Hans Christian Andersen (1952)
Why is it that the “Hollywood ending” or the “fairytale ending” has become something to be chastised and not taken seriously? What is wrong with happily ever afters for audiences looking for an escape? Charles Vidor’s Hans Christian Andersen – which, in an opening intertitle, presents itself as “not the story of his life, but a fairytale about this great spinner of fairy tales” – is the sort of movie one expects to have said happily ever afters. Not so. A delightful musical from Samuel Goldwyn Productions and distributed by RKO, Hans Christian Andersen has a resolution that subverts (but does not reject) those expectations in ways very few fairytale films have ever attempted.
For powerful producer Samuel Goldwyn (1936′s Dodsworth, 1946′s The Best Years of Our Lives), Hans Christian Andersen was a fourteen-year undertaking that included several screenwriters submitting their scripts and no expenses spared. After accepting Moss Hart’s (1947′s Gentleman’s Agreement, 1954′s A Star Is Born) screenplay, Goldwyn greenlighted production on the film. Goldwyn became so endeared to this film that he could not be flustered by its clunky narrative and weaker musical segments. But regardless of its noticeable faults, the lavish Hans Christian Andersen is a fascinating film – demonstrating that fairytales can be compelling for children and adults.
We open in Odense in Denmark, where cobbler Hans Christian Andersen (Danny Kaye) passes the time creating and sharing stories with local children. Andersen’s storytelling is grating to the schoolmaster (John Brown), who pleads with local government officials to stop the cobbler from making the children tardy to school. Andersen implores to the officials that there is as much to learn outside the classroom as in it, and even the adults are stopping to listen to his tales. Andersen’s assistant is the teenaged orphan, Peter (Joseph Walsh), who persuades Andersen to travel to Copenhagen after secretly learning that the town leaders have voted to exile the cobbler. In Copenhagen, Andersen and Peter will stumble onto the Royal Danish Ballet and Andersen finds himself crushing on and intimidated by lead ballerina Doro (French international Zizi Jeanmarie, who by trade is a ballet dancer and not an actor). Doro asks Andersen – referring to him by occupation, not name – to fix her shoes. Andersen witnesses her husband, choreographer Niels (Farley Granger) cruelly criticize Doro, and Andersen believes that he is being abusive. Peter, watching what happens after his boss leaves, notices how loving Doro and Niels are to each other outside of rehearsal.
Andersen returns to his new Copenhagen storefront, not heeding Peter’s protestations that Doro and Niels are in love, and proceeds to write “The Little Mermaid” to tell Doro – in the only way he can – that Niels is the wrong man. Here, it is useful to remember that Hans Christian Andersen is intended to be a fairytale for Andersen himself, and that the film has some freedom to reinterpret his works and their central messages.
Before we talk about the passions found within, it is worthwhile to note that Hans Christian Andersen is a celebration of storytelling and what the art of creating stories and telling them to others can do. These tales bring healing to those suffering from their own anxieties; comfort to the hopeless; wisdom to confound even the wisest individuals. Andersen is the sort of character who, if he could, would spend his lifetime brightening the days of anyone who might take the time to listen. But life necessities and political pressure interfere – for Andersen and everyone else – and Denmark needs a decent cobbler.
Modern scholarship has uncovered that Andersen was incredibly shy about his feelings, largely closeted in his bisexuality, and that he tended to fall for women who did not return his ardor. Though this 1952 film does not reflect much of the real-life Andersen (for reasons of historiography and the Hays Code), it has a more complicated portrayal of what it means to fall in love and what love may seem to be than anyone might predict. Going into Copenhagen, we are unsure whether Andersen has felt and experienced love for another person. His social awkwardness when not telling stories probably suggests he knows little else outside the two main functions he performs. Watching Niels’ conduct to Doro, Andersen has been informed by the kindness imbued by his protagonists in his own stories, finding such behavior repugnant to the fictional love he has based his fairytales in. The film insists that Doro and Niels’ professional hostility to each other does not extend to their private romantic lives – an argument that is not well-supported by Hart’s screenplay. The differences between the public and private aspects of their relationship are unbelievably night and day, and it is too difficult to imagine how Doro tolerates how she is being treated. I stop short of calling Hans Christian Andersen as abuse-enabling, but the messages are too mixed.
Andersen’s conduct, too, knowing so little about Doro outside of fixing her shoes, could be better developed. Are his actions crossing the line in invading a couple’s privacy? Are they borne from actual love (which would require, above all, commitment and an effort to understand the other person in a way Andersen does not display)? What is apparent is that Andersen’s idealism towards love is childlike – as opposed to childish – and he does not listen to criticism or advice that contradicts that. When, late in the film, Doro finally understands what Andersen’s feelings for him are, she is taken aback and unable to respond. For too long she has taken the cobbler for granted, not believing that they are anything more than ballerina and cobbler who fixes her shoes. It leaves the conclusion, as frustrating as the romantic writing has been, with more pathos than the viewer might think possible.
