184
184
10
The Czechoslovak–East German
Co-production Trˇi orˇísˇky pro Popelku/Drei
Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel/Three Wishes
for Cinderella: A Transnational Tale
Pavel Skopal
From the 1950s on, film studios in the people’s democracies of the Eastern
Bloc regularly entered into international co-productions with partners
from both sides of the Iron Curtain. This practice went through periods of
greater or lesser intensity depending on the status of international relationships
in different states or on the cultural policy of the Soviet Union. The
studios had manifold reasons for engaging in negotiations with a foreign
partner despite the inevitable problems they also encountered throughout
the production process due to differing concepts, practices and expectations.
By entering into co-productions, studios sought, for example, to
secure commissions from party or government bodies, to achieve international
recognition (especially when collaborating with a capitalist partner),
to acquire training from indigenous practitioners and specialists, to
secure superior technical equipment, to enhance the studio’s production
portfolio (and thus increase chances for festival awards or higher profits)
or simply to share the production expenditures.1
The last two reasons in
particular played an important role in the case of Tři oříšky pro Popelku/
Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel (Three Wishes for Cinderella, 1973).
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Popularity With Two National Audiences
A fairy-tale film2
coproduced by Czechoslovakia and the German
Democratic Republic (GDR), Three wishes for Cinderella, remains a perennial
highlight of Christmas TV programming even today.3
The initial
incentive to shoot it as a co-production was the desire on the part of the
Czechoslovak studio, Barrandov, to share the film’s production costs, which
were projected to be much higher than the average.4
The deal was facilitated
by the partners’ mutual interest in producing a film that would be
truly popular with both national audiences – and the fairy tale was one of
the few genres5
with good prospects to appeal simultaneously to viewers in
both countries. In fact, fairy-tale films proved to be an extremely attractive
product, particularly during the early 1950s, the period when the range of
genres available in East German and Czechoslovak cinemas was the most
limited in the states’ histories. In Czechoslovakia, Pyšná princezna (The
proud princess, 1952) and Byl jednou jeden král (Once upon a time, there
was a king, 1954) reached 6.8 million and 4.4 million viewers respectively,
making them the second- and seventh-most attended movies of the dec-
ade.6
In the GDR, the adaptation of Wilhelm Hauff’s story Die Geschichte
vom kleinen Muck (The story of Little Mook, 1953) drew an astonishing
12 million cinema-goers, and the romantic fairy tale Das kalte Herz (The
cold heart, 1950) reached 4.1 million viewers in the first two years after
its premiere.7
In addition to the local popularity of indigenous fairy tales,
films of this genre also proved to travel well throughout varied national and
cultural spaces. Among the elements contributing to the genre’s mobility
were stories shared among cultures, clear distinctions between good and
evil, and settings localised in fantastic and culturally nonspecific worlds
– Three wishes for Cinderella contains all of these. Upon its release the film
achieved extraordinary results in Czechoslovakia, garnering 1,476,000
viewers during the first year after its premiere8
and faring well in the GDR
as well, where it was the sixth-most-attended movie in 1974, with 721,000
tickets sold.9
All these data imply that fairy-tale films in general, and Three wishes
for Cinderella in particular, were truly popular with audiences. However,
any consideration of ‘popularity’ in the context of cinema exhibition in
the Soviet-bloc countries requires a brief clarification of the concept
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Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe
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186
‘popular.’ Usage of this term is complicated by the fact that Czechoslovakia
and the GDR systematically provided promotional and distributional support
for movies that fully met the state-defined ideological requirements.
Furthermore, cinema-goers’ choices were limited by the compulsory
participation in screenings organised by their schools or places of work.
These distortions complicate the interpretation of film attendance understood
as an expression of cinemagoers’ free choice, but despite that, the
consistently high attendance numbers that fairy-tale films enjoyed in both
Czechoslovakia and the GDR are a clear indicator of the genre’s popularity.
