Indeed, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) bears about as much resemblance to the lives of the historical Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm as Danny Kaye singing "Wonderful Copenhagen" does to the life of Hans Christian Andersen. Facts it gets right: of the two, Wilhelm was the storyteller and family man, often in fragile health, while Jacob was the more retiring philologist with an extensive academic bibliography. Facts it does not care about: everything else except early nineteenth-century Germany, because that provides a gorgeous opportunity for filming in 3-strip Cinerama. There are lovely views of forests, cliffs, rivers, formal gardens. When we cut to an external shot of a king's palace in a fairytale, it's Neuschwanstein. There is also the same problem that many 3D films suffer, i.e., there's no reason for a shot except that it shows off the process, but apparently I have more patience for it in a nearly lost film that doesn't exist on DVD and has never been restored for murky reasons having to do with the state of the original negatives. The version available on TCM is jittery and full of artifacts, with plainly visible lines between the three panels and an Omni film-like warping the farther the image gets from the center of the screen, but I'm still quite glad to have seen it. It is apparently the most complete version commercially available, including the overture and entr'acte and some additional bits of prologue. Maybe TCM will restore the thing and then we could actually see the actors' expressions. It took me until the act break to realize Wilhelm's wife was Claire Bloom.
The frame story is much as I had remembered it, allowing for twenty-five years of forgetting the fine print. Some unspecified year circa Napoleon, the brothers Grimm have spent the last six months working for a local duke, compiling a complete history of his family in exchange for rent-free lodging; they are nearing deadline and conscientious Jacob (Karlheinz Böhm) is beginning to lose patience with his flighty brother, because Wilhelm (Laurence Harvey), while visibly trying his best, is the kind of easily distracted luftmensch who gets sent out for bread and comes back an hour late for dinner with an armful of roses and a newly collected story—a charming gesture, but you can't put it on the table. Nor can you put it in the Duke's family tree. Wilhelm promises to reform, but there's always a more interesting story than the dry dull ancestors under his pen. The situation reaches crisis when he doesn't just lose track of time, huddled scribbling in the rain outside a storyteller's house,1 he loses the entire manuscript of their work in his haste to make a boat he's already missed and Jacob can't take it anymore: he quits, leaving a fever-numbed Wilhelm to make his fragmented apologies to the Duke and receive an ultimatum worthy of a fairytale in return. Spin straw into gold before sunup. Answer the unguessable riddle or lose your head. Come up with six months' back rent in three days or get your family turned out into the street. Cue, more or less, the scene that stayed with me all those years, as the stories that Wilhelm has never had a chance to write down appear around his sickbed and ask him to name them, to stay alive to keep them alive: "We die like dreams, fade into forgetfulness . . . We haven't much more time." Of course there's a happy ending. All the best fairytales have one.
Three actual folktales appear within this narrative.2 ( That is my world, dear ladies. If you prefer yours, I beg you keep it, with my fond blessings and a cordial good day! )
I'm not surprised that I didn't remember much of the embedded stories, truthfully: it's not as colorful, but the tension in the frame is something that even at eight or nine I would have recognized (see also, it's nearly three in the morning and I'm still awake writing about a movie). As an adult, I have a very keen sense of the danger that Wilhelm is placing his family in; I can also appreciate that the film is not schematic about it. Jacob isn't the heavy, even if he's the one with Karlheinz Böhm's softly precise German accent. If anything, the brothers are complementary kinds of socially inept. Wilhelm is the myth-minded dreamer, a loving husband and father with a humorous, theatrical turn of phrase; he'd forget his head if it weren't holding up his hat. He'll chase after anyone who can tell him a story. He knows about his fool's reputation and defends it like Quixote. Jacob is a meticulous scholar with no small talk, a stiff sense of responsibility, and a shy manner that is alternately endearing and awkward; although he falls in love with the beautiful Greta (Barbara Eden), she breaks their engagement when he refuses to leave his brother.3 He is made very happy by writing about grammar and phonology and sound laws. He is made very unhappy by his brother continually flaking on him—he's not having much fun with this genealogical commission, either, but he wants to get paid for it. He sells his library to keep his family safe. If you stick them together, you get something like one well-integrated person who can hold down a job and a home life, which is perhaps why they never separate. But the affection is real, too. Hence the last lines of the film.
I had forgotten that Wilhelm protests being the conduit of all the stories of Germany: "But it . . . it isn't fair. Why must this be on my conscience?" Even dying, he doesn't like responsibility. He takes it on, though; living, which is harder than deciding you're a failure and turning your face to the wall. We have the stories. I understand why I remembered that.