Hans Christian Andersen is foremost a Danny Kaye piece, partly thanks to how Goldwyn and Vidor handled this production. Kaye’s on-screen partnership with the film’s many child actors is delightful to watch. He successfully embodies Andersen’s optimism and sense of wonder – where other adults might trudge their way to places they need to go, one can imagine Kaye’s Andersen being distracted by animals or flowers, not arriving where he needs to be until many minutes or hours after the fact. Kaye’s graciousness in his performance did not extend to how he treated his two adult co-stars. Irritated with Jeanmarie’s troubles understanding director Vidor (Vidor had a heavy Hungarian accent) and Granger for whatever he did, it does not help either of those two performances. Kaye also had a short temper with the film’s technicians and makeup artists – mystifying those on set, as Kaye never had any history of mistreating people during film shoots before or after Hans Christian Andersen. Jeanmarie’s lack of acting pedigree harms her supposed romantic connection with Granger’s character and more emotional scenes with Kaye. Granger’s lackadaisical performance – a year after starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train – is a critical letdown, robbing Hans Christian Andersen of romantic tension.
Samuel Goldwyn pursued Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (R&H had already completed Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I) to write the musical score for Hans Christian Andersen, but instead settled for Frank Loesser (who composed the stage musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) as composer and Walter Scharf (1968′s Funny Girl, 1971′s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) as musical director. No one song is a spectacular standout but, together, Loesser’s score is a solid effort with a few numbers that will lodge themselves – your tolerance may vary, depending on how you feel about Danny Kaye before this movie – in your head. The film’s second song, “The Inchworm” (which isn’t exactly an earworm) is an ambitious example of counterpoint – when two or more musical voices that are melodically and rhythmically distinct but come together to harmonize – that displays who Andersen is as a person. It contrasts the robotic learning occurring in the classroom nearby with his daydreaming curiosity. Soon after leaving for Copenhagen is the film’s actual earworm, “I’m Hans Christian Andersen”. Like “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins (1964), “I’m Hans Christian Andersen” has verses spread across the film, fitting to whatever the situation is at that moment. Yes, this means Hans Christian Andersen has many instances where he is singing his own name. You would think the people of Odense and Copenhagen would have no need for this song by a certain point!
"Wonderful Copenhagen” works as a memorable traveling song, maybe a Hollywoodized sea shanty, as it is one of the most repeated songs in the instrumental score. From the film’s songs, “Thumbelina” would be nominated for an Academy Award. And though I retrospectively disagree with that nomination, it is a charming, inventive ditty that shows Andersen always retains his compassion even at a desperate time. “The Ugly Duckling” is a simple musical retelling of the eponymous fable and is quite meaningful when taken in context.
But the film’s greatest musical achievement has to be the extended, climactic ballet sequence – presented like a borderless fantasy rather than depicting any divide between stage, orchestra, and audience. Combined with the cinematography by Harry Stradling (1938′s Pygmalion); production design by Howard Bristol (1940′s Rebecca), Antoni Clave (1961′s Black Tights), and Richard Day (1941′s How Green Was My Valley); and costume design by Clave (for the ballet sequence only; Mary Wills did the costume design for everything else, and she too should deserve acclaim), the ballet is a stupendous feat of visual creativity following in the footsteps of two breakout movies that started this trend in Hollywood musicals – 1948′s The Red Shoes and 1951′s An American in Paris. Yes, Niels takes Andersen’s idea to adapt it for the ballet stage while failing to understand Andersen’s true intentions behind the work. With the music based on five pieces by Franz Liszt and adapted by Heinz Roemheld (1942′s Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1945′s Wonder Man), it is a cinematic splendor that surprisingly is not from a better movie.
Before the film’s release, rumors in Denmark had many believing that Hans Christian Andersen would be an unfair depiction of their national hero. To stem the growing unrest, Goldwyn sent Kaye on a goodwill pre-release tour to Denmark. From the moment Kaye arrived at the airport in Copenhagen and made his way to lay flowers at Andersen’s statue, he was followed by thousands of his fans. At the statue he joked, “I came here to see if you would murder me.” Kaye would be killed with Danish kindness, accomplishing what he set out to do. The film became a critical and financial success in Denmark, across Europe, and in the United States – where it became the eighth-highest grossing movie of the year. After years of struggling to produce the film, Goldwyn was relieved the film was well-received.
Hans Christian Andersen would be the final film he made with Samuel Goldwyn – the executive who made him a movie star after distributing Wonder Man. No longer contracted to Goldwyn, Kaye’s career existed outside the Hollywood Studio System as he freelanced for the major studios and could exercise whatever creative authority he wished. Hans Christian Andersen can be difficult to watch because of its scattered plot and underwritten motivations for its central characters. Yet, in this fairytale of a fairytale spinner, it also pushes forward a complex take on love that few other films of this genre attempt – imbuing with musicianship and artistry as worthy as anything found in 1950s Hollywood. Though his faults are there for us to see, Hans Christian Andersen lives a good, honest life. With all the uncertainty and pain he goes through in the course of this story, he is never embittered, always hopeful.
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
