1h 12min || 10 October 1954 | Color
Director: John Paul
Stars: Anna Russell, Mildred Dunnock, Frank Rogier
Genres: Animation | Adventure | Family | Fantasy | Music | Musical
Watched on AmazonPrime. Hard to know whether the print was good and the animation was deliberately soft, or if the colors were originally more vivid. I wouldn't choose these colors for a forest. Audio quality is fine.
Didn't absorb that this was an opera before running it, and didn't like what I heard. I especially disliked the spoken dialog of the children, since the adults trying to be children sounded very artificial, and they didn't sing operatically. Hated what I saw: the stop-motion wasn't bad, but the backgrounds were. Some scenes were just pans of an ugly background. Of course, when dealing with evil witches, ugly is the correct choice. But the pan didn't reveal anything. It was just visual filler to accompany the orchestral music. Ugh.
IMDb rating 6.9 with 160 votes. I can't imagine who likes this. Not opera-lovers. Maybe stop-motion historians, since this is supposed to be the first feature-length s.m. film produced in America.
RKO, dir. Paul; 5
