Here are two reviews about the finally released US-VHS - thanks to Michele!
Wade Major writes in the Internet:
"Three Wishes for Cinderella
**** (Audio: C+, Video: B-, Features: F)
No extra features.
The 1973 Czech effort "Three Wishes for Cinderella," also known as "Three
Nuts for Cinderella" or "Three Acorns for Cinderella," is an unsung gem.
This surprisingly "liberated" look at the fairy tale re-imagines it with
a Cinderella who seizes the day and does all the things that a modern,
liberated feminist would do. This one doesn't wait for men to take action.
She takes action!
Boasting
typically lovely Eastern European production values -- Russian fairy tales
of the period are particularly attractive, too -- "Three Wishes for Cinderella"
suffers on DVD only from a middling transfer and a source print that could
have been better. It's vastly superior to every other exhibition format
previously see in the U.S., though, including home video, imported foreign
bootlegs and the handful of roaming revival prints sometimes seen at Czech
film festivals. Notably lovely cinematography from Josef Illik and memorable
music by Karel Svoboda.
Collector Rating: WORTH FULL PRICE"
San Francisco Examiner
"Facets
has also released the very charming "Three Wishes for Cinderella" (1973,
Facets, $19.95). This odd Czech version of the famous story is warmly
compelling right from the start. It moves fast and doesn't contain any
musical numbers, and it combines a nice sense of humor with a sense of
wonder.
But most of the film's success comes from the lovely and charming actress
Libuse Safrankova in the role of Cinderella. Instead of talking mice,
she comes across three magic acorns that, once cracked, conjure up disguises
for her -- including her magnificent ball gown.
Facets' new DVD comes in a crisp full-screen transfer, with minor scratches and flaws in the film stock still evident. The subtitles are not the greatest, and at one point, they unintentionally serve up a dirty double-entendre.
Highly recommended for kids of any age who can manage the subtitles."
(7th April 2003)
The following interpretation of our favourite film
comes from Dieter Matthias, akad. Oberrat at the faculty of educational
science at the University of Cologne. Extracs of his article
"Stop waiting for the fairytale prince!"
are repeated here, published in the periodical "Praxis Deutsch" issue
143, Friedrich Verlag, May 1997, pp.48 - 55 (translated by Kathrin Richter)
"If fairytales are "keys to the world" and orientation for young humans...,
they can influence the process of finding one's identity, which always
is a proces of finding one's sex, too. ...It has been proved, that film
and TV seduce their young viewers to take over roles. Especially in
constructing the social categories "woman" and "man" media often use
traditional female and male clichés. ... Besides more or less trivial
fairytale film adaptions (...) however there are those, who narrationaly
and filmtechnically break up the better known and traded pattern and
present changed identification offers. Three Nuts for Cinderella
belongs to this rare kind of fairytale movies...
Three Nuts for Cinderella draws the figure of a selfconscious, "emancipated"
Cinderella. ... (Libuse Safrankova) (...) convincingly and inviting to identification
plays a warmth and selfconsciousness radiating brave and smart Cinderella,
who competently defends her personality against stepmother and -sister,
but also from the prince and finally makes him court her, after she
has demonstrated her self-confidence. She is an autarkic fairytale character
full of youthful grace, not trying to please any man nor entering the
stage from his perspective. ...
Compared to Vorličeks Cinderella .... Grimms' Aschenputtel is a substancial
colourless figure. ... Not much more emancipatedly created is the literal
model ... of ... Božena Nemcová ... . Here Cinderella is, like at Grimms'
- a girl tormented by the stepmother released by a prince. ... Thus the
director could not take the emancipatoric tendencies for his filmic
drawing of Cinderella from the Pattern. Those he supposedly took from
the author's biography, i.e. above all of the repute she enjoyed in
socialist Czechoslovakia and from others of her works. ...
Interesting on Vorličeks film adaption is te fact, that the new idea
of a girl, Cinderella personifies, can only be kept up in the context
of a change in the other roles' profiles, especially of the male counterpart,
the prince. In the film ... the prince appears as a swinging, still a
little clumsy young man, detesting the constraints of courtly life and
courtly education and wanting to come loose from them. He escapes the
restricting walls of his home into the snowy wood, away from the dusty
lessons of the private tutor and the formalisms of the dancing instructor.
