French twist
Sleeping Beauty
An alternative take on 'Once upon a time'.
The definitive fairy tale doesn't really exist. Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White - these are stories that have morphed continually over the centuries, through the slippery traditions of oral storytelling and countless literary interpretations. This is the nature of the genre: as society evolves, so do fairy tales. And while the stories have never been completely fixed, we can identify landmark moments in their development.
One such moment occurred in France, circa 1697, when a highly ranked public servant by the name of Charles Perrault published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals. His volume, also known as Tales of Mother Goose, was one of the first written collections of European fairy tales. His book included early versions of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss In Boots and Bluebeard, predating the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm by more than a hundred years.
While dressed in courtly Renaissance fashions, the basic elements of Perrault's fairy tales are familiar, though they sometimes flow off in unusual directions. In Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, for example, the ordeal continues long after the princess wakes up, when she finds herself with an ogress of a mother-in-law. His Little Red Riding Hood ends rather abruptly, on the other hand, when the heroine is eaten by the wolf.
Perrault's tales are the basis for a season of films screening over the next few months. Using his fairy tales as their starting point, directors Catherine Breillat (Romance), Jacques Demy (Les parapluies de Cherbourg) and Olivier Dahan (La vie en rose) have put their own idiosyncratic visions to work, breathing strange new life into dusty old classics. Under the banner 'Charles Perrault: The Godfather of European Fairy Tales,' this season will show you the rare work of three acclaimed auteurs while illustrating the still malleable nature of these magical stories, which have had many different lives on the silver screen. Visit the ACMI website for film info and session times.
'Charles Perrault: The Godfather of European Fairy Tales' screens at ACMI from Sunday 2 January - Sunday 24 April (except Sunday 20 and 27 of March).
Find out more about the program.
Published Thursday, 6 January 2011
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