The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
| The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm | |
|---|---|
Souvenir program cover
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| 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 |
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Production
company |
George Pal Productions
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| Distributed by |
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Cinerama Releasing Corporation |
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Release date
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Running time
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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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Wikipedia