1. She won't let him in; she only tells stories to children, not adults. Showing a shameless degree of self-awareness, Wilhelm protests, "Oh, but I'm much younger than I look! People tell me—" at which point the door slams in his face. He sits down outside her window and starts taking notes.
2. The internet tells me there were supposed to be six, but constraints of time and budget intervened. I have to say I would love to have seen "The Fisherman and His Wife" filmed in "the coral forests off Key West."
3. The historical Jacob never did marry; he lived with Wilhelm and Dorothea all his life. They raised the children together. The film leaves their future ambiguous—when the brothers are met in Berlin by a cheering crowd of children, all demanding a story, Greta is visible in their midst. Viewer's choice, I guess.
The frame story is much as I had remembered it, allowing for twenty-five years of forgetting the fine print. Some unspecified year circa Napoleon, the brothers Grimm have spent the last six months working for a local duke, compiling a complete history of his family in exchange for rent-free lodging; they are nearing deadline and conscientious Jacob (Karlheinz Böhm) is beginning to lose patience with his flighty brother, because Wilhelm (Laurence Harvey), while visibly trying his best, is the kind of easily distracted luftmensch who gets sent out for bread and comes back an hour late for dinner with an armful of roses and a newly collected story—a charming gesture, but you can't put it on the table. Nor can you put it in the Duke's family tree. Wilhelm promises to reform, but there's always a more interesting story than the dry dull ancestors under his pen. The situation reaches crisis when he doesn't just lose track of time, huddled scribbling in the rain outside a storyteller's house,1 he loses the entire manuscript of their work in his haste to make a boat he's already missed and Jacob can't take it anymore: he quits, leaving a fever-numbed Wilhelm to make his fragmented apologies to the Duke and receive an ultimatum worthy of a fairytale in return. Spin straw into gold before sunup. Answer the unguessable riddle or lose your head. Come up with six months' back rent in three days or get your family turned out into the street. Cue, more or less, the scene that stayed with me all those years, as the stories that Wilhelm has never had a chance to write down appear around his sickbed and ask him to name them, to stay alive to keep them alive: "We die like dreams, fade into forgetfulness . . . We haven't much more time." Of course there's a happy ending. All the best fairytales have one.
Three actual folktales appear within this narrative.2 ( That is my world, dear ladies. If you prefer yours, I beg you keep it, with my fond blessings and a cordial good day! )
I'm not surprised that I didn't remember much of the embedded stories, truthfully: it's not as colorful, but the tension in the frame is something that even at eight or nine I would have recognized (see also, it's nearly three in the morning and I'm still awake writing about a movie). As an adult, I have a very keen sense of the danger that Wilhelm is placing his family in; I can also appreciate that the film is not schematic about it. Jacob isn't the heavy, even if he's the one with Karlheinz Böhm's softly precise German accent. If anything, the brothers are complementary kinds of socially inept. Wilhelm is the myth-minded dreamer, a loving husband and father with a humorous, theatrical turn of phrase; he'd forget his head if it weren't holding up his hat. He'll chase after anyone who can tell him a story. He knows about his fool's reputation and defends it like Quixote. Jacob is a meticulous scholar with no small talk, a stiff sense of responsibility, and a shy manner that is alternately endearing and awkward; although he falls in love with the beautiful Greta (Barbara Eden), she breaks their engagement when he refuses to leave his brother.3 He is made very happy by writing about grammar and phonology and sound laws. He is made very unhappy by his brother continually flaking on him—he's not having much fun with this genealogical commission, either, but he wants to get paid for it. He sells his library to keep his family safe. If you stick them together, you get something like one well-integrated person who can hold down a job and a home life, which is perhaps why they never separate. But the affection is real, too. Hence the last lines of the film.
I had forgotten that Wilhelm protests being the conduit of all the stories of Germany: "But it . . . it isn't fair. Why must this be on my conscience?" Even dying, he doesn't like responsibility. He takes it on, though; living, which is harder than deciding you're a failure and turning your face to the wall. We have the stories. I understand why I remembered that.
1. She won't let him in; she only tells stories to children, not adults. Showing a shameless degree of self-awareness, Wilhelm protests, "Oh, but I'm much younger than I look! People tell me—" at which point the door slams in his face. He sits down outside her window and starts taking notes.
2. The internet tells me there were supposed to be six, but constraints of time and budget intervened. I have to say I would love to have seen "The Fisherman and His Wife" filmed in "the coral forests off Key West."
3. The historical Jacob never did marry; he lived with Wilhelm and Dorothea all his life. They raised the children together. The film leaves their future ambiguous—when the brothers are met in Berlin by a cheering crowd of children, all demanding a story, Greta is visible in their midst. Viewer's choice, I guess.
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