Portugal, 35mm, 1:1,37, Color – B&W, Dolby SR, 75′ (2000)
“The sob is the tune of the Walserian smalltalk. It reveals to us where its preference lie. Only in madness, of course. They are characters who have lived through it and that is why they now seem so superficial, inhuman, unperturbed. If we were to describe in one word what is both so terrible and funny about them we could say that they are cured. Naturally we still never know how such a cure was achieved, unless perhaps if we ponder a little on Snow White“.
Walter Benjamin
Robert Walser picks up the story where Grimm left off. At the hands of the poet, the characters are given a free rein, even to the extent of poking fun at the tale.
How presumptuous of the prince to have disturbed Snow White in her beauty sleep, to have kissed her (something she will forever deny) and removed her from her glass casket in order to restore her to life, i.e., in order to possess her in the flesh.
In this petty drama Walser remains imbued in the conflicts of childhood. One notices the father’s absence – it is always the mother, or stepmother, that the heroin must confront.
If Snow White would rather die or return to the land of her dwarfs, it may be because she doubts the goodwill of her stepmother. After all, didn’t she try and poison her? When Snow White was rescued by the prince and thereby restored to life did not the queen, thanks to her kisses, incite the hunter to knife her?
And here we have the prince and the young girl, as pure as her name implies – evoking for us Walser’s own death in the snow – terrified by the bestial scene they witness between the queen and the hunter. The man is on top of the woman and their posture seems to the two young innocents amazingly brutal.
Poisoned kisses, love and crime intimately interwoven. It is imperative that we put right the tale of the Brothers Grimm. The mother, stepmother, could not possibly have been so wicked – it would have been unbearable. But Snow White must learn that love and hate are never far apart. She understands. Like Robert, she felt “hurt, ostracised/persecuted, hated”. She was just being silly and now all’s well that ends well. She has opted for happiness.
But at what price? The dilemma is almost hamlet-like: the affirmation of a little “yes” means renouncing a big “no”. The sun melts the last snowflakes. Society does not harbour the mythical world.
Le bonheur n’est pas gai.
Oh night, shrouded by the moon, is it snow yet?
Marie-Louise Audiberti/João César Monteiro
(Press Office – Dossier)