Unknown Zwerg Nase film horror version
Many people have been searching the dark movie “The Dwarf-Nose” on the tale of Wilhelm Hauff for a long time. I myself asked this question in the mid-2000s. Already then there were quite a few pages discussing this film. As time went on, various versions of the famous fairy-tale screen versions appeared on the network. However, some seekers calmed down by finding what they were looking for. But still there is a huge group of people who have never found a film that they saw many years ago. On this link you can see some active search forums. Here you can read the comments of numerous witnesses (on various sites) who watched the movie. Searches are conducted to this day. Perhaps one day the film will be found thanks to the efforts of the seekers.
The heart of the matter
An organized search for this film adaptation of V.Hauff’s fairy tale began during this distribution. The topic reached 50 pages there, but searches did not advance, therefore a topic was created in this section. There is no hope that this film is in anyone’s personal collection. It is impossible to find even the slightest information about him. While the task is to collect information with the help of eyewitnesses. The film was shown in the 80s once or twice. Unfortunately, it was not possible to establish the exact date of the show, because in the State TV and Radio Company for this film made an exception and did not post the information in the TV program. A thorough search conducted by enthusiasts in the newspapers of the 80s did not reveal the date of the show. The case is strange, because In the TV program you can find any film broadcast by Soviet television. According to the memoirs of some of the film was shown in the first half of the 80s, according to the memoirs of others - in the second half of the 80s. This suggests a double display. If this is so, then it is all the more strange that the film was not announced in both cases.
The film was shot based on the work of W.Hauff "Dwarf-Nose", but as an option it was called either "The Legend of Poor Jacob", or "The Instructive Story of Jacob". The name consisted of three or four words, one of them is "Jacob". Some letters had accented characters (ž, á, etc.). Letters in Latin, but the alphabet is Slavic. The meaning of words was, in principle, guessed. Title titles were performed in Gothic letters, and fire ran over them. There is also an assumption that the film was co-produced by several European countries.
The film was very different from what we were then shown. He was shot in the Gothic style, in the genre of realism. From the point of view of camera work, makeup, clothes, made very worthy. There are few scenery, only the necessary minimum, but considering that the camera was filming in a narrow, confined space, these decorations were quite enough. It was a television movie. It was filmed by cameras on a magnetic tape. Accordingly, the image is tough. Translation voice-over.
Despite being very curious, the film had a terrible impact. It was a kind of numbing horror. Not because of the special effects, but because of the general atmosphere of hopelessness. The oppressive atmosphere was present in the film with a distinct line. In the film, everything happened very slowly and it created a feeling of pain. And there constantly hung fog as one of the means of forcing the atmosphere. Dwarf-Nose looked ugly to disgust. It was a man, very crooked, with a hump above his head. His nose was large, fleshy, hooked, downward. Fingers are long, knotted, awkward. And for all its appearance, the dwarf was incredibly depressed.
The world view of the Dwarf was very well conveyed, we see the world through his eyes, from the bottom up (the operator used this technique from time to time - a first-person view, a camera at the level of the dwarf's eyes). Many people remember the episode of how a witch took out severed human heads with distorted facial features from a basket instead of cabbages. At the same time on the necks were visible traces of dried blood. Heavy for the perception of the film, the tension did not release all over. But the film and attracted too.
Found screenings of the tale
The Central Television of the USSR also broadcast the Dwarf-Nos television film of the GDR [1978] produced in the program “Visiting a Fairy Tale” in 1981 and 1985, and in the 70s they showed the Soviet production by director G.Orlova I am writing about this because many, recalling Dwarf-nose, mean one of these films. But these films are no match for the film being sought.
On the Internet, it was possible to find information about 14 film versions of this tale. The list (in German) was compiled by Delirium2007. The movie we are looking for is missing.
The film's storyline and features
The film is television, the image is clear, and the colors are dim, in gray and brown tones, the lighting is diffused, because in the film it's autumn. When Jacob, already enchanted, was returning home from the old woman's lair, the mood of this moment conveys the next frame from the movie "Labyrinth"(1986), although the color scheme here is not exactly the same. Throughout the movie the weather was dull.
