The Blue Bird

Maurice Maeterlinck's wonderful play is transformed into a magical film by Maurice Tourneur, one of the masters of early cinema. Maeterlick's belief, that beauty is to be found in all things, is here given life in a film that works for adults and children.

The visuals are splendid, and the effects gorgeous (reminiscent of Melies in some scenes and German expressionism in others). And the two little children give excellent performances.

The Grapevine Video print is very good, but it does have some nitrate decomposition, which is very sad. I hope there is a pristine print of this masterpiece in an Archive somewhere - it deserves preservation.

It will remind you of the 1939 "Wizard of Oz", especially in costume and sentiment, but pre-dates it by over 20 years. An unmissable silent gem.

There seem to be only a few directors of cinema's infancy whose films are worth much attention; Maurice Tourneur is one of them. His films may not always be the most entertaining, but most of them that I've seen contain something that interests. "Alias Jimmy Valentine", for example, has major story problems, but the heist scene is outstandingly filmed for 1915. Here, too, the allegorical messages (the bluebird is happiness and such) are too sappy at times, but then there's an inspired shot or something else innovative.

The dark, flickering transfer of a deteriorated, bleeding print surely takes away from much of the visual qualities of this picture, but some of the photography and the color tinting shines through. Tourneur had some preparation for the dreamland journey of this film with the dream climax in "The Poor Little Rich Girl" of the previous year. The wonder and imagination of a child are well affected. Despite its age, the film's best element is still apparent; I think that is its awareness. Perhaps, most obviously, this film is comparable to "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), but more so to the 1914 trilogy, which Baum produced. The animal costumes are especially reminiscent, as are the cheap, but nice-looking backdrops and sets. Showing even more awareness are the trick shots in the way of a Méliès fantasy and the final shot where the boy turns to the camera and directly addresses the audience concerning the film's parable. So, to an extent, Tourneur overcomes the wear of age and the kiddy bluntness of the allegory.

Its basic purpose is to remind the colors, flavors and emotions inspired by the play of Maurice Maeterlinck. Indeed, the coherence of story is a serious problem, compensanted by the admirable expresions of imagination, fantasy, a sort of ingenuity. In same measure, it is unfair to ignore the context of its aparition - the end of war, the return to peace and the enthusiasm crowning IT. And this is, maybe, the fair perspective to see it, not ignoring the performances, atmosphere, solutions for images from play. A beautiful film, maybe more a version for the familiars with play text, poetic, sweets, just realistic. So, just delightful.

As it is well-known among silent film connoisseurs, the fine Arts were an essential influence on silent films in general and Herr Maurice Tourneur's work in particular. His beautiful oeuvres gave him fame and prestige around the world from his French period in the mid 10's to his career in the USA.

"The Blue Bird" (1918) tells the story of two poor children, Mytyl and Tyltyl, who are led by the fairy Berylune in the search, around a fantastic world, for the blue bird of happiness. The film belongs to Herr Tourneur's American silent film period, and in this movie it is possible to watch all his artistic virtues in full display. This early astounding production is striking even today for its great artistic merits. The film was based on a book written by the Belgian poet Herr Maurice Maeterlinck and maybe Herr Tourneur during his young days could have illustrated it due to his earlier career as a book illustrator or… MEIN GOTT!!! Perhaps he even read it! In any case, Herr Tourneur adapted and transferred the fairy tale story to the silent screen in a superb way.

The film exudes classicism and even romanticism, artistic subjects that Herr Tourneur know very well how to employ in the world of fantasy. There is amazing art direction, elaborate decors and costumes and witty technical effects, not to mention the inventiveness that can be seen in every shot of the film and in the beautiful, exemplary photography of Herr John van den Broek and Lucien Andriot that captures the atmosphere of the classical fairy books through a cinema lens in a masterly way.

Probably the story can be considered as affected, even innocent in this modern time but even that has a special value in artistic terms for this film; that baroque taste and out of date atmosphere fit perfectly in the story that moves from the real to the dream world, from the real to the unreal. Herr Tourneur's interpretation of this fantastic universe is a prodigious work, imaginative and inventive and shining with brilliant artistic merits.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must listen to the gracious caw of the Schloss crows.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

I found this 1918 version of "The Blue Bird" by accident. The film was based on the show by Maurice Maeterlinck, originally titled "L'Oiseau Bleu", and apparently had success on Broadway.

This silent movie was directed by Maurice Tourneur. The story springboards in the manner of Bunyan's pilgrim's progress as the "similitude of a dream." The shots, employing the rigid camera technique of the day, resemble illustrations in children's books from the era and remain quite beautiful over the course of various monochrome tintings.

So far so good, because this is a ...strange, strange story. The premise for the children's dream is that with help from the Blue Bird of Happiness we can see beyond the apparent nature of the perceived world of material objects and somehow grasp the spiritual essence of the merest of mere things. We will then stop coveting wealth, fame, and power, and discover contentment with the joys of (our existing) home and hearth.

Confined to a verbal description the premise seems more than a little banal, yet on film the concept allows Tourner-Maeterlinck to birth some of the oddest roles in movie history: e.g., check out Charles Craig as Sugar (yes, the real thing) and Sammy Blum as Bread (ditto). I don't know how "method" acting figures in all of this, but the result seems to be an attempted demonstration of Spinoza's view that apparently inert matter is somehow ensouled. Then again, encountering Bread and Sugar as just guys is less surprising after years watching all the animation of the inanimate in television commercials. For good measure the children's dream grants the household pets human speech and personality, revealing the pets' canine and feline characters as noble and sinister, respectively. That for me was about the only unoriginal thing in this one-of-a-kind viewing experience.

If only Maeterlinck could have tried out his idea in the Sixties, maybe with Timothy Leary as technical adviser... But I digress.

The two child leads, the characters named Mytyl and Tyltyl (easy to type on the script?), are effectively, if naively, portrayed. I also remember enjoying the choreographed sequence introducing the "fire" character. And the artistically accomplished use of silhouettes in place of live actors to present a party sequence deepens the credibility of a filmed dream.

The music-only soundtrack on the version I saw was marred by a flutter so bad I simply turned off the sound and missed nothing. Aside from a few brief rough patches in the images the print I saw was gorgeous. Based on the frequent use of tinting to signal mood changes I would even call this black and white movie colorful.

Theatrical adaptations of Baum's "Oz" books were running at about this time (a young Ray Bolger saw one, forming a resolution achieved years later as an adult), along with Barrie's "Peter Pan". In spite of its age you can see ingredients that would later appear in the 1939 production of "The Wizard of Oz". The Blue Bird tale was remade in the sound era in 1940 starring Shirley Temple. Intended to rival MGM's "Oz", it flopped. Another try occurred in 1976 as a U.S. - U.S.S.R. exercise in détente. Maybe Soviet censors saw the lively menagerie of physical things noted above as a creative application of the Marxian principle of "materialism".