#maimon's rambles

I do love how there are some moments that suggest Gladys... Kind of sucks as a witch? She puts Alex's parents and his classmates under her spell to keep herself alive, but we never see that really working, or if she even knows a spell for that. She doesn't lie down suffering again after that one scene, but she doesn't look visually any different (unless she puts on her make-up and disguise) nor does she act particularly different*. She also say she'll know if Alex tells on her, but she very well might be lying, and relying on her threats and Alex's fear of her. After all, she did not know of Justine spying on them, only noticing when Marcus was alerted, and only finding out when the teacher fell asleep during her stake-out. The only thing we see her definitely be competent at is hypnotizing people and manipulating others.

I don't know, I just really like the idea of a villain with actual magic powers, but whose actual control over people is fear and smoke and mirrors. Kinda like Karaba or the the Wicked Witch of the West (in the book).

So, thanks to @princesssarisa I discovered this old radio program, Let's pretend, from the 1940's. It adapts various classic fairy tales, and among them there was an episode on Madame d'Aulnoy's Yellow Dwarf. And I got curious to check it out, since this story has kind of a downer ending, with the pair of lovers getting defeated by the dwarf and dying together, only to be turned into palm trees by their mermaid friend who couldn't save them. It is quite melodramatic, kind of makes fun of the précieuses of the time and offers a morality about not making promises you can't keep. And while the radioplay kept the death and transformation of the protagonists, the tone changed drastically: now the mermaid summons the "Queen of Enchantments" to save her friends, and the arboreal metamorphosis is to protect the pair for as long as the Yellow Dwarf lives. In the meantime, the two can still be heard professing their undying love to each other. So from a tragic ending we switched to a bittersweet but hopeful one. This isn't too out of the ordinary for a U.S. children's production from the '40s, but it got me thinking: the Yellow Dwarf is one of d'Aulnoy's most famous productions, to this day it gets often cited when talking about her tales. But over the course of the late 18th and 19th century fairy tales experienced a gradual shift to being more and more geared towards children. So I wondered how else the ending of this one may have been altered to be more child-friendly. I figured that it would either soften the sullen finale like in Let's pretend, or dwell on the faults of the protagonists to create a moral teaching.

So I went to look and I actually found a bunch of instances like this!

First of all, the Let's pretend episode is tracing the ending of Minnie Wright's translation for the Blue Fairy Book, from 1889. Here too, the palms intertwine and caress each other as they whisper of their love, though we're given no hope for them to return to human shape. Otherwise the tale is kept much the same as in french, only without the inclusion of the final morality. Such an approach was also used by the anonymous translator of the 1840 Glasgow edition as well as Sabine Baring-Gould in 1894, only translating the text but not keeping the morality. James Planché on the other hand kept the final moral, when he translated the story in 1854, around the same time he produced his fairy tale extravaganza on the very subject.

Now a true difference can be found in Walter Crane's Toy Book, from 1875, explicitly written for children. Here the King is warned in time by Toutebelle of the dwarf and kills his foe, taking his betrothed back home. The story ends with the comment that the princes was "cured of her vanity, and lived happily with the King of the Golden Mines".

Both Baring-Gould and James Planché agree that during the early 19th century The Yellow Dwarf was among d'Aulnoy's lesser known fairy tales in England, however this started to change when its plot was incorporated in christmas pantomimes, like Planché's Fairy Extravaganza, the Yellow Dwarf and the King of the Gold Mines. This show has probably the most outrageous alteration for a happy ending. The lovers die and get turned into palms by their respective supernatural suitors, only for Syren the mermaid to pop out of the fountain that sprouted between the trees. She invokes creative liberty and theatre logic to allow for a departure from d'Aulnoy. Wow.

In 1825 there already was one english retelling of the french fairy tale: Walter Sholto Douglas' Tales of the Wild and Wonderful used the story as a jumping point to create its own gothic folkloric plot, mixing in elements from Germany. One such thing is the Yellow Dwarf's weakness, his beard. Just like Snow White and Rose Red, princess Brunhilde must cut it off to finally defeat him and escape with her lover Ludolph. This adaptation also was made for a somewhat older audience however.

