The Blue Bird

The famous pas de deux from the final act of Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty. It is a virtuoso display piece danced by Princess Florine and the Blue Bird as part of the wedding festivities for Aurora and the Prince, and is often to be found as a showpiece on gala programmes. Cecchetti performed the role of Blue Bird at the ballet's premiere in St Petersburg in 1890 (with Nikitina). The airborne choreography for the male is especially demanding with its series of brisés volés.

This play by the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck has reached the screen several times. It differs from his other dramas in having a fairy element, but shares their philosophical concerns and symbolist style. Two years after The Blue Bird was published (1909), Maeterlinck won a Nobel Prize, which brought his work wider attention in the Anglophone world and prompted various successful stage productions.

In essence, The Blue Bird tells the story of Tyltyl and Mytyl, discontented son and daughter of a woodcutter living in the depths of a forest, who are visited one night by the fairy Berylune. She asks for help in finding the Blue Bird, which alone can cure a little girl who is ill and unhappy. The children already have a blue bird, but it is not blue enough. To help them, Berylune provides a magic diamond which enables them to see things as they really are. Suddenly their house seems beautiful, and they can see the souls of Fire, Water, Sugar, Bread, Milk, Cat, and Dog, all of whom join the quest. These children go through the Mists of Time to the Land of Memory, where they meet their dead grandparents; in the Palace of Night they tour chambers containing all the world's ghosts, sickness, terrors, and mysteries; they ask a forest for help; they get bored in the Palace of Luxuries; they visit the Palace of the Future, full of unborn babies. Nowhere do they find the Blue Bird. Disconsolate, they return home, only to find their own blue bird much bluer than before. The girl who was ill can now run and dance.

The makers of an early film version (USA, 1918) took advantage of newly developed techniques of multiple exposure, allied to huge specially constructed sets, to create the lands and palaces the children and their new friends visit. Missing from the gathering are Bread, Milk, and Sugar, regarded then as too difficult to personify and dramatize. There is, though, an extra character, Light, who is given the job of helping the children find their way. In this version heaven is the Palace of Joys and Delights; there Tyltyl and Mytyl meet not their grandparents but their mother, who is known as the Joy of Maternal Love.

The best‐known adaptation is that directed for Fox by Walter Lang (USA, 1940). It was made as a vehicle for Shirley Temple, then near the end of her reign as child star; as a showcase for full Technicolor, only recently perfected; and as a rival to MGM's The Wizard of Oz. The children's companions are further reduced in number—they have only Berylune, Tylette (cat), Tylo (dog), and Light to go with them—and their travels are simplified. First they talk to their grandparents in the Land of Memory. Next they stay for a while with Mr and Mrs Luxury. As they pass through the Haunted Forest, Oak and Cypress conspire with Wind and Fire to frighten them. Finally, in the Land of Unborn Children, they meet the Studious Boy, unhappily but courageously setting sail for an earthly life.

Fox revisited the story 36 years later (USA/USSR, 1976) and made a film that took advantage of advances in film technology, of the lower shooting costs on offer in Russia, and of the availability of a gallery of female adult stars. Elizabeth Taylor appears in various roles as Maternal Love, Light, and a Witch; Jane Fonda is Night, the Princess of Darkness; Cicely Tyson plays Cat; and Ava Gardner represents Luxury. For the first time, Sugar, Milk, and Bread are included among the children's screen companions, and the Blue Bird, too, gets a personification.

None of these versions has stuck to Maeterlinck. They have selected the picturesque sequences that suited their stars and their available special effects; and they have invented new ones. Maeterlinck's philosophizing has tended to get pushed into the background, except the simple central idea that happiness is to be found in your own heart when you know how to look.

— Terry Staples