Fairy Tales From Another World

Read Time:8 Minute, 37 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Beneath the Trees: Folktales at DEFA II
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Genre: Fantasy, Folklore, Family
Year: 1959–1991, 2026 Blu-ray
Runtime: 6h 13m
Directors: Siegfried Hartmann, Gottfried Kolditz, Walter Beck, Konrad Petzold
Writers: Siegfried Hartmann, Anneliese Kocialek, Fred Rodrian, Günter Kaltofen, Margot Beichler, Walter Beck, Egon Günther
Cast: Rolf Ludwig, Doris Weikow, Marianne Christina Schilling, Julie Jurištová, Katrin Martin, Pavel Trávníček, Hans-Peter Minetti, Jana Mattukat, Jens-Uwe Bogadtke, Wolf Kaiser, Horst Drinda, Eva-Maria Hagen
Where to Watch: available October 19, 2026. Pre-order your copy here: www.eurekavideo.co.uk

RAVING REVIEW: I love films that tell familiar stories in unique ways. It’s probably why I love the Czechoslovakian film ALICE (NĚCO Z ALENKY) so much. There's something so wonderfully unusual about watching fairy tales that are recognizable yet don't quite resemble the versions most of us grew up with. BENEATH THE TREES: FOLKTALES AT DEFA II collects five productions from East Germany's DEFA studio, spanning nearly three decades of filmmaking and an even wider range of approaches to fantasy. Some are colorful and playful, others feel eerie in their own way, and one carries considerably more political weight than you might expect from a collection built around stories involving princesses, witches, and magical animals.

That is ultimately what makes the set worth exploring. THE TINDERBOX, SNOW WHITE, SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED, THE FROG KING, and THE ROBE don't feel as though they came from the same creative mind. They share an interest in familiar folklore, but their visuals, tones, and even intended audiences change considerably. Watching them together becomes about seeing how DEFA kept finding different uses for stories that had already survived generations of retelling.

THE TINDERBOX makes one of the strongest first impressions because it's so comfortable with its own artificiality. The sets, costumes, and effects aren't trying to disappear behind realism, yet the movie commits to them so confidently that its constructed world quickly becomes convincing on its own terms. The enormous dogs guarding the treasure are particularly memorable, not because the effects could fool a modern audience, but because something is charming about seeing relatively simple techniques used with such imagination.

That handmade quality runs throughout much of the collection. Modern fantasy tends to treat visible seams as problems to eliminate, while these films often benefit from allowing you to notice the craft involved. Painted environments, carefully arranged studio spaces, costumes, forced perspective, and physical tricks give the movies personalities that expensive digital perfection can sometimes flatten. Even when an effect looks dated, there's usually enough thought behind the image that it becomes part of the attraction rather than something to overlook.

SNOW WHITE might initially seem like the least surprising inclusion because its story has become so culturally familiar. The basic framework remains recognizable, but Gottfried Kolditz's version has a theatrical quality that sets it apart from the interpretations many viewers immediately bring with them. It's colorful without becoming overly sweet, and a slightly strange stiffness in parts of the production somehow suits the fairy tale's simplicity rather than fighting it.

That doesn't mean every part of these movies has aged equally well. Performances can be broad, humor sometimes lands awkwardly, and the deliberate storytelling occasionally makes individual films feel longer than their relatively modest runtimes suggest. Watching all five also means repeatedly entering stories constructed around simple moral lessons, archetypes, and repetition, so the full 373 minutes are probably better approached as individual movies than as one giant viewing session.

SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED changes the visual texture considerably by moving much more of its story outdoors. Forests, castles, mist, and natural landscapes replace much of the obvious studio construction, giving the movie a rougher, occasionally more mysterious look. The difference is noticeable enough to show how much DEFA's approach to these films evolved between the late 1950s and the end of the 1970s.

Witches, transformations, and recognizable fairy-tale mechanics still appear, but nature itself begins doing part of the storytelling. The movie doesn't need every corner of the frame to announce that we're somewhere magical. A foggy forest or an old castle can handle that job, and the result sometimes comes closer to the uncomfortable atmosphere of old European folklore than the polished fantasy imagery audiences may associate with these stories today.

