The Singing Ringing Tree
Encyclopedia
The Singing Ringing Tree was a children's film made by East German studio DEFA in 1957 and shown in the form of a television series by the BBC. It was a story in the style of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

, directed by Francesco Stefani
Francesco Stefani (film director)
Francesco Stefani was a film director. Stefani lived in the Federal Republic of Germany and worked in the 1950s, mainly at children's film productions. He became famous with the film The Singing Ringing Tree, for which he led as a guest at the DEFA Director...

.

The film was purchased by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and cut into three parts to create a mini-series which was first broadcast 19 November 1964 to 3 December 1964 as part of Tales from Europe, with an English-language voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...

 track (not dubbed
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...

, however, the original soundtrack was simply faded up and down). It was repeated many times through to 1980.

The cast included Christel Bodenstein as the Princess, Eckart Dux who played the Prince/bear, Charles Hans Vogt as the King and Richard Kruger as the dwarf.

One reviewer (Roger Thomas at amazon.com) has summed it up thus:
Imagine a fairy tale conceived by Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 and directed by Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

, with nods in the direction of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari and German expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, and you'd be close.


A Radio Times
Radio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...

readers' poll in 2004 voted this programme the 20th spookiest TV show ever.

A spoof
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 of the series was created as a sketch in the last season of The Fast Show
The Fast Show
The Fast Show, known as Brilliant in the US, was a BBC comedy sketch show programme that ran for three series from 1994 to 1997 with a special Last Fast Show Ever in 2000. The show's central performers were Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Simon Day, Mark Williams, John Thomson, Arabella Weir and...

, entitled, The Singing Ringing Binging Plinging Tinging Plinking Plonking Boinging Tree.

External links

  • BBC Radio 4 - The Singing Ringing Tree at bbc.co.uk
    Bbc.co.uk
    BBC Online is the brand name and home for the BBC's UK online service. It is a large network of websites including such high profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services co-branded BBC iPlayer, the pre-school site Cbeebies, and learning services such as Bitesize...

  • British fan site
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