Three Wishes for Cinderella

 Also known as "Three Nuts for Cinderella," because magic hazelnuts figure into the plot, this movie is known mostly for being one of those insane European holiday traditions. The traditional Christmas airing in Norway is famously very weirdly dubbed, with a narrator talking over the original audio and describing the action. I've seen clips of it on YouTube and it's pretty bad. But I watched the restored version on Criterion and the actual look of it is lovely. Václav Vorlíček is the Czech director, and I liked his oddball "The Girl on the Broomstick." The actors speak in both Czech and German, and in the version I saw, the German is dubbed into Czech (I assume there's an all-German audio out there somewhere.) It shares some of the insouciance of "The Girl on the Broomstick," not to the same manic level, but there's a lot of young people being rebellious and a strong female lead with power and agency.

As an Iron Curtain co-production of Czechoslovakia and East Germany, this is in not a traditional Cinderella story, in ways I mainly approve of. Cinderella is a horsewoman and fierce with a crossbow. She is tough, smart and resourceful. The royalty isn't too favorably portrayed - the prince is a bit of an idiot who just likes hunting, which makes him the perfect mate for Crossbow Cindy. 

On the subject of hunting, for all the traditional "Cinderella is helped by cute animals" that this film sticks too, she's also a hunter along with the prince and although she saves a deer from his arrow in one scene, a fox is horribly and bloodily killed by an arrow (Norse: you guys watch this snuff film at Christmas??) and Cinderella downs a hawk with an arrow. The fox was worse. Maybe they edit this part out for holiday TV viewings? Does Norway still kill whales? Must be that Viking blood. 

Although that put me off quite a bit, I love the gorgeous winter scenery of the movie and could watch Cinderella cantering through the snowy woods the whole length of the movie. There is a lovely darkness and blue-ness to the whole movie, very winter and firelit. I can see why you'd watch it in the winter. If they remade it, actually which they did and I haven't checked that out yet but I will to see if my predictions are right: it would be overly bright but digitally blue-toned, way too clear, not nearly as naturalistic, probably no gory fox murder.

Things I liked: Winter woods, insane costumes, lighting, horse girl Cinderella

Thing I hated: Gory fox Murder

Q: Does it mean anything that the prince is always running away from history lessons?

Crossbow Cindy