Speaking of german fairy tales, there have been reworks of d'Aulnoy there as well! In Johann Andreas Christian Löhr's 1820 fairy tale anthology, which mixes Grimms' tales and those of France and 1001 nights, the Yellow Dwarf is able to kill the lover of princess Wunderschön. However, in a sudden burst of rage, the princess wrings the diamond sword from his hands and chops his head off. She then returns to her mother's court, where she marries the first of her suitors that doesn't faint at the sight of her (so much for her undyig love for the King of the Gold Mines). "Thus ends this murder-, sorrow-, tear- and wonder-tale". From 1846 we have Johanne Satori's take on the Yellow Dwarf. Here instead the King defeats the imp and takes princess Flora with him home. Meanwhile, the Desert Fairy Fufu, embarassed for having been tricked, decides to never leave her kingdom again, and thus leaves the two in peace. Both these works were meant for children and focus on the importance of the princess becoming less vain.

The only adaptation of this story I could find from Italy is in the notes of Gozzi's Greenbird, where he first intended the Ogre and the fairy Serpentina to kidnap the protagonists Renzo and Barbarina like the Desert Fairy and Dwarf do in d'Aulnoy. But this was never included in the final product.

I find it interesting how much the different adaptations have changed their interpretation of the tale and the tone in the retelling. This story has more elasticity than I first thought it might.

Like with there was a princess long ago, it is simply the Grimm fairy tale retold through song, with the additional game of children miming out the scenes. It was first recorded by school teacher Paul Hoffmann in 1901, in his collection, das Gehör- und Notensingen in den Elementarschulen, which he compiled from the songs and games of his children. This has lead some to posit he composed this song himself. In 1913 Georg Winter also published this rhyme in Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz, a collection he had worked on since 1895 and which compiled popular nursery rhymes and children's games from Saxony. Some versions seem more derived from Humperdinck's opera, with both children shoving the witch into the oven.

The wide popularity of this song has lead to many parodies as well. Michael Ende rewrote it this way in 1982:

"Hänsel und Knödel, die gingen in den Wald. Nach längerem Getrödel rief Hänsel plötzlich: Halt! Ihr alle kennt die Fabel, des Schicksals dunklen Lauf: Der Hänsel nahm die Gabel und aß den Knödel auf.“

"Hänsel and Dumpling, they went into the woods. After much daudling, did Hänsel exclaim: Halt! You all know this fable, destiny's dark design: Hänsel took the fork and ate the dumpling up.“

Comedian Otto Waalkes also had his fun with this nursery rhyme, overlapping it with pop songs throughout the years

( @adarkrainbow Walter Moers also references it at the start of Ensel and Krete: «everyone know this tale: "Ensel and Krete got lost inside the woods..."»)

So, it was about a year ago that I found @adarkrainbow's reviews on Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales and introduced him to the older adaptation of Basile's work, More than a miracle (aka Cinderella italian style, or Happily ever after). But thinking about it, there are more movies that, while not trying to adapt the whole of the parthenopeian fairytales, do cover singular stories from the Pentameron. I didn't know all of these movies beforehand, so there might be more I haven't found yet, which means this post might get some updates down the road.

1. Tale of Tales (il Racconto dei Racconti), Matteo Garrone, 2015

The movie that wears the original book's title, Tale of Tales is Garrone's first delve into outright fantasy. The themes of dreams and fairytales are something that this director (famous for more realistic films, like the much acclaimed Gomorra) often tried to tackle, since 2002's The embalmer, and which he revisited in 2019's Pinocchio. This adaptation takes three tales from the original collection (the enchanted doe, the flayed old lady, the flea) and retells them straight, without Basile's light-hearted but dark humour. The result is a film that embraces the "grim and gory fairytales" style. Yet Garrone never loses himself entirely to cynisism, there is always wonder and beauty alongside the grotesque.

2. More than a miracle (C'era una volta), Francesco Rosi, 1967

The original adaptation of Basile's work, More than a Miracle is a product of the italian style comedy and rode on the star power of Sophia Loren and Omar Sharif following Doctor Zhivago. In many ways an opposite work to Tale of Tales, this is the first attempt of adapting the Pentameron as a whole. But rather than adapting specific tales from the collection, Rosi takes elements and details from different stories and weaves his own original plot, following a haughty prince falling for a strong-willed peasant woman. The historical and geographical environment that created the book is also an actual setting in this movie, unlike the very fantastic and otherworldly Tale of Tales. Other folk tales and southern traditions also get mixed in, something that Roberto de Simone would also do with his play.

3. La Gatta Cenerentola, Roberto de Simone, Domenico Virgili, 1997

Ok, I'm really stretching the definition of "movie" here, since this is just a recording of de Simone's musical/operetta, first performed in 1976. But it is one of the most notable adaptations of Basile's fairy tales, one that unites the oldest italian version of Cinderella with modern day folk tales, collected by de Simone himself. The resulting piece not only explores the many different forms Cinderella can take, but also depicts neapolitan folk culture, with its traditions, language and music. Naples is just as much of a protagonist as Cinderella is, really one represents the other.

