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The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
Wonderfullgrimm.jpg
Souvenir program cover
Directed by Henry Levin
George Pal (fairy tale sequences)
Produced by George Pal
Screenplay by Charles Beaumont
William Roberts
David P. Harmon
Story by David P. Harmon
Starring Laurence Harvey
Claire Bloom
Karlheinz Böhm
Barbara Eden
Walter Slezak
Oscar Homolka
Yvette Mimieux
Russ Tamblyn
Jim Backus
Beulah Bondi
Terry-Thomas
Buddy Hackett
Music by Leigh Harline
Bob Merrill (songs)
Cinematography Paul Vogel
Edited by Walter A. Thompson
Production
company
George Pal Productions
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cinerama Releasing Corporation
Release date
  • August 7, 1962 (1962-08-07)
Running time
135 minutes
Country United States
Germany
Language English
Budget $6.25 million
Box office $8,920,615

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is a 1962 American film directed by Henry Levin and George Pal. The latter was the producer and also in charge of the stop motion animation. The film was one of the highest-grossing films of 1962. It won one Oscar and was nominated for three additional Academy Awards. Several prominent actors — including Laurence Harvey, Karlheinz Böhm, Jim Backus, Barbara Eden, and Buddy Hackett — are in the film.

It was filmed in the Cinerama process, which was photographed in an arc with three lenses, on a camera that produced three strips of film. Three projectors, in the back and sides of the theatre, produced a panoramic image on a screen that curved 146 degrees around the front of the audience.

The story focuses on the Grimm brothers, Wilhelm (Laurence Harvey) and Jacob (Karlheinz Böhm), and is biographical and fantastical at the same time. They are working to finish a history for a local Duke (Oscar Homolka), though Wilhelm is more interested in collecting fairy tales and often spends their money to hear them from locals. Tales such as "The Dancing Princess" and "The Cobbler and the Elves" are integrated into the main plot. One of the tales is told as an experiment to three children in a book store to see if publishing a collection of fairytales has any merit. Another tale, "The Singing Bone", is told by an old woman (Martita Hunt) in the forest who tells stories to children, while the uninvited Wilhelm secretly listens through an open window. The culmination of this tale involves a jeweled dragon and features the most involved usage of the film's special effects.

Wilhelm loses the manuscript of the Duke's family history while writing down this third story - he is supposed to be collecting additional information for the family history - and the brothers cannot meet their deadline. They are required to pay their rent, which was waived while they worked. As a result of wading through a stream in an effort to retrieve the manuscript (which fell into the water after his briefcase broke open), Wilhelm becomes critically ill with potentially fatal pneumonia. He dreams that at night various fairytale characters come to him, begging him to name them before he dies. In the dream, Russ Tamblyn reprises his role as Tom Thumb from the 1958 film. His fever breaks and Wilhelm recovers completely, continuing his own work while his brother publishes regular books including a history of German grammar and a book on law. Jacob, shaken by his brother's experience, begins to collaborate on the fairy tales with Wilhelm.


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