That is so if we understand the term ‘popular’ according to the anthropological
paradigm whereby popularity is measured by the product’s correspondence
to the recipients’ preferred values.10
The most popular fairy-tale
films all shared a rather brisk narrative pace, contained a clear and easily
acceptable distinction between good and evil, blended action with
humour, visual attractiveness and familiar, culturally-domesticated stories
that were ‘well narrated’ according to accepted norms of a ‘good movie.’ In
effect, they more than met the demand for ethically distinct and culturally
familiar entertainment that operated according to the established narrative
and stylistic norms of a quality film product.11
Children’s Films at Barrandov and DEFA: a
Temporary Reconciliation of Production Concepts
Barrandov and the East German Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA)
studios jointly coproduced six films primarily oriented towards children
and youth, of which four were creatively controlled by Czechoslovak
film-makers: Three Wishes for Cinderella, Die Insel der Silberreiher/Ostrov
stříbrných volavek (Island of the silver herons, 1976), Der Katzenprinz/
Kočičí princ (The cat prince, 1979) and Zauberhafte Erbschaft/Kouzelné
dědictví (Magical heritage, 1985). The other two – Die Igelfreundschaft/
Uprchlík (The runaway, 1961) and Abenteuer mit Blasius/Dobrodružství s
Blasiem (Adventure with Blasius, 1974) – were initiated and creatively controlled
by DEFA, which nevertheless accepted a certain degree of advice
and creative input from their Czechoslovak partners due to their trust in
Barrandov’s experience and effectiveness when it came to this kind of production.
The fact that one partner always held clear creative dominance
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The Czechoslovak–East German Co-production
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over each of the projects helped avoid major conflicts between the studios
and yielded results which mostly, although not always, satisfied
both partners. Besides, all but one of these co-productions were implemented
in the 1970s and 1980s, that is, during the Normalisation era,12
which put both party politics and the cinema industry structure in better
sync.13
Another reason for the long-standing cooperation between these
studios was the fact that fairy-tale films were more adaptable to cultural
negotiation than other genres. By contrast, although cultural functionaries
in Czechoslovakia and the GDR placed a high premium on the use of
war movies as a way to confirm ideological alignment between the former
wartime enemies, such productions inevitably touched sensitive nerves
in the participating nations and were thus far less frequently attempted.
Barrandov and DEFA did successfully demonstrate the ideal of solidarity
among socialist states in the co-production of the war films Jahrgang 21/
Ročník 21 (Those born in 1921, 1957) and Koffer mit Dynamit/Praha nultá
hodina (Prague at zero hour, 1962), however both projects had difficulty
overcoming disagreements between the partners over the representation of
the war,14
and consequently the studios never again made a joint foray into
the war movie genre.15
It was in the production of films for children that
the partners’ mutual adjustment of expectations was most fluid and lasting.
This does not mean that conflict was entirely absent from the collaborative
work on the six co-productions aimed primarily at children.
Differences in the standards of cinema production and variances in the
attributes expected from genre movies16
gave rise to numerous disputes and
ultimately resulted in the termination of cooperation between the studios
in 1985 after the production of the fairy-tale film Magical heritage. DEFA
agreed to participate in this project, proposed by Barrandov, under the
strict condition that Barrandov would reciprocate and coproduce a DEFAcontrolled
project titled Der Eisen Hans (Iron John, 1987).17
However,
Barrandov harshly criticised the latter project on grounds that are significant
because they echo rather typical complaints by Barrandov’s creative
personnel towards DEFA’s output: that the script was poorly structured,
overly symbolic and featured insufficient comic relief.18
Consequently, and
in contrast to earlier cases, DEFA head Hans Dieter Mäde rejected all of
Barrandov’s proposed changes to the script of Iron John. The Barrandov
practitioners were confident in their own creative capacities, believing that
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188
their indigenous vision of children’s films constituted a sure-fire recipe for
success, and when DEFA refused to acknowledge this view, the partnership
between the studios was effectively over. As a result, DEFA completed Iron
John without Czechoslovak assistance.
