FilmSkool — a free film school
FairyTale: A True Story
In 1917, two children take a photograph, which is soon believed by some to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies. Based on the true story of the Cottingley Fairies.
1997 · Directed by Charles Sturridge · 99 min · Fantasy · Drama · Mystery · Family · Screenplay in the scene database · 11 frames
Tagline
Believe.
Plot
Early 20th-century Europe was a time and a place rife with conflicting forces, from the battlefields of World War I to the peaceful countryside of rural England. Scientific advances such as electric light and photography appeared magical to some; spiritualism was championed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while his friend Harry Houdini decried false mediums who prey upon grieving families. J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan charmed theatergoers of all ages. Young Frances Griffiths, whose father is missing in action, arrives by train to stay with her cousin Elsie Wright in rural Bradford, West Yorkshire.
Polly Wright, Elsie's mother, is deep in mourning for her son Joseph, a gifted artist who died at the age of ten, and she keeps Joseph's room and art works intact. Elsie is not allowed to wear colours or to play with his toys, but she has taken the unfinished fairy-house he built up to her garret bedroom where her doting father, Arthur, regales her with fairy tales. He is a bit of a local hero, responsible for the electrification of the local mill, where children as young as Elsie go to work. He is also an amateur photographer and chess player. When Frances arrives she and Elsie discover a shared fascination with fairies, whom they encounter down at the "beck", a nearby brook. They abscond with Arthur's camera one afternoon to take pictures of the fairies, hoping to give Polly something to believe in. When she comes home after attending a meeting of the Theosophical Society, where she hears stories of angels and all sorts of ethereal beings, she finds Arthur reviewing the prints in disbelief, but she thinks they are real. She takes them to Theosophist lecturer E.L. Gardner, who has them analysed by a professional and then brings them to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The photos are pronounced genuine, or at least devoid of trickery.
No one except Houdini believes that young children could be capable of photographic fraud, and Conan Doyle himself arrives at the girls' home with Houdini, Gardner and two new cameras. Arthur catches Houdini poking around and tells him point-blank that he doesn't believe that the fairies are real, but that no trickery took place in his darkroom either. Abetted by the buffoonish Gardner, Elsie and Frances soon come up with two more photos and Conan Doyle has the story published in The Strand Magazine, promising everyone's names will be changed. But a newsman soon identifies the beck in Cottingley, tracing the girls through the local school and besieging the family. Hundreds of people invade the village in automobiles and on foot, and the fairies flee the obstreperous mobs. By way of apology to the fairies, the girls finish Joseph's fairy-house and leave it in the forest as a gift.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Albert Ash, Ernie Contreras, Tom McLoughlin
- Cinematography: Michael Coulter
- Edited by: Peter Coulson
- Music: Zbigniew Preisner
- Production design: Michael Howells
- Produced by: Bruce Davey, Wendy Finerman
Cast
- Florence Hoath as Elsie Wright
- Elizabeth Earl as Frances Griffiths
- Paul McGann as Arthur Wright
- Peter O'Toole as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Harvey Keitel as Harry Houdini
- Phoebe Nicholls as Polly Wright
- Bill Nighy as Edward Gardner
- Tim McInnerny as John Ferret, a Reporter
- Joseph May as Houdini's Assistant
- Peter Mullan as Sergeant Farmer
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Icon Productions, Wendy Finerman Productions, Paramount Pictures
- Box office: $14,059,077
- Themes: fairy tale, fairy
On this film
This is the plain index, shown because JavaScript is off. Every lesson here is a free video published by the channel credited on it and plays through that channel's own embed — FilmSkool hosts nothing.