'Rumpelstiltskin' may be a fairly slight story that doesn't really lend itself well to a feature film (the most being a half an hour episode of a series of of fairy tale adaptations), but it does have an unforgettable titular character (one of the most memorable in all literature), an interesting conflict and personally have always gotten out of it a valuable and important message of greed.
DEFA distributed a number of fairy tale adaptations from East Germany, some are better than others but they do intrigue. Mainly for seeing older versions of these stories and some have some very interesting differences to the original stories. All are worth a look, if some more for curiosity and completest sake. The 1955 version of 'Rumpelstiltskin' is one of those. It has notable and interesting changes, namely a different take on Rumpelstiltskin himself, with him being an intended more sympathetic interpretation rather than the nasty one of the Grimm story, its larger cast of characters (on top of the original characters, there are major and minor additions with extras acting as go-betweens) and the heavy economic theme.
Yet for all those interest points, this 'Rumpelstiltskin' disappointed me. Appreciated that it aimed to be different and it is far from trash or unwatchable, but found it lacking in a lot of areas.
Will say that there are good points. The sets are simple and sparsely detailed, but are cleverly used and are still not hard on the eyes. The costumes are more interesting and are very colourful, the best thing about the film visually, and it's all complemented beautifully by the photography, one of the better-photographed DEFA fairy tale films, and lighting, the latter of which actually making the sets more interesting than they are. The incidental music, while not sticking in the head a long while after, is a pleasant listen. Karin Lesch is charming as Marie.
Did really appreciate the character development to Marie and the King. Marie is not someone potentially passive, though always actually rootable in the original story, but learns to be more assertive. Can myself learn from doing that, being someone who gets easily stressed and struggles to be assertive. The king is also not as greedy, with him learning to put his family first. Appreciation too is had for what the film has to say about greed and how money corrupts, very truthful and very relevant today.
Despite the more intended sympathetic interpretation of Rumpelstiltskin, this doesn't really come off successfully. It just doesn't gel with his grotesque appearance and comes over as annoying and at times too creepy, Siegfried Seibt does admirably but overplays at times. This version of 'Rumpelstiltskin' can be too stagy, feeling like a filmed play or something and never feeling opened up, and suffers from the original story lending itself much better to a shorter length, evident in the over-stretched pacing and that it somehow feels padded. This is including the decision to broaden the cast and number of characters, as intriguing as it was they merely distracted and didn't add very much.
Its handling of the message/theme can come over as heavy-handed and obvious and the dialogue doesn't flow very well. The direction has competence but is undistinguished.
Summarising, don't consider 'Rumpelstiltskin' a good film but it did serve as an interesting take on the story which is hugely appreciated, despite the differences mostly failing. 5/10