Prior to Mäde’s move to protect DEFA’s sovereignty and individuality
of production that resulted in this breakup, the studio had readily accepted
the pragmatic approach of Czechoslovak dramaturges and scriptwriters for
over a decade. The most productive period of cooperation was launched
by the financial and popular success of Three wishes for Cinderella, which
demonstrated Barrandov’s expertise in crafting fairy-tale films and led
to other collaborations on productions for children. In addition to the
co-productions stimulated by the success of Three wishes for Cinderella,
DEFA also cast Czechoslovak actor Pavel Trávníček in Schneeweißchen
und Rosenrot (Snow White and Rose Red, 1978) in a role that closely
followed Trávníček’s leading character in Three wishes for Cinderella. A
memorandum of the East German Hauptverwaltung Film (Central Film
Administration)19
reveals that the guardians of cultural policy came to
regard Three wishes for Cinderella as a benchmark for how a commercially
and aesthetically satisfying family movie should look: ‘We hope that this
fairy-tale [Snow White and Rose Red] will replicate the commercial success
and the artistic methods of Three Wishes for Cinderella, so that it may meet
the expectations of children and adults.’20
Cinderella, a Transnational Character
As Anne Jäckel has pointed out, a successful model of international coproductions
demands cultural affinities.21
In the case of Three wishes for
Cinderella, the studios succeeded in finding a common cultural field in
the Cinderella story, which has strong ties with both the German and the
Czech literary traditions. The story had been adapted by the creators of
the romantic literary canon in both national contexts, the Grimm brothers
and Božena Němcová, respectively.22
The authors and their folktales were
easily tailored to meet the demands of the cultural policy in the GDR, as
well as in Czechoslovakia during the Normalisation era. As part of the two
German states’ competition for national heritage, the Grimms were incorporated
into the construction of the GDR’s national identity and included
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The Czechoslovak–East German Co-production
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in the official literary canon.23
Likewise, Božena Němcová had a firm position
in the Czechoslovak literary pantheon established according to state
cultural policy after the communist putsch in February 1948.24
Because of the global popularity of the Cinderella story more generally
and its acceptability for the communist cultural policy more specifically,
the 1973 movie Three wishes for Cinderella addressed audiences already
well acquainted with filmic adaptations of the fairy tale: in addition to the
black and white Soviet version Zolushka (Cinderella, 1947), there were also
Disney’s Cinderella (1950), which first came to Czechoslovak screens only
in 1971, and an indigenous Czechoslovak adaptation, Popelka (Cinderella,
Vlasta Janečková), a black and white TV musical produced in 1969. In
an effort to differentiate its new project from these previous versions,
Barrandov envisaged Three wishes for Cinderella as a big budget venture
with lavish sets, to be shot on the expensive Eastmancolor film stock. In
effect, the project’s high budget made external financing a necessity.25
Although DEFA was very active in exploiting the writings of the
Grimm brothers,26
this 1973 Cinderella adaptation was not based on the
Grimms’ version but on the one written by Božena Němcová. The preference
for Němcová‘s version of the story was rooted in scriptwriter
František Pavlíček’s27
intensive and long-lasting interest in Němcová‘s
oeuvre.28
The differences are significant between the versions of Cinderella
as adapted by Pavlíček from Němcová, on the one hand, and the Grimms’
Aschenputtel, on the other. In contrast to the Grimms’ take on the tale,
Božena Němcová’s Cinderella is a much more active figure, and Pavlíček
emphasises the character’s independence even further. Regardless of the
recognizable tie to the Czech literary canon, director Vorlíček pragmatically
promoted a transnational reading of the story during the project’s
approval process and insisted that he did not fear a ‘denationalisation’ of
the fairy tale.29
The Czechoslovak studio’s declarations of the story’s transnationality
and cultural adaptability30
might have been intended to emancipate
the project from the sacrosanct cultural heritage of Němcová’s fairy
tales and might have been motivated by the desire to ensure that the envisioned
international co-production not be cancelled. For their part, however,
the German partners had no problem accepting that this modernised