The atmosphere is gothic, unusually heartfelt, with sinking in the inner world of the main character. Presence of fog or haze. Hopelessness and strain, some other feeling that everything happens in a dream, and the desire to move quickly is impossible. The dwarf moved awkwardly like slow-mo, as if pressed to the ground. Slow movements created a sense of "drag" that made me uncomfortable.
The atmosphere of the film was permeated with some kind of silence, often there were long pauses between the dialogues, all this seemed to emphasize the immersion of the Dwarf in himself, deeply experienced his condition. There was no music, but at times there was a background, disturbing, vague. A lot of silence, a lot of smooth movement.
Jacob is a handsome young man with dark hair. He has a meaningful, far from childish view. Jacket and pants in medieval style. When Jakob loses his beauty, turning into an ugly dwarf, you experience a shock from the contrast.
The market was not very crowded, everything was happening slowly and somehow indifferent. It seems that it was morning. The sellers were laying out their goods. Light diffused, it looks like autumn. The trays are covered, stand in rows, covered or covered with some sacking. Scenes in the market of which there were many were shot near because of the tightness of the shopping arcades.
When the witch appeared on the market, she was not shown at first, was a first-person view. She walked slowly and ominously, and people shied away from her. When she was finally shown - it caused a shudder. The old witch was walking straight to the greengrocer. Traders and market visitors were frightened by her appearance, all at once became quiet. Danger literally felt skin. By the way, the saleswomen were dressed like cabbage, a cap on her head, a dress with lacing, skirts. The old woman did not make an impression of insanity. After the witch had gone down the aisle to the greengrocer counter, from that moment until the end of the episode, only three people were in the spotlight - Hannah, Jacob and the old woman. The rest were quietly picking at the counters and stealthily watching what was happening. In this situation it was very disturbing for Jacob and Hannah, they seemed defenseless. It was felt that trouble was coming. It was very transmitted through the screen. Approaching the counter of Hannah, the old woman became a long time, oh-very, very long and scrupulously choose cabbage. Her bony fingers with eerie nails showed on the whole screen. She stirred and crumbled the goods, brought the roots and greens under her ugliest nose, scolded the goods, threw it on the ground. Jacob and his mother did not like it. Who will buy from them after these manipulations? Then Jakob laughed at the old woman with a sneer, ridiculing her nose and thin neck, to which she replied that he would grow the same nose and even worse, but he would not have a neck at all. Then Hannah asked her to buy something or leave. The old woman chose several heads of cabbage, but she asked Hannah to send her son to help her bring the basket with cabbage to her house. Jacob did not want to go with her, he was frightened, but he had to obey. And they went for some colorless, sun-bleached streets. The basket at Jacob was, it seems, a shoulder strap and from this view he was similar to a hunchback. And the old woman made a joke about this. She was going to turn him into a freak and was in anticipation of revenge for her disrespectful attitude.Jacob still did not understand the hidden meaning of her words. She led him like a slaughter. They walked through the streets outside the city wall, they crossed the bridge. It feels like this bridge is a kind of border between this and that world. The road in the fog and haze.
The appearance of the witch's house is terrible and sad, inside it seems bigger than outside. The dwelling is secluded, seemingly in the slums of the forest, hidden from prying eyes. Before opening the door, the witch searches for the key. There are several rooms in the house, not just the kitchen. The floors in the house are mirrored. On the floor skate-skim squirrels shod in nutshells! And the proteins are real, not fake. The original picture - the camera of the operator is installed as if at the level of the floor, and in the foreground the squirrel rides. When she drives off, a review opens into the room and it becomes clear that there is a bunch of squirrels bustling around.
Jacob carried a basket with cabbage heads, and in the witch's house it turned out that all this time he carried a basket with severed human heads. The old woman said the phrase - "Yes, human heads are a hard burden" (or "heavy burden"). She picked up the lid from the basket and grabbed it by the whirlwind, pulled out a human head from there. In the basket were like four heads. One - female, in a cap with ruches. The rest are masculine, shaggy, with open mouths. The people who saw the film were horrified by this episode with their heads cut off. Where else could you see this?