4. Cinderella the Cat (Gatta Cenerentola), Alessandro Rak, 2017

Again I'm bending the rules here, since this movie is arguably more inspired by the play than by the fairy tale, but I think it can still be included. For one thing, Mia and her father are called Basile in this adaptation, so there's a definite awareness of the source material. Also, the King is a proper defined character in this version, unlike de Simone's play where he doesn't even appear. Though its being a jukebox musical, the six stepsisters having a feminiella among them and a plot that has the city of Naples at its heart, lead back to the NCCP's great retelling. The inclusion also of a prince character in Primo Gemito gives away the influence of other retellings too. All in all this movie is its own thing, with well made 3d animations, an interesting relationship between Cinderella, the stepmother and the King, and a clever use of the shoe.

5. The myrtle maiden (O myrtové panně), Svatava Simonová, 1992

I only discovered this movie this year, thanks to @fairytaleslive. Again, this isn't a direct adaptation of Basile's fairy tale, La mortella (the Myrtle), but of Clemens Brentano's retelling, Das Märchen von dem Myrtenfräulein, from his italian fairytales. Unlike previous examples, which were all mostly produced in Italy, this movie come from Czechia, a land with a much richer tradition in fairy tale movies. Nevertheless, this isn't the most outstandig production.

So, if you interest yourself in fairy tales and their origins, you might have come across the assertion that the first instance of Hänsel and Gretel, as for so many folk tales, comes from the Pentameron. In it, we have the tale of Nennillo e Nennella, either the 7th or 8th story of the V day (depending on the edition), in which the titular children are left in the woods by their father Jannuccio, after the wishes of their stepmother Pasciozza, due to their poverty. On their first trip, the father leaves a trail of ash, which the children follow home, but on the second he just leaves breadcrumbs, a donkey eats these, and the kids are lost to the forest. But there is an even older example offered, Das Erdkühlein, "the little earth cow", from Martin Montanus' Gartengesellschaft (the garden company), from 1560. Here we have two sisters, Maidlein (a nickname of Margarete, like Gretel) and Annelein, a wicked stepmother and a plan to abandon a stepchild in the forest, first foiled by trails of sawdust and chaff, but that takes place after the girl uses linen seeds, which are picked by birds.

So far so good, right? These tales present close similarities to both Hänsel and Gretel and its predecessor, Perrault's Little Tumbling, so it makes sense to consider these two stories as the influences for the more famous ones. Except the way the older tales continue does not match Grimm or Perrault at all! Neither Nennillo, Nennella or Maidlein meet a child-eating monster, that they have to outwit to survive, nor is their return home a grand happy ending. The chidlren in Basile are separated, Nennillo raised by a prince, and Nennella taken by pirates and swallowed by a magic fish, only to be saved by her brother, and the prince punishing their stepmother; Maidlein meets the titular earth cow, a magic animal that keeps her well-fed, until her stepmother and jealous sister kill it and take her home to continue their abuse. While Grimms' and Perrault's stories are categorized as two subtypes of ATU 327 ("The children and the Witch", and "the dwarf and the giant"), the two older examples follow different structures. The little earth cow is an instance of ATU 511 ("One-eye, two-ey, three-eye), a type of story more closely related to Cinderella (the one giving Maidlein her trails back home is in fact her godmother). So it might be more correct to see the older tales as the first cases of this fairy tale BEGINNING, not of the tale types themselves. But then what is the model Nennillo and Nennella is following?

Oh hey, I came across my old sketchbook again, and decided to share some of these here (I actually had prepared to post some of them already some time ago, but then that got derailed).

This here is from 2020, depicting the story of Rhodopis. It was written down by Strabo and Aelian in the 1st and 2nd centuries a.d. It is by some scholars considered the first version of Cinderella, though only the section wuth the trial of the shoe is present. Rhodopis was also a real historical character, a hetaira (ἑταίρα) from Thrace (around modern day Bulgary), who was freed by the brother of Sappho, Charaxus. She was able to get rich and send a donation to the temple in Delphi, which lead to many legends to form around how she got so rich. Some of these were transcribed by Herodotus, though even he found them ludicrous.

When I drew this, the italian wikipedia article on Rhodopis still only gave the plot of Shirley Climo's 1989 retelling of the tale, so here the woman is washing her clothes rather than bathing and a hawk carries the shoe instead of an eagle.