telling of the story diverged significantly from the Grimm version. The
chief of DEFA, Albert Wilkening, was fully aware of the digression from
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Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe
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190
the German version of the tale, yet this did not prevent him from praising
the film. On the contrary, he emphasised the film’s ‘strong realism’ and the
fact that ‘deeds are more important for the story than miracles’.31
The modernisation became an emblematic feature of the project for
both partners. Ota Hofman, the head of the dramaturgical group that had
been developing the project, did not emphasise any element of national
specificity; according to him, the divergences from the previous versions
of the tale were a factor of the unconventionality, originality and modernity
of the script, rather than a result of any attempt at national appropria-
tion.32
He proclaimed that the script’s moral value is grounded in a sense
of justice and in the active attitude toward life Cinderella expressed in
the story. The director, Vorlíček, also publicly emphasised this concept
of an active heroine in a Czechoslovak film journal: ‘Readers remember
Cinderella as a passive, defenceless creature, tortured by her wicked stepmother
and envious sisters, dependent on the help of doves and liberated
by a prince charming. Our Cinderella is more like a modern girl, she is
active, brave, sporty and she helps herself out of misfortune.’33
The concept
of the ‘modernised’ Cinderella, as well as the source of the modernisation
in Němcová’s version of the story were equally enthusiastically recognised
and accepted in East German critical discourse. Neues Deutschland, the
official newspaper of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschslands, SED
(Socialist Unity Party of Germany) highlighted the fact that Cinderella
is presented as an emancipated, strong and determined character:
‘Cinderella, as we met her in this movie, is different from the one we
know from the Grimms’ fairy tales. She does not bear her suffering with
patience […] she helps herself. […] The movie elaborates an emancipatory
tendency. Cinderella becomes a creature which could almost be our
contemporary.’34
Another review enumerates the character’s features that
would be easily attributable to the ideal socialist youth: ‘In the centre of
the story is not a lucky fellow (Hans im Glück) into whose hands happiness
fell like a ripe plum. Instead, we are watching a girl who has to fight
for her happiness and future. And the little cinemagoer can easily identify
with Cinderella and can learn how one has to fight: with courage, persistence,
purposefulness and an iron will.’35
This did not mean that the social reality in the GDR and Czechoslovakia
would keep the promises of such discourses of emancipation.36
Although
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The Czechoslovak–East German Co-production
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young women were more independent than their mothers’ generation,
society still demanded that they behave according to traditional morals, a
contradiction that was closely related to the society’s modernisation.37
In
this context, the image of Cinderella as independent but also responsible,
active and lippy but at the same time hardworking and caring, obviously
corresponded to the constructed normativity of young women’s behaviour.
This movie provides us with a character that is rather extraordinary for
a genre usually glorifying passivity and self-sacrifice as heroines’ virtues
but does not challenge societies’ norms and expectations. In the GDR, ‘by
the 1970s, East German women and men began to change their attitudes
about their social and economic roles, and DEFA fairy tale figures began to
comment, often subtly, on these developments’, Benita Blessing argues. She
adds, however, referring to a DEFA fairy tale from 1978, ‘…that the cinema
audience at the end of the 1970s was not quite ready for princesses to reject
their princes was both reflective of a bourgeois sentiment regarding marriage
and, at the same time, a lesson in not losing one’s princess-worthy
looks.’38
Only the DEFA fairy tale Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns (Gritta
von Ratsinourhouse, 1984), in a diversion from the literary version, let the
heroine avoid marriage. The late 1970s movie with more conventional ending
that Blessing was referring to was, significantly, Snow White and Rose
Red, that is, the fairy tale mentioned above as having been produced with
the intention of repeating the concept and, in effect, the commercial success
of Three wishes for Cinderella.
