FairyTale: A True Story (Magna) (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio Interviews-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Featurette-Behind The Scenes
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	93:39 (Case: 98)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (89:26)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Charles Sturridge
Studio Distributor	Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Florence Hoath Elizabeth Earl Paul McGann Phoebe Nicholls Harvey Keitel Peter O'Toole
Case	Click
RPI	$34.95	Music	Zbigniew Preisner

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, extensive - it's 1917
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    I was surprised by the number of fairies they managed to get involved in this movie. After all, fairies are notoriously fickle creatures, and very shy about appearing on film. And yet, they have managed to get some extensive shots of fairies in flight, and one sequence with quite a large number of fairies. Their diaphanous wings come up very well on film.

    The film-makers have gone to a lot of trouble to reproduce the atmosphere of 1917. The costumes appear authentic, as do the vehicles, and language. I could have done with a little less authenticity - the large numbers of war-wounded on the train, and the graphic nature of at least one of the wounds, makes me reluctant to show this film to young children. Even the behaviour of the reporters and the mob seem quite realistic. 

    The start of the film, showing Frances Griffiths (one of the girls) and her encounter on a train with a horribly disfigured soldier, is superb at portraying her innocence, and acceptance of the unusual. It is warming to see how the proof of the existence of fairies is uplifting to so many people during the First World War.

    There is some gorgeous footage of English countryside and wildlife - a young fox, a rabbit, even a fawn - portraying the unspoiled environment. The invasion of the general public feels both inevitable, and tragic. The departure of the ground-dwelling folk (gnomes, I think) is sad, and rather deliberately symbolic of the despoiling of nature.

    There are some delightful moments in this film, including some beautifully cut triple sequences, which show a dramatic escape by Houdini interleaved with two other scenes. Ordinarily I find such overlapped sequences annoying, but they are really well done here. 

    This is not a rapidly-moving action film. It proceeds slowly, and gently, but without dragging.

    Can you reach inside, and recapture some of the innocence of youth? Some of that sense of wonder? You may well enjoy this.

Video

    The video transfer is rather good.

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. I suspect that the original aspect ratio was 1.85:1, so this is quite close.

    The picture is quite sharp throughout, with no edge enhancement. There are a couple of lapses of focus, but I think these are inherent in the source material, rather than artefacts of the video transfer. Shadow detail is excellent, and I saw no low level noise. There were some instances of fine film grain, but they were not troubling.

    Colours are mostly drab, as is appropriate for a story set during World War I. It appears to be a deliberate design choice, and it works well. Fleshtones appear natural, so I think it is more a case of careful costuming and set decoration than manipulation of the film. There are spots of bright colour, most noticeably some flowers, and lush green of foliage.

    There is some aliasing, and a couple of cases of shimmer, but only affecting small parts of the image - not very noticeable. There's a single instance of pixelization, but it occurs on a dark background, and is not easy to see. I did see a film artefact, but only one...well, maybe two!

    There are no subtitles at all.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted. I was unsure whether the layer change occurred during the movie, because I didn't see it while watching, but I have found it. They hid it beautifully, in the fade to black between the end of the movie and the start of the credits at 89:26, during a natural pause in the music. Very elegant work.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    You needn't worry too much over the choice of soundtracks. There's a choice of exactly one: English Dolby Digital 2.0, surround encoded. With that, and no subtitles, it is unsurprising that there's no language selection menu.

    Dialogue is clear, excepting the confusion inherent in the plethora of accents. I saw no audio sync glitches, but there is a complete dropout for over a second at 15:25.

    The score is straightforward classical music, and works well with the storyline. It enhances the surreal feeling of the movie. There were a couple of moments when I felt it was quoting from another piece, but I couldn't nail it down.

    Although this is a surround-encoded soundtrack, the surrounds and subwoofer don't appear to be used. The surrounds do seem to echo the fronts with the score, but that's about it.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras are limited, but interesting. I think it's nice that after the movie ends the special features menu is shown, rather than the main menu.

Menu

    The main menu has background music.

Interviews

    There are 8 interviews, each of which links from a single page filmography. The interviews are not long, and they have been cut quite roughly, but there's some interesting information in them. They are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The interviews are:

• Charles Sturridge (director) - 3:47 - terribly edge-enhanced
• Elizabeth Earl - 0:51
• Florence Hoath - 0:37
• Harvey Keitel (Harry Houdini) - 3:40
• Paul McCann (the father) - 0:55
• Peter O'Toole (Arthur Conan Doyle) - 1:37
• Phoebe Nicholls (the mother) - 2:18
• Wendy Finerman (producer) - 2:37

    I must mention something that amused me - twice, Harvey Keitel refers to "Albert Conan Doyle". Harvey helps us by mentioning that he wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Theatrical Trailer

    The trailer is only 1:34 minutes long, presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. 

    I noticed an interesting difference between one scene of the film and the trailer - in the film we see one of the girls tell a nosy reporter that the fairies will come out "and box your ears". In the trailer we hear "and kick your butt" - not quite as refined. I suspect that we have the original English cut of the film, but an American trailer, and that the change was made because American audiences are unacquainted with the English expression.

Behind the Scenes

    This is fairly brief (6:59), but it shows some of the shooting, and some rehearsal for a scene. There's quite a bit of background noise to the sound. 

    This film does not appear to be released on DVD in Region 1, as yet.

    FairyTale: A True Story is a pleasant movie, nicely presented on DVD. I'd be a little careful of showing it to children because of some of the footage of war-wounded.

    The video quality is rather good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are not extensive.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall