Hansel and Gretel

We had the sound track when I was growing up. My brothers and sisters and I listened to it over and over. I'm well into my forties now, and I can still reel off songs and dialog. My older sister burned CDs of the sound track for us all a few years ago. A wonderful present! I hadn't heard it for decades, and missed it very much. The angel pantomime still gives me goosebumps, it's so very, very beautiful. The witch was played for laughs as much as for being scary. She is delightful. My friend's children always love it when I give them my imitation of her cackle.

I was priviledged to actually see the movie once in a theatre, a children's matinee. How I wouldn't love to have a copy of it. The music and vocalizations are timeless, beautiful, thrilling. I'm sure any child would love this classic as much as I and my siblings did!

Although this film may look like it was from Eastern Europe, it was definitely made in New York City. I was a member of the Apollo Boys Choir in 1953(we were from Palm Beach, Florida), and I remember visiting the studio in New York while the film was being shot. We came up from Palm Beach in the fall to record our part of the sound track. The choir director, Coleman Cooper, was a perfectionist, and we worked harder on this music than any other set of pieces I can remember. Unfortunately, by the time we got to New York we were pretty sung out. The recording session was long, and during it the producer decided that our sound needed some bolstering, so he brought in several female members of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus to help out. Mr. Cooper must have been very disappointed. This was an important project for him. We boys were a little disappointed too. I, at least, quickly got over it. The women, of course, were excellent singers, several were quite attractive, and they thought we were cute.

I found the other comments to be enlightening, especially with regard to the hurry-up conclusion.

However, I know for a fact that the boys' choir used in this movie was no a European choir, but the Apollo Boys Choir, originally of Palm Beach, Florida, that moved to Dallas, Texas until its director, Coleman Cooper, retired. It is unfortunately no longer in operation. During the Depression, the choir toured the United States in limousines, not buses, and sang for President Roosevelt at the Hot Springs resort where he escaped the pressures of Washington DC. The choir accompanist, Mr. Bert Hallack, is a resident of Palm Beach.

One famous former chorister of this choir is George Bragg, who founded the Texas Boys Boys (of Fort Worth).

This film has always been one of my top favorite childhood films. "Hansel and Gretel" was not always easily accessible to kids. Although it had sporadic television showings back in the days of black and white televisions, kids normally had to wait about every three years for it to be theatrically re-released to see it. I remember seeing it once on television back in the days before we had color television sets and then seeing it several years later on the big screen (in all of its Technicolor splendor) and it captivated me by being the definitive version of the famous tale. I liked it so much that when they re-released it some years later I went to see it again! After the mid-seventies it more or less disappeared and it seemed to have become a forgotten film (shown occasionally on early cable T.V.). However, in the early eighties I was surprised to see it on VHS through a company called Media Home Entertainment. Sadly, their print had a terrible mono soundtrack making the film inaudible and the scene where the the stars form in the heavens (after the Sandman floated away) looked like it was set in the daytime instead of at night-time. Later, in the eighties a no-frills video company released the same print with a marginally better soundtrack. When HBO showed it in the early nineties, they showed a restored quality print. One with perfect sound and with the stars in the heavens forming in the evening (keeping to the evening setting of Hansel and Gretel asleep under a tree in the forest). Not long afterward, that restored version was put on to VHS by Vestron and I was delighted. Too bad that Vestron didn't hold on to the rights long enough to put out a DVD edition of the film. It has since fallen into the hands of another company and they've evidently used a not exactly perfect VHS print of the film as the master source for their DVD presentation of "Hansel and Gretel". The evidence of VHS decay are sporadically obvious during the film. It's annoying that the company probably had the means to give us "the" perfectly restored version of the film on DVD, but instead decided to gyp us with a low-budget video to DVD transfer of it. I hope that another company will obtain the rights to this film and put a good copy of it on the market soon. "Hansel and Gretel" must have been a pretty big hit in its day (1954). There was a comic book and a record album of this film. I know that the two times that I saw it in the theaters it played to packed movie houses. Let's hope to see a restored DVD edition of it the near future!

The story/fairy-tale is one of the best-known and is a timeless one, while Humperdinck's opera still enchants me after being first acquainted with it 11 or so years ago. It is also one of the most accessible operas(with the music not too heavy and it's a story almost everybody knows) and one of the few to translate well into English.

This 1954 film does get a little hurried visually and narratively at the end, but is overall one of the best versions of both the fairy-tale and the opera(I personally saw it for the first time recently so don't have nostalgic bias for it). The visuals are beautiful and clever, charming in the lighter parts and atmospheric in the darker parts. The amount of effort put into making the film is more than evident throughout. Humperdinck's music is enchanting and is not trivialised whatsoever here, it's played with energy and depth by the orchestra and beautifully paced. The choral singing is well-balanced and committed, if recording the music was indeed punishing it doesn't show at all in the singing.

Hansel and Gretel(1954) works well also in the writing and story departments. The script is whimsical and witty, enough to make one laugh, bite the nails and occasionally cry(not exactly emotionally but because there are scenes done so beautifully that it does evoke some emotion, notably the dream pantomime). The storytelling is close in detail and spirit to both the fairy-tale's story and the opera and captures the essence of both. Filled with cute animals, charmingly lovely moments like the dream pantomime(figuratively and literally heavenly here), funny moments- both light hearted and dark- like with the chemistry between Hansel and Gretel and especially the witch, whimsy and darkly scary moments like with again the witch, there is enough to captivate children and adults alike, not making the mistake of making it too scary for children or too juvenile for adults.

All the characters engage in personality and there is a real attempt to make them individual, the most memorable and most colourful character being quite easily the witch. All the acting and singing is top-notch, several have picked out Anna Russell as the standout and I am going to whole-heartedly agree, Russell is hilarious and genuinely creepy as the witch and was clearly having a whale of a time. That does not mean though that the likes of Mildred Dunnock, Frank Rogier and Christine Brigham didn't excel, they certainly did in fact with Dunnock an authoritative and no-nonsense mother-figure, Rogier is a Father that is easy to feel sorry for and Brigham's Hansel and Gretel are both spirited and appealing. Just that Russell made the biggest impression. Overall, fantastical in every sense, for lovers of the story, the opera or both this is a version that is not to be missed. 10/10 Bethany Cox