Conclusion
Although fairy tales were among the most popular genres both in the
GDR and in Czechoslovakia, there was no guarantee that Three wishes
for Cinderella would achieve equal success in both countries. Yet, despite
the differences in the respective concepts of filmmaking for children,
this is exactly what happened. The project also had to overcome a significant
discrepancy in the degree of mutual respect between the partners.
Whereas DEFA functionaries and filmmakers had highly prized
and respected Czechoslovak fairy tales and children’s films since at least
the 1960s, Barrandov was not equally enthusiastic about DEFA’s productions
and creativity. The smooth and successful implementation of
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192
the co-production outlined in this paper was determined by the East
German studio’s appreciation of the Czechoslovak approach to the genre,
as well as by DEFA’s fondness for Barrandov’s scriptwriters and directors.
The dramaturges at DEFA appreciated the effective storytelling as
well as the light and humorous atmosphere in Barrandov’s films for children.
Another essential factor was the transnational dimension of the
Cinderella story, which provided a ready defence against cultural heritage
protectionists who might attempt to claim Němcová’s adaptation
as exclusively Czech (thereby ensuring that the project would remain
available for international co-production), while at the same time making
the film palatable to East German cultural functionaries, critics and
audiences.
The exceptionally successful co-production Three wishes for Cinderella
highlights some of the advantages as well as certain pitfalls of those international
projects established between film studios from two Soviet bloc
countries that focused on popular genre production. The sharing of expenditures
and production facilities helped Barrandov overcome significant
difficulties during the shooting process and increased the production value
of the film, since the project was able to invest in expensive western film
stock, lavish settings and attractive exteriors. No less important was the
fact that DEFA did not interfere with Barrandov’s creative concept. Both
sides realized that the blending of two concepts into one product could
hardly work. This mode of cooperation between the two studios came to
an end in the mid-1980s, as Barrandov was not willing to assume the position
of minor participant on Iron John and DEFA adopted a more protective
attitude towards their own conception of fairy-tale films. Rather than
being the product of a magic formula for a popular fairy-tale genre film,
Three wishes for Cinderella’s success was the result of a pragmatic alliance
that united two production facilities under the umbrella of a singular creative
concept built around a transnational story.
Acknowledgement:
This essay was made possible through the financial support of the Faculty
of Arts, Masarykova Univerzita, and through the help of the National Film
Archive in Prague, which provided the archival material.
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Notes
1. For details on DEFA’s motivations for international co-production, see Mariana
Ivanova, DEFA and East European Cinemas. Co-Productions, Transnational
Exchange and Artistic Collaborations (Dissertation, Austin, University of Texas,
2011). She recognises three motivations: to gain international prestige, to compete
with the West in the field of genre production and to display international
solidarity between the socialist countries. For detailed analysis of Barrandov’s
co-productions and its motivations, see Pavel Skopal, Filmová kultura severního
trojúhelníku. Filmy, kina a diváci českých zemí, NDR a Polska, 1945–1970 (Brno,
2014), pp. 21–59.
2. I classify Three wishes for Cinderella interchangeably as a fairy tale or as a children’s
film. Both labels are adopted from the contemporary discourse in the
film industry and film criticism. Barrandov’s dramaturgical plans, for example,
routinely divided production output into five categories: 1. dramas, 2. adventure
and detective stories, 3. comedies and musicals, 4. films reflecting ‘problems of
young viewers’, 5. Children’s films, with Three wishes for Cinderella falling into
the last category.
3. For example, the largest Norwegian TV channel regularly screens the film at
Christmas. In Germany, the film has a museum dedicated to it (in Moritzburg)
as well as a strong fan base, and it is regularly screened on TV. A good token of
the enduring fame of the film are websites such as: http://www.dreihaselnuessefueraschenbroedel.de/
(accessed 1 March 2016).
