The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
Souvenir program cover
Directed by	Henry Levin George Pal (fairytales)
Produced by	George Pal
Written by	David P. Harmon Charles Beaumont William Roberts
Starring	Lawrence Harvey Claire Bloom Karlheinz Böhm Barbara Eden
Editing by	Walter Thompson
Distributed by	MGM/Cinerama
Release date(s)	August 7, 1962
Running time	135 min
Country	United States
Language	English

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 famous actors — including Laurence Harvey, Jim Backus, Barbara Eden, and Buddy Hackett — are in the film.

It was filmed in the groundbreaking Cinerama format, 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.

Plot

The story focuses on the Grimm brothers, Wilhelm (Laurence Harvey) and Jacob (Karlheinz Böhm), and is biographical and fantastical at the same time. Both 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.

Eventually, Wilhelm loses the manuscript of the Duke's family history while writing down this third story - he is actually supposed to be collecting additional information for the family history - and the brothers cannot meet their deadline. So they are required to pay their rent, which was withheld while they worked. Meanwhile, because he was 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 pneumonia and lies at death's door. He dreams that at night various fairytale characters come to him, begging him to name them before he dies. The experience causes the fever to break and Wilhelm recovers completely, continuing his work as his brother publishes regular books such as a history of German grammar and a book on law. However, Jacob, shaken by his brother's experience, now begins to collaborate on the fairy tales with Wilhelm.

The two are ultimately invited to receive honorary membership at the Berlin Royal Academy, which makes no mention of the tales in their invitation. But as the train pulls into the station and Jacob prepares to make a speech deliberately insulting the Academy for snubbing Wilhelm, hordes of children arrive, chanting, "We want a story!" Wilhelm begins: "Once upon a time, there were two brothers". The children raise their voices in a loud cheer, and the film ends.

Cast

• Laurence Harvey - Wilhelm Grimm / The Cobbler ("The Cobbler and the Elves")
• Karlheinz Böhm - Jacob Grimm (as Karl Boehm)
• Claire Bloom - Dorothea Grimm
• Walter Slezak - Stossel
• Barbara Eden - Greta Heinrich
• Oskar Homolka - The Duke (as Oscar Homolka)
• Martita Hunt - Anna Richter (Story Teller)
• Betty Garde - Miss Bettenhausen
• Bryan Russell - Freidrich Grimm
• Ian Wolfe - Gruber
• Tammy Marihugh - Pauline Grimm
• Cheerio Meredith - Mrs. Von Dittersdorf
• Walter Rilla - Priest
• Yvette Mimieux - The Princess ("The Dancing Princess")
• Russ Tamblyn - The Woodsman ("The Dancing Princess")/ Tom Thumb (in Wilhelm's Dream)
• Jim Backus - The King ("The Dancing Princess")
• Beulah Bondi - The Gypsy ("The Dancing Princess")
• Terry-Thomas - Sir Ludwig ("The Singing Bone")
• Buddy Hackett - Hans ("The Singing Bone")
• Otto Kruger - The King at Ludwig's Trial ("The Singing Bone")
• Arnold Stang - Rumplestiltskin (in Wilhelm's dream)
• The Puppetoons - The Elves ("The Cobbler and the Elves")
• Peter Whitney - The Giant (uncredited)

Accolades

The film won an Academy Award and was nominated for three more:

Won

• Best Costume Design

Nominated

• Best Art Direction (George Davis, Edward Carfagno, Henry Grace, Dick Pefferle)
• Best Cinematography
• Best Music

Cinerama tells a story

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm was produced and exhibited in the original 3-panel Cinerama widescreen process. It was the first Cinerama feature that attempted to tell a cohesive story, unlike previous productions, which had all been travelogues.

Cinerama Lost and Found

Cinerama Inc, now a unit of Pacific Theatres, had long ago abandoned the process, put the machinery and negatives into storage at their old Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, and sold off the remaining Cinerama travelogue prints to be used as sound spacers. MGM held the elements for How The West Was Won, and Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, which they co-produced with Cinerama Inc. When the MGM Library was sold to Ted Turner, all the MGM elements went to the Turner company.

When Turner's Home Video unit released Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm on VHS and Laserdisc, the film was transferred from an anamorphic 35mm element that was a composite of the 3 Cinerama panels. This video seems to be a general release version, missing the Overture, Prologue, Entr’Acte and Exit Music from the Cinerama roadshow presentation.

