rank Princess Consort, but the other siblings insist on a second contest, this one a set of royal robes for the emperor and empress. Meanwhile, the Princess of So is preparing an army and plots to to kill Nang Ut. Nang Ut has a dream about this or somehow senses that she’s in danger, I guess? She and the Prince begin to pray, and once more the fairy appears. This time she gives them a gem which will become royal robes, a nectar that will make someone look as beautiful as a fairy, and a golden hairpin that will become a heavenly lute. Once more, the fairy’s magical robes win the contest (and the fairy sabotages the brothers’ entries). But the Princess of So’s army is here. “Woe to us!” As per their agreement with the evil princess, the royal siblings demand that Third Prince go out to join the fighting. His pickiness ruined everything! He graciously tells his parents that he has to go and fight, despite their protests that he’s too inexperienced. He’s an intellectual, not a warrior. The prince comes out on the wall carrying Nang Ut in what seems to my educated eye to be a birdcage (oh, and she was living in a dollhouse inside the palace, too). He negotiates with the besieging army and Nang Ut speaks up, startling the others, to challenge the enemy general. If he can eat all the rice in her little pot, then he wins. (Wait, where’d they get the pot from?) The pot, of course, refills itself automatically, and the general gets angry. (Still confused but okay.) “Devil’s magic is at work here! Deploy the troops!” The army charges and Nang Ut tells the prince to use the golden hairpin. It becomes a lute and its music confuses the soldiers, sends them into despair and fills them with the desire to go home. They all collapse. The war is over before it begins. Princess So: “I’ve been to many perilous battles and never flinched from swords and arrows” (pretty hardcore) “but now I must accept defeat and drop my swords. Kill me, then! So will be ruined and filled with tears.” But Nang Ut has mercy and makes an alliance with her. Shamed, the princess of So blames the two princess consorts for everything. There are so many princesses in here. With war averted, the beauty contest ensues. The princess consorts come out, bow, dance, respectfully greet the king and queen. The queen asks for Nang Ut, but the Prince is worried. “They’re so beautiful I don’t know what to do!” he says to Nang Ut, who is back in his sleeve. “My love, did you forget already? Pour this nectar water on me and you’ll witness something incredible.” Burst of smoke. There’s Nang Ut, full size. The prince doesn’t recognize her at first (“Miss, why are you here in my palace? Darling Thumbelina, where are you?”) but then they run up to join the contest. The King: “She’s like a fairy from heaven!” Even the princes and their wives have to admit that Nang Ut is worthy to be First-Rank Princess Consort. They are about to be punished for their treachery, but our heroes ask for leniency on their behalf. Good for you, guys. The king decides to retire and live in peace, farming on a mountain. They ask to go with him, but he goes off on his own. With that, Third Prince and Nang Ut become the new rulers. All very happy. All singing. So much singing. Start watching it here. (Originally posted on Tumblr.)
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We open on a man named Jonathan chopping wood. A voice from midair calls him, and turns out to belong to the Queen of the Forest, who asks Jonathan not to cut down the tree. He doesn’t believe her, but she talks him into agreeing, and says she’ll grant him three wishes. Then she vanishes, proving that she’s magical. He goes home for dinner and says grace before he eats. This is such a fifties movie. He keeps trying to tell his wife about the Queen of the Forest, but stops, complains about having cabbage for dinner, and wishes for sausage. Bing, there’s a sausage. He starts talking about how beautiful the Queen was; his annoyed wife wishes sausage was on his nose. Blah blah blah. This isn’t even Tale Type 700! Finally this blows over and they make up, and the wife gives us The Line: “Even if he were no bigger than my thumb.” Cut to outside. It’s dark. Owls watch as something rustles in the grass, heading slowly towards the tiny house. In the silence, someone’s whistling but we can’t see who. This is shot like a horror movie. Jonathan and Anna are asleep (in different beds. Such a fifties movie). 13 minutes in, we finally see Tom Thumb, dressed in a (normal-sized) fig leaf. I first saw this dubbed in Spanish, and with the low-quality video and annoying high-pitched voice, I thought he was a woman. It didn’t help that the leaf looks like a dress. Anyway, as Tom warms himself by a candle, he announces that he’s their son. He’s actually five and a half inches tall, so quite a bit bigger than a thumb. The overjoyed couple place the tiny adult man in a baby’s cradle and bid him goodnight. This was one thing that felt weird about the movie – Tom is a child, really, and everyone treats him as such, but he’s played by a grown man. Not that Russ Tamblyn was bad in the role. He has a very playful Peter Pan-like air, and he does some great acrobatics, but I still feel like having a child in the role might have been better for effect. Tom varies between being an obvious cutout and a doll. I should mention that this film won an Oscar for special effects. For its time, this was pretty good. Anyway, Tom is woken by