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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Name this film 2

Warrington Minge

18:36 / 12.12.01

Anyone want to give this a try?
Its been bugging me for a while.

A feature length cartoon that used to be shown every christmas on ITV. Its very sad and I always recall blubbing at the end.

All I can remember is the last scene which shows a dead sparrow ( or bird of some kind ) lying in the snow. Good luck.

19:35 / 12.12.01

That would be Hans Christian Andersson's (sp?) "The Happy Prince". The story revolves around a sparrow that stays with the statue of a prince through the winter. The statue is eventually stripped of the gold it was covered with and the sparrow dies because it's winter and too cold.

Maybe that's not it, but that one always made me cry.

Zoom.

Warrington Minge

20:36 / 12.12.01

Thanks captain,

that sounds exactly right!

cheers

You've made my christmas!!

09:34 / 13.12.01

if you need to find a copy, its tagged onto the end of the snowman video, the one with a quite scary introduction by David Bowie of all people

my moms a childminder by the way, we have nearly every kiddies animation ever FUCKING MADE playing continuasly. Its nearly as annoying as stepping on a stikkle brick barefoot and not being allowed to swear

09:56 / 13.12.01

Right on all counts--except it's not a Hans Christian Anderson story. It is, in fact, a tale by dear old Oscar Wilde.

And it's not a sparrow, it's a swallow, who usually winters over in Egypt, and who has several lovely descriptive passages on the warmth and beauty of that land.

And I cry like a fucking baby every time I read it.

[ 13-12-2001: Message edited by: Jack Fear ]

09:56 / 13.12.01

The only part of it I could remember was that it had something to do with gold and the inside of a statue or something like that..wracked my brain trying to think of it...only saw it once as a child...I gotta get a copy.

Does anyone remember Rock and Rule?
Im trying to recall if it was any good or not..

11:50 / 13.12.01

SPOILERS FOR "THE HAPPY PRINCE"
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The Happy Prince is a statue in the city square, a statue covered in gold leaf and crusted in gems. The swallow comes and stays on his shoulder, and they become friends. The Happy Prince doesn't get around much, being as he is stuck up on a high pedestal like Lord Nelson, so he asks the swallow to fly around the city and tell him what she sees. The swallow, naturally, sees appalling poverty and human misery.

The Happy Prince is deeply moved, and asks the swallow to pry the gems from out of his eye-sockets and sword-hilt, and distribute them to the poor. This she does, out of love for the Happy Prince, all the time protesting gently that she really should be getting to Egypt after all.

At last, after the swallow has picked all the gold leaf off the Happy Prince and given it to the poor, she dies of cold and exhaustion. The city fathers, seeing how shabby the statue of the Happy Prince has become--and for fuck's sake there's a dead bird at its feet! Eeew!--tear it down and melt it in a furnace, and hurl the dead swallow on the dust-heap.

And when God sends an angel to Earth with orders to fetch the two most precious things in all the world, the angel returns with the battered body of the swallow and the leaden heart of the Happy Prince.

And then I weep for long minutes.

13:41 / 13.12.01

Noble, self-sacrificing, er, birds. Tug on the heartstrings every time, eh? On a related matter, wasn't it Oscar Wilde who wrote 'The Rose and the Nightingale' about a nightingale who, impressed by a young poet's ardour for the girl next door (or whoever) presses herself slowly upon a rose thorn, so it pierces her heart and her lifeblood brings forth a perfect red rose?

She dies in agony, the poet picks the rose and gives it to his lady-love - who, Knowledge-esque bitch that she is, laughs and chucks it in the gutter where it's crushed by a cartwheel.

That, like the endings of both 'Watership Down' and 'The Plague Dogs' used to have me bawling my eyes out on a regular basis.

Ahem.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

13:59 / 13.12.01

"The Nightingale and the Rose", I believe, but otherwise pretty much correct. The poet is, I think, a student, and the point is that she demands a red rose, but there are none to be had, and the nightingale has to dye a white rose with its heart's blood.

I remember at 14 or so seeing a musical version of it written by Sarah Carter, most talented girl in the upper sixth, with moody goth multi-instrumentalist and transvestite Danny Hinds as the object of the student's affection.

All together now...

The foes,
Suppose,
He's lookin' for a red, red, red, red rose...
Cor what a poser...
And we've got pink and blue
And-a white ones too,
But these colour roses just won't do