4. See the interview with the director Václav Vorlíček from 4 May 2000, Národní filmový
archive (NFA), Prague, 322 OS, Oral History collection. The film’s budget
was CZK 3,552,000, but the final expenditures reached CZK 4,083,000. See
Barrandov Studio a. s., archive (BSA), Prague, collection Scénáře a produkční
dokumenty, file Tři oříšky pro Popelku. It was still below the average budget
in 1973 (CZK 4,761,000) but extraordinarily high for a fairy-tale (an average
budget for crime films in the same year, for example, was CZK 3,213,000 – see
Lucie Šimůnková, Případ Exner. Prohry českého kriminálního filmu v letech
1970–1982 (M.A. Thesis, Faculty of Arts, Masarykova Univerzita, Brno, 2015),
p. 126. More importantly, this was not the DEFA budget but solely the budget of
Barrandov, which participated in the project with a 60 per cent share.
5. I’m referring to fairy-tale films as a genre. Most historians of GDR cinema dealing
with production for children use ‘fairy tale’ as a generic label as well, see, for
example, Benita Blessing, ‘Happily Socialist Ever After? East German Children’s
Films and the Education of a Fairy Tale Land’, Oxford Review of Education
xxxvi/2 (2010), pp. 233–48; Qinna Shen, The Politics of Magic. DEFA FairyTale
Films (Detroit, 2015); Marc Silberman, ‘The First DEFA Fairy Tales Cold
War Fantasies of the 1950s’, in J. Davidson and S. Hake (eds), Take Two. Fifties
Cinema in a Divided Germany (New York, 2007), pp. 106–19. For a reflection
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Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe
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194
of the contested status of fairy-tale films as a genre, see Pauline Greenhill and
Sidney Eve Matrix (eds), Fairy Tale Films. Visions of Ambiguity (Logan, UT,
2010), pp. 15–17, and Sue Short, Fairy Tale and Film. Old Tales with a New Spin
(New York, 2015), p. 6.
6. Jiří Havelka, Československé filmové hospodářství 1956–1960 (Praha, 1973), pp.
205, 209.
7. Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch), Ministerium für Kultur, DR1/4441.
8. The ninth most-attended film in Czechoslovak cinemas in the period 1973–7.
See Rozbor distribučních výsledků za měsíc srpen 1974 v ČSR, Národní filmový
archive (NFA), R18-BII-1P-2K.
9. See Elizabeth Prommer, Kinobesuch im Lebenslauf. Eine historische und medienbiographische
Studie (Konstanz, 1999), p. 346; and SED, Abteilung Kultur,
1972–1980, attendance of DEFA films premiered in 1974–5, Stiftung Archiv
der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv Berlin
(SAPMO-BArch), SED, DY/30/IV B2/9.06/80.
10. For an introduction to the anthropological and market paradigms of popularity,
see Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Introduction’, in Richard Dyer
and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Popular European Cinema (London-New York,
1992), pp. 2–5.
11. For a more elaborate discussion of audience preferences in both the GDR
and Czechoslovakia, see Skopal, Filmová kultura severního trojúhelníku,
pp. 177–259.
12. ‘Normalisation’, as it was known, was a period in Czechoslovak history that followed
the Soviet-led invasion of the country in 1968. The conservative turn in
politics that normalisation brought with it significantly affected cultural policy
and had a strong impact on cinema culture. In 1970 Barrandov underwent
major managerial and organisational changes: the former ‘artistic groups’ were
replaced by dramaturgical groups and production groups. In this centralised
model of production, which was typical of both the Czech and East German
production systems, dramaturges coordinated screenplay development. For
an overview of the organisational changes in Barrandov’s production system,
see Petr Szczepanik, ‘The State-socialist Mode of Production and the Political
History of Production Culture’, in P. Szczepanik and P. Vonderau (eds), Behind
the Screen. Inside European Production Cultures (New York, 2013), pp. 113–33;
for a detailed description of dramaturges’ role in the ‘State-socialist Mode of
Production’, see also Petr Szczepanik, ‘How Many Steps to the Shooting Script?