In the late 90s, a grass roots Cinerama revival reached from specially retrofitted theatres in Dayton, Ohio to Bradford, England, drawing audiences from throughout the world to see Cinerama films saved or assembled by collectors. Talk of renovating the Seattle Cinerama theatre and Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, with the ongoing ability to show 3-strip Cinerama films, led to discussing the possibility of striking new prints of 3 strip Cinerama features to show there.

While Cinerama Inc, under supervision of former Cinerama Dome manager John Sittig, examined their negatives of This Is Cinerama and discovered they were intact enough to strike a new print, Roger Mayer, then in charge of MGM movies for the Turner organization, was able to report that the negatives for How The West Was Won were all in excellent shape. New Cinerama prints of both features were struck for occasional showings at the Seattle Cinerama, the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, and Pictureville Cinema in Bradford, England.

Rumors of Negative Damage

When asked about the possibility of striking a new print of Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, Mayer said at that time that the Grimm Negatives had sustained some water damage while in storage, and that the costs of making a new print were prohibitive.

In subsequent years a good deal of lore and speculation evolved regarding the extent of damage to the Grimm negatives. Some reported it as "extensive" while others claimed it a total loss. Many believed that West and Grimm were stored with Pacific's Cinerama titles under less than ideal conditions, and it was often assumed the water damage to Grimm had happened there. The Turner/MGM film library was eventually sold to Warner Brothers, but the actual elements had been very carefully stored by the Turner organization for many years.

As the DVD market grew to include Blu-Ray, Warners painstakingly remastered How The West Was Won from the original 3-strip Cinerama negatives, but an interview with George Feltenstein of Turner/Warner's Homevideo unit repeated "extensive water damage" (which he said had occurred in MGM's storage facility before Turner acquired the library) as a reason for not releasing Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. Feltenstein did point out that, having been shot in IB Technicolor, the Grimm elements included protection separation elements of the 3 primary colors, all of which are in fine shape, and can be used to create a new negative. There was not enough apparent sales potential for Grimm, he said, to justify the substantial cost at that time.

As film negatives are often stored horizontally and stacked in boxes, it seems unlikely that the entire negative (3 strips for every reel) could have been water damaged unless there had been a rather serious flood. The director of a Cinerama documentary has said he has actually examined the Grimm elements, and - far from being "extensive" - the water damage to the 3 strip negatives was limited to only the far edge of one of the three panels, and even then only on some reels.

Restoration Rumor

In online discussions with film fans, a Warner Home video spokesman reportedly stated that they would not master Grimm to DVD from the 35mm anamorphic composite used for the Laserdisc because it was a general release version, missing the Overture, Prologue, Entr'Acte and Exit music from its original roadshow engagements. Fans had pointed out that this version did not contain the full width of the 3 Cinerama panels.

Meanwhile, the cable channel TCM, Turner Classic Movies, has been airing Grimm about twice a year, complete with all the elements that were missing from the laserdisc. This sparked a rumor that the film had been "restored." - A Cinerama related website (http://cinerama.topcities.com/wwotbgld.htm) has posted images illustrating the difference between the original 3 panels, the laserdisc, and the current TCM broadcast version - which shows more of the original picture. All the audio elements (Overture, sound for the Prologue, Entr'acte, Exit Music) were readily available, and have been released in a 2 disc CD soundtrack, so the only visual added was about a minute and 19 seconds of picture for the Prologue, and a still shot for the roadshow presentation music. The source of the currently broadcast complete version seen on TCN is still unknown, however, it has since been reported that there is also an existing 65mm negative which contains all 3 panels of the film.

Looking forward

John Mitchell, A private collector who had assembled a Cinerama screen and projectors outside his home in Australia, has compiled and carefully saved prints of Cinerama films, including an original IB Technicolor print of Grimm. As Cinerama approaches its 60th anniversary, and the films of How The West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm approach their 50th, it has been announced that Mitchell's 3 Strip Cinerama print of Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm would be shown at a Spring 2012 film festival in Bradford England, and a Cinerama festival in the Fall of 2012 in Hollywood. These showings mark the first public theatrical presentation of the full Cinerama version in 40 years.

Fans missing the film look forward to seeing it on a big Cinerama screen, and a petition has surfaced online to gather support for some kind of a DVD and Blu-Ray release sometime in the future. http://www.change.org/petitions/wonderful-world-of-the-brothers-grimm-on-dvdbluray

See also

• The Brothers Grimm (2005)
• List of stop-motion films

External links

• The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm at the Internet Movie Database
• The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm at AllRovi
• John Mitchell interview