The prince's figure personifies no masculine power- or dominance-behaviour:
Such a prince cannot release Cinderella, but he- as well as Cinderella
- brings along conditions, which let foresee, that the future connection
between both of them will be formed by independence and equality.
Control
structures are drawn in this film adaption exclusive cartooningly. They
are only binding upon those who believe to be able to profit from them,
e.g. the vain stepmother and her daughter. Farmhands and maids of the
farm laugh at the prince, when he comes to look for the true bride with
help of the shoe. Spontaneously cheerful peoples' mockery befall him,
even when everybody knows, whom they face. Such a presentation was a
custom with almost all fairytale films from socialistic countries.
In the following the author describes different possibilities how to employ the film within the german lesons in school. Here extracts from the first conception: comparison of the woman- and man-image at Grimms and Vorlicek.
... Pupils detect, that Cinderella takes over role characteristics which
are considered masculine within our society, e.g. when wearing man's
clothes (motive of changing sex) and shooting. ... But this is no "emanzipatory"
drawing of the heroine. Cinderella, in order to obtain approval and
respect from the prince and his companions, has to let herself in for
the rituals and customs of a men's society. From the nut she obtains
men's clothes, i.e. a hunter's dress, to be able at all to match with
the prince and put herself onto the same level.
In the whole film Vorliček goes far beyond competing with the "manly"
by drawing the heroine as a strong young woman, totally independent
from judgement of male and female authorities being completely herself.
... The arrival of the royal family together with the prince does not
at all impress her and does not stop her from rather riding into the
wood and shout for inner joy into the winter air.
She
also does not want to be loved on account of her beauty (veil before
the face while dancing; puzzle) and be taken as a bride by the prince,
but to be asked, if she wants him. Cinderella also does not want to
let herself find at the end and carry home like a bag, but to walk towards
the prince voluntarily, to let her inner discover by him and to share
her freedom with him (ending scene with riding into the wood, togetherm
but both with an own horse; ...)
Pupils recognize, that actually no Disney-prince [translater's annotation:
in the original text it says "Cinderella-Prinz", this would have lead
to misunderstandings within the translation, so I chose "Disney-prince",
because this it what Mathias referes to] in gala-uniform fits to this
Cinderella, who - like at Grimms - only at the ball appears as dancer
and assume, that for this reason Vorlicek characterized the prince as
a cheerful young man trying to break the court's rules. Only by taking
to his heels from his private tutor he gets the chance to meet Cinderella.
His boyish, carefree manners make him, unintentionally, get her the
magic nuts which the farmhand delivers to the heroine and which bring
both together. However, it becomes clear, that the "childlike" in our
society usually is granted to the masculine, to the "child within the
man". All women, also the queen, here are the stronger figures. At the
same time pupils find out, that the changes in both figures in contrast
to the familiar profiles of fairytale characters - "soft-focusing the
boy's figure" and "emanzipation of the girl's figure" - finally make
it possible, diferent from the Grimms' version, to stage the connection
of two independent humans, who find themselves equivalent."
Well, dear user, did you read the text entirely? Hats off! Yet I think it is worthwhile. Here I'd like to thank Mr. Matthias heartily for the friendly permission to quote his article! Mr. Matthias understood showing the aspect in detail, which, on my opinion makes up the great success of the film: the unusual picture of a heroine.
The quoted article moreover contains further extremely interesting
informations and posibilities of interpretation, e.g. concerning camerawork,
which as well is emancipatorical (e.g. you often see something from
Cinderellas point of view, scarcely something from the prince's point
of view - not she is watched, but looks around). Gripping are the finfings
of a pupil panel: what do boys, what do girls like best of the folm?
You see, I did not quote everything yet! Those of you who want to go
into the article more closely or simply read the whole (only in german,
so far...) can order the issue easily by internet at friedrich-verlag.de
or get it directly on the net on
http://www.uni-koeln.de/ftp/institute/ew-fak/Deutsch/matthias/medienerziehung_ss98/M%E4rchenprinz.html