The witch fed Jacob with soup. During this meal, she tore off a petal from a dark red four-petalled flower with a yellow mid-lily type and threw it into the plate, after which he fell asleep either on the couch, or right behind the table. Then there was a transformation. Jacob's nose grew-a large, fleshy curve, directed down to the chin itself, a massive hump appeared above his head, his very head twisted, his head fell into his shoulders. But he is not a dwarf in the strict sense of the word. This is an adult man, crooked, with a huge hump. Externally dense, loose, disheveled. Clothes are bad. Jakob became painfully already terrified in the image of a dwarf. The witch, in contrast to him, did not look so ugly. But he was not yet aware of what had happened to him. Another important detail is that, having put on his shells on his feet, Jakob has already become completely immersed in witchcraft spells. And it was just throwing them off and then changing into their shoes, he became a bit "free". His seven-year stay with the witch seemed to him a dream when he woke up. He thought he slept for a couple of hours and it was time to go home. The old woman was not at home at this moment.
The Jakob's escape was very long. He himself did not yet understand what had really happened to him. He returned very slowly, barely moving his legs, bending over. It seemed that this return would never end. He walked along a strange area, faded in the sun. The scenery gave some unnaturalness to the landscape, there was something irrational about it. And on some segment of the road there was a feeling of a corridor. From the house of the sorceress to the city the dwarf met no one. The terrain along which he walked was lifeless. The dwarf stumbled in confusion, looked around, as if he had seen everything for the first time, and muttered something.Appearing in the city, Jakob walks down the street, and we do not see him, but what he sees himself, that is, we look with his eyes, namely from below upwards. Jacob does not understand people's excessive attention to him. Before entering the market, he passed the wicker fence. In the market, the very sad mother of Jacob is sitting behind the counter, and when he, enchanted by the terrible dwarf, approached her, she recoiled with a cry of horror, became even more upset after his words, like he was her son, and chased him away, scolding Because he mocks her grief. He goes to his father in misunderstanding and despair.And there he, having received a mirror from him, looks at him, and from that moment begins to understand what has happened to him after all. On the street, he sits on the pavement, huddled against the walls, crushed and completely absorbed by this event.
Then Jacob repeatedly, when he becomes a cook of the duke, will come to the market for food. He will have his "own" corner from which he is furtive, at some distance, he will look at his mother with a very sad look, and what's important is sitting right on the ground.
The suspense of the film was that the sorceress did not forgive Jakob his escape, she decided to return it at all costs. I remember that there was a constant threat that she would return, she would not leave it that way, the fate of the dwarf was solved, there was some inevitability in it. Even if the dwarf can be disenchanted by incredible efforts, she will invariably spell it again and take it back to her lair, and no one will save, even her parents. It is despair, it is useless to fight. Such were the sensations, experiences and constant fear for the dwarf, the old woman is on the heels, this threat was somehow present somehow. This pressured incredibly.In the course of the film, the witch came back for Jacob to the market, but could not find it. He somehow managed to hide. At moments when the old woman appeared on the market, the intensity of horror was the maximum.
Quite a large part of the story was connected with the market. In the same place, Jacob bought geese. They brought them in a wooden cage to the kitchen, and at that moment when Jacob was alone in the kitchen, the goose began to talk with him. And it was the bewitched goose from among the others, bought in the market, Jacob then took to his room, where he lived. Very clearly passed the line that the goose Mimi told about her fate and the fate of her father. With the goose Jakob very often went to the market in search of a magic grass, which would help them to regain their former appearance. They searched for her for a long time and painfully, for many days. Found only when already desperate.
I remember that I brought out the moral from the film: if Jakob did not laugh at the witch, then he would escape the painful suffering, i.e. he suffered through his own fault. When I watched the GDR version, I had no such thought, because in this film Jakob did not suffer too much, there is not this drama. And one more, perhaps, the most important: the dwarf with his disgusting appearance evoked a feeling of disgust, disgust at the physiological level. It seems and pity him, but it was impossible to observe his appearance without disgust.