A Political History of Screenwriting’, Iluminace xxv/3 (2013), pp. 73–98.
13. The liberalisation of Czechoslovak cultural policy in the 1960s, which had
caused tension between these two countries, was later redrafted by hardliners,
ensuring that it was in synch with that of the GDR. The official ideological
positions of both the East German and Czechoslovakia Communist Parties
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The Czechoslovak–East German Co-production
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were thus closer than previously. And the major changes which Barrandov
underwent at the start of the Normalisation era saw it restructured in a manner
similar to that which DEFA had put in place in 1966.
14. For more details on these projects see Pavel Skopal, ‘Kriegsgeschichten von
Liebenden und Nationen Internationale Romanzen in drei Co-Produktionen
der späten 1950er-Jahre’, in L. Karl, D. Müller and K. Seibert (eds), Der lange
Weg nach Hause. Konstruktionen von Heimat im europäischen Spielfilm (Berlin,
2014), pp. 152–66.
15. Successful joint projects were focused on different generic formulae instead: a
musical Eine schreckliche Frau/Strašná žena (A terrible woman, 1965), a historical
comedy (Die Gestohlene Schlacht/Ukradená bitva (The stolen battle,
1971)), and a historical drama Die Elixiere des Teufels/Elixíry ďábla (The devil’s
elixirs, 1972). In all of these cases, certain disagreements had to be solved and
conceptual differences had to be adjusted to meet the other partner’s demands,
but no serious conflict emerged, and all of the projects closely followed the
concept of the leading partner: Barrandov for The figure skater and fidelity, and
DEFA for The stolen battle and The devil’s elixirs.
16. Although Barrandov’s productions for children had a good reputation at
DEFA, the East German studio cultivated its own tradition, and between
1950 and 1989 it produced over 40 feature length, live action fairy-tale films
(Märchenfilme) which ‘played an important role in the GDR’s claim to the realist-humanist
tradition.’ See Shen, The Politics of Magic, for a cultural history of
DEFA’s fairy-tale films from the post-WWII period to reunification.
17. A report from 4 October 1984, BArch, VEB DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme DR
117/28357.
18. See, for example, letter from the director of Barrandov studios, Jaroslav
Gürtler, to the DEFA director Hans Dieter Mäde, undated (probably the end
of 1985), BArch, DR 117/28960.
19. A division of the Ministry of Culture that oversaw film production and
distribution.
20. A letter from HV Film to Hans Dieter Mäde, 17 February 1978, BArch, DR
117/27245, file 1.
21. Anne Jäckel, ‘European Co-production Strategies:  The Case of France and
Britain’, in A. Moran (ed.), Film Policy: International, National, and Regional
Perspectives (London and New York, 1996), p. 87.
22. Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, ‘Aschenputtel’, in J. Grimm and W. Grimm
(eds), Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Ausgabe letzter Hand (Ditzingen, 1997), pp.
137–44; Božena Němcová, ‘O Popelce’, in B. Němcová (ed.), Národní báchorky
a pověsti I (Praha, 1950), pp. 112–28.
23. See David Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR
(Lincoln, NE, 1995), pp. 167–8.
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24. Božena Němcová (1820–62) was celebrated as one of the ‘classics’ of the
Czech literary canon, a ‘progressive’ author and a representative of the Czech
National Revival. Folk tradition became an important element in the shaping
of the identity of the new regimes both in GDR and Czechoslovakia, although
not without difficulties. The folkish culture had to be incorporated into the
proper, progressive strand of two divergent trends: irrational Romanticism
versus rational Classicism; and the bourgeois/reactionary element versus
the national/progressive one. See Bathrick, The Powers of Speech; Vladimír
Macura, ‘Obrození‘, in V. Macura, Šťastný věk (a jiné studie o socialistické
kultuře) (Praha, 2008), pp. 131–46; Jiří Křesťan, Zdeněk Nejedlý. Politik a vědec
v osamění (Praha, 2012), pp. 360–1.
