The Blue Bird

(1940, U.S.) color 83/88 minutes
20th Century Fox
Story: Maurice Maeterlinck (from his play "L'Oiseau bleu")
Screenplay: Ernest Pascal, Walter Bullock
Music: Alfred Newman, David Buttolph, David Raksin
Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller
Produced by: Gene Markey, Darryl F. Zanuck
Directed by: Walter Lang

With: Shirley Temple Mytyl), Gale Sondergard (Tylette the Cat), Nigel Bruce (Mr. Luxury), Sterling Holloway (Wild Plum), Spring Byington (Mummy Tyl)

Plot Outline (IMDb): Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, a woodchopper's children, are led by the Fairy Berylune on a magical trip through the past, present, and future to locate the Blue Bird of Happiness.

***

Bizarre, creepy gothic fantasy stars Shirley Temple, in a borderline child/adolescent role, as a spoiled brat who searches for the bird of happiness in a most nasty world of doom and gloom.

For a light-hearted fantasy, this is awfully depressing, full of moaning and weeping, especially in a hellish future purgatory where half-naked pre-adolescent spirits fret and moan over when they will be born.

Also harrowing is a truly inferno-like forest fire. Fox's attempt to cash in on the success of the previous year's THE WIZARD OF OZ is, unlike it's predecessor, a stage-bound downer, yet parallels abound, including a black and white opening that switches to color, and a remarkably similar moral: "There's no place like home!"

But this plays more like kiddy horror than fantasy. Gale Sondergard, famous for her Spiderwoman roles, is great as a conniving, evil cat. (Sondergard was, at this time, a member of the Anti-Nazi League Hollywood chapter, considered by some to be allied with the Communist Party, and she received some blacklisting due to this unfortunate misinformation.)

Shirley Temple's tutor, Francis Klamt, fought with the producers over a scene in which lightning strikes a tree and a piece of bark comes off. As it was originally planned, the bark could have flown in the wrong direction and injured Temple. Due to Klamt's complaint, carpenters built a safety ledge to protect Temple from flying props.

Although Temple had almost single-handedly saved Fox studios from bankruptcy during the depression, after this and a few other bombs, she was shown the door, and had the typical difficulty of child actors in adolescence.

Video/DVD availability: VHS (Fox Home Video)