Then THE FROG KING swings back toward deliberate artificiality and becomes one of the stranger-looking entries in the collection. Walter Beck's sets aren't simply backgrounds for the story; they're central to its identity, especially as Henriette's journey pushes her into increasingly unusual spaces. The contrast between the recognizable fairy-tale kingdom and the darker architecture surrounding the Frog King gives the film a visual personality that becomes more interesting the farther Henriette travels.

Henriette herself also makes the movie feel surprisingly lively. Rather than existing primarily as a princess waiting for the plot to resolve itself around her, she's stubborn, active, and willing to push into unfamiliar territory. The movie still belongs completely to the fairy-tale tradition. There's enough personality in her characterization that THE FROG KING avoids feeling like another simple retelling of material everyone already knows.

The real discovery, though, is THE ROBE. Based on Hans Christian Andersen's THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, it begins with two weavers attempting to enter a kingdom surrounded by an enormous wall. It quickly becomes something sharper than a children's fantasy. The ruler's vanity remains important, but the film expands the story into a satire of authority, conformity, fear, and the ridiculous behavior people accept when admitting the obvious becomes dangerous.

Its production history makes what you're watching even more fascinating. Filmed in 1961, the movie's imagery of an isolated kingdom enclosed behind a wall became politically explosive as the Berlin Wall was being constructed. Production was halted before completion, and the film remained unfinished for decades before finally being reconstructed and released after East Germany itself had disappeared.

Knowing that history changes how THE ROBE plays out without turning the movie into a history lesson. Suddenly the exaggerated costumes, absurd officials, and enormous barrier surrounding the kingdom aren't simply colorful fairy-tale decoration. The comedy has teeth, and the familiar idea of an emperor demanding everyone participate in his obvious lie becomes much more pointed when viewed through the circumstances surrounding the film's suppression.

That historical context also helps explain why BENEATH THE TREES: FOLKTALES AT DEFA II becomes more interesting after you've watched the movies rather than less. These weren't fairy tales created solely to distract children for an hour. Again and again, familiar stories are reshaped around class, responsibility, independence, solidarity, and the relationship between ordinary people and those claiming authority over them.

Sometimes those ideas are handled lightly enough that younger viewers could simply enjoy the monsters and magic. Other times they're barely disguised. That difference keeps the collection from settling into repetition, even when several stories share similar kings, castles, curses, and transformations.

Eureka's presentation helps enormously because the restorations keep production design among the main attractions. The colors, textures, and physical spaces matter in these movies, particularly when comparing the studio-heavy construction of the earlier films with the landscapes used later. Seeing them preserved this carefully makes it much easier to appreciate the work that went into creating worlds that were never supposed to look completely real in the first place.

The supplemental material is equally valuable for anyone coming into DEFA with limited background. The 60-page booklet doesn't simply provide basic production notes; it digs into how these films were designed, how their politics developed, and why their particular approach to fairy tales mattered within East German cinema. The additional commentaries, interviews, video essay, and animated shorts make this feel less like five curiosities placed in a box and more like an introduction to an entire filmmaking tradition.

Not every film in BENEATH THE TREES: FOLKTALES AT DEFA II is equally engaging, and the simplicity of some of the storytelling can make portions drag. That's the main thing keeping the collection from climbing higher for me. I admired a lot of this more than I enjoyed each film as a complex experience, especially when the sets, effects, or historical context held my attention more than the story itself.

There's something about finding an entire branch of fantasy filmmaking that looks and behaves differently from the fairy tales most of us know. These movies can be goofy, eerie, colorful, political, and occasionally downright bizarre, sometimes shifting between several of those qualities within the same story. BENEATH THE TREES: FOLKTALES AT DEFA II isn't a collection where every entry became a new favorite, but exploring these strange little kingdoms proved considerably more interesting than simply watching another round of familiar fairy tales.

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[photo courtesy of EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT]

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