his toys, who want to sing and dance for him. There’s a stereotypical Chinese doll named Con-Fu-Shon. I think there’s also a golliwog running around in the room, just so twenty-first-century viewers can feel sufficiently cringy. Also among Tom’s toys is an angry-looking bride doll (clearly a woman trying with her all not to blink), who’s the only one who doesn’t come alive. Then we get to the LONGEST DANCE SEQUENCE EVER. After five hours straight of Tom’s whimsical insanity, it’s morning. Tom and his father go out to the fields to work, and are spotted by two crooks who want to use Tom in their heist. Tom is naïve and trusting, but his father knows better and sends them on their way. On the way back, we encounter Woody, some random guy who’s in love with the Queen of the Forest. They can only be together if he kisses her and she becomes mortal, but they keep dancing around the subject and this is our excuse for a plot, people. Woody heads off and encounters Jonathan and Tom. He offers to take Tom to the upcoming local fair, and Jonathan agrees. WHY am I watching a random guy singing about STOP-MOTION-ANIMATED SHOES? I DON’T KNOW! Anyway, Woody and Tom run off to buy some shoes. The shoemaker gives Tom some miniature shoes off a keychain. However, in the midst of the dancing people, Tom nearly gets trampled, and grabs onto a balloon’s string and floats away. He floats right over the castle that the two crooks are trying to break into. (I call no way.) They shoot down his balloon with a slingshot and catch him. He thanks them for saving him, and they con him into helping them steal a bag of gold. They claim it’s for orphans. Then they send him off through the dark, scary swamp, with a single gold coin for his troubles. Fortunately, he’s rescued by the Queen of the Forest, who then has a argues with Woody. Finally Tom sneaks home, afraid of getting in trouble with his father. (Both of these scenes have the man yelling at Tom and the woman saying “Don’t yell at him.”) Along the way, Tom accidentally drops his coin into a batch of bread that his mother’s cooking up. Tom is sent off to bed, and the toys decide to bring out a doll called “The Yawning Man” to help him fall asleep. This, of course, involves singing. NOOOO Okay, okay. The soldiers are looking for whoever robbed the treasury, and stop by Jonathan and Anna’s house. Anna offers them some breakfast, but wouldn’t you know it, she gives them the bread containing the coin. The soldiers decide to arrest the couple. Tom and his toys hear the commotion and try to get out, but Tom can’t open the door. This was actually a pretty sad scene. Finally Tom gets out and finds Woody. Fortunately, Woody somehow knows where to find the thieves. They track them down to an abandoned castle, where we find the thieves counting “Two for you and two for me, three for you and three for me…” in a scene straight out of Maria como un Ajo. Meanwhile we’re continually cutting back to Jonathan and Anna, who are about to be sentenced. Their punishment is 24 lashes. And I guess that’s it. This seems a bit underwhelming to me, especially since they’re still playing the town lasher as a clumsy, goofy person who gets tangled in his own whip. He seems to have his hood on wrong. Tom plays tricks on the robbers for a few very long and repetitive minutes, and then Woody starts throwing punches and the fight commences. After that fight scene, presumably all of the participants have brain damage. So many head blows. I think everyone spent at least a few minutes unconscious except for Tom. The thieves finally figure out what’s going on and decide to escape on their horse, but Tom is hiding in its ear and directing it towards town. This looks way more uncomfortable for the horse than I’d envisioned it. Jonathan gets his shirt torn off so that he can be lashed, and he turns out to be pretty toned, at least in the back region. But just before they can whip him, the thieves come flying in on their horse and fall off, sending gold flying everywhere, and Tom shouts that they’re the culprits. They’re about to escape, but Woody catches up with them and punches them out. Hurray! The Queen of the Forest pops in, and Woody kisses her. They both vanish momentarily, and her gown and diamond crown transform to a peasant dress and flower wreath, which . . . I guess . . . means she’s mortal now . . . ? Anyway, they get married and everyone is standing around celebrating. Tom is the groom figurine on the cake, standing next to that bride doll from earlier. He kisses her on the cheek and she comes to life (or perhaps simply gives in to the crippling urge to blink). They dance around the cake and everyone sings. So . . . are kisses in this universe magical?
This movie left a lot unexplained, like how Tom actually came into being. It’s harmless, but doesn’t have much substance, and some of the elements (such as Con-Fu-Shon) haven’t aged well. Although Tamblyn’s acrobatics are excellent and the stop-motion effects are nice, it suffers from long musical sequences which completely halt the narrative for minutes on end. Storywise, it’s a fairly straightforward Thumbling retelling, but with far too much padding. The Woody/Forest Queen romance was unnecessary. Overall, it was an interesting watch - not great, but okay. |
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Researching folktales and fairies, with a focus on common tale types. Archives
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