The Snow Queen

Definitely one of those fairy tale stories that every kid remembers from Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published in 1845 and has been in print ever since in various children's books, full length and annotated. It has also seen quite a few adaptations in film, literature, animation, theatre, musicals, and dance.

I hadn't realized that it had been made into a movie by the BBC in 2005 until I ran across a blog post on the film on one of the fairy tale blogs that I read. I decided to look for the movie at my local library and was happy to see that they had a copy of this film.



The film is directed by Julian Gibbs and stars the talents of Syndey White as Gerda, Juliet Stevenson as the mother, Pax Baldwin as Kai, and Patrick Stewart as the voice of the raven. The film features CG elements throughout, which takes a bit of getting used to when you think of how the BBC normally does their films. I think I appreciated the CG part of the film more after watching the extra 'making of' section of the DVD.

Also featured in the film are the musical score and songs composed and written by Paul K. Joyce. The dialogue in the film is kept to a minimum while the music and songs carry the characters and TV viewer on the journey to the Snow Queen's palace. The songs are performed by Syndey White and really add an 'unearthly' fairy tale feel to the film.

All in all, I quite enjoyed the film. It makes me want to re-read the Snow Queen story.

Until next time ^___^