25. The co-production contract divided the rights according to production share,
that is, 60 per cent for Barrandov and 40 per cent for DEFA. See the contract
between DEFA and Barrandov, BSA, collection Scénáře a produkční dokumenty,
file ‘Tři oříšky pro Popelku’.
26. Throughoutitshistory,DEFAmade23feature-lengthfilmsbasedontheGrimms’
tales. See Qinna Shen, ‘Barometers of GDR Cultural Politics. Contextualizing the
DEFA Grimm Adaptations’, Marvels & Tales xxv/1 (2011), pp. 70–95.
27. Pavlíček wrote the script under the name of his colleague Bohumila Zelenková
because he had been dismissed from Barrrandov in 1970 for his political attitudes
and had not been allowed to work for the studio since then. See Štěpán
Hulík, Kinematografie zapomnění. Počátky normalizace ve filmovém studio
Barrandov (1968–1973) (Praha, 2011), pp. 108 and 121.
28. For the script Pavlíček also borrowed motifs from another Němcová fairy tale,
About Three Sisters. In 1962 Pavlíček wrote a script for a biopic of Němcová,
Horoucí srdce (An ardent heart, 1962); and just two years before Three wishes
for Cinderella he authored a script for a TV adaptation of the most famous
work by Němcová, Babička (Granny, 1971).
29. Václav Vorlíček’s explication of realisation and financial conditions of the coproduction
Three wishes for Cinderella, undated, Barrandov Studios Archive
collection, scripts and production documents, file: ‘Tři oříšky pro Popelku’.
30. Which was fully justified, as hundreds of versions exist the world over, from
China to North America, and it is impossible to reconstruct the Urmärchen,
or authentic parent tale. See Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy
Tales (Princeton, 1987), p. 153.
31. Barch, DEFA Studio für Spielfilme, DR 117/26495.
32. Ota Hofman’s dramaturgical explication of the literary script, addressed to
Barrandov’s ‘central dramaturge’, Ludvík Toman, 29 June 1972, BSA collection,
Scripts and production documents, file: ‘Tři oříšky pro Popelku’.
33. A. Krejčíková, ‘Národní spisovatelka a její pohádka v čase normalizace.
Poznámky k Pavlíčkovu scénáři k filmu Tři oříšky pro Popelku’, Kino xxviii/7
(1973), pp. 8–9.
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34. Rolf Richter, Neues Deutschland, 24 March 1974. The popular magazine
Filmspiegel similarly celebrates Cinderella’s independence and activity (30
January 1974, quoted in Československá kinematografie v zahraničním tisku 3
(1974), pp. 32–3). Both reviews recognise Božena Němcová as the source of
the story and both also describe the character as a modern one – that is, as a
proper benchmark for a socialist girl.
35. Ralf Schenk, ‘Warum nicht einmal “Aschenbrödel”?’ Freies Wort v/4(1974).
36. For an analysis of DEFA’s Frauenfilme of the 1970s and 1980s, which addressed
such ‘typically feminist issues as equality in the domestic sphere, male violance
against women, patronising male behaviour, and sexual harassment at
work’ and criticised ‘the prevailing state of gender relationship in the GDR’, see
Andrea Rinke, ‘From Models to Misfits: Women in DEFA Films of the 1970s
and 1980s’, in S. Allan and J. Sandford (eds), DEFA:  East German Cinema
(New York, 1999), pp. 183–203.
37. For example, women were still fully subordinated to the duty of work during
the Normalisation in Czechoslovakia, although some exemptions from the
duty were applied towards mothers. See Christiane Brennerová, ‘Líné dívky,
lehké dívky? Příživnictví a disciplinace mladých žen v době normalizace’,
Dějiny a současnost xxxv/7 (2013), p. 19–22.
38. See Blessing, Happily socialist ever after?, pp. 240–5.
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