little princess

小公主The Little Princess review by Margarita Landazuri2008-04-26 22:05:56 来源：Internet 浏览次数：410 文字大小：【大】【中】【小】简介：By 1938, at age 10, Shirley Temple had been a star for half her life. She was still talented, popular, and generally carefree, but she was growing up. And as she recalls in her autobiography, Child St ...By 1938, at age 10, Shirley Temple had been a star for half her life. She was still talented, popular, and generally carefree, but she was growing up. And as she recalls in her autobiography, Child Star, Temple was becoming more perceptive about the behavior of adults around her, and more aware of her own sometimes troubling emotions. This charged atmosphere was what she would remember best about working on The Little Princess (1939). Based on the Victorian-era novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Little Princess is the story of pampered Sara Crewe, whose widowed father leaves her in a luxurious boarding school while he goes off to fight the Boer War. When he's reported missing, and the money stops flowing in, the cruel headmistress banishes the girl into a garret and turns her into a servant. 20th Century Fox spared no expense on The Little Princess, which was Temple's first Technicolor film, and boasted a strong supporting cast that was perhaps a bit too talented for Shirley's liking.Playing a cockney maid who becomes Sara's friend was a charming scene-stealer named Sybil Jason. A South African girl a year younger than Temple, Jason had appeared in British films and had been brought to the U.S. by Warner Brothers as a potential rival for Temple. Observing the crew's delighted reaction to Jason's cockney accent when the two girls filmed a scene together, the normally confident Temple felt pangs of jealousy. She recalled that she took out her feelings on another actress, Marcia Mae Jones, who played a schoolgirl who snubs Sara. In a scene where Sara dumps coal ashes on her rival, Temple did so a bit too enthusiastically, then asked director Walter Lang if she could do it again. Lang demurred, and as a repentant Temple shared her treats with Jones, she was disconcerted to learn that Jones envied her because she seemed so happy all the time.Temple had never had any difficulty crying for a scene, and she had a particularly difficult one coming up, in which she had to make an entrance crying violently. Thinking about Jones' comment as she prepared for her entrance, Temple found she couldn't cry at all. She recalled someone's suggestion that the way to do so was to laugh and cry at the same time, and managed to work herself up into a hysterical fit, which she couldn't stop once the scene was over. Temple's mother had to take her into her dressing room to calm her down.During the making of The Little Princess, Temple also remembered becoming more aware of pettiness by adults. James Roosevelt, the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, visited the set with his wife. When co-star Arthur Treacher made a lighthearted remark that Shirley could be president if she set her mind to it, Temple found the remark insulting to the president, and resented it. And there were other things that bothered her during production; a pet monkey on the set bit her. Temple's own pony, which the studio had hired for a scene, performed badly.All these incidents, while trivial, were humiliating for Temple. Childish self-confidence was being replaced by adolescent self-consciousness, and the sunny little girl adored by millions would soon disappear forever.The Little Princess was a success; as it turned out, the movie would be Shirley Temple's last successful feature as a child star. The Blue Bird, a very expensive and much-anticipated fantasy adventure made the following year (1940), proved to be a box office bomb. Although Temple continued to make films until 1949, she never equaled the success she enjoyed as a child star. She retired from the screen, and later had a successful career as a politician and diplomat.小公主 A Little Princess （95年版）review by James Berardinelli2008-08-23 19:51:02 来源：Internet 浏览次数：163 文字大小：【大】【中】【小】简介：A "family movie" is often loosely defined as a motion picture that, aimed at children, is likely to bore parents to tears. Numerous examples leap to mind, most of them from Walt Disney Studios, a pr ...关键字：小公主 A Little Princess （95年版）A "family movie" is often loosely defined as a motion picture that, aimed at children, is likely to bore parents to tears. Numerous examples leap to mind, most of them from Walt Disney Studios, a production company that holds the curious distinction of making animated features that are more mature than live-action ones. However, A Little Princess isn't from Disney, it's from Warner Brothers. Most importantly, it's not only suitable for consumption by those over age 10, it's actually enjoyable.The film is based on the popular 1888 children's book Sara Crewe by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is the third filmed version, following 1917's A Little Princess with Mary Pickford and 1939's, which featured Shirley Temple. While not as good as 1993's The Secret Garden (another movie based on a Hodgson story), this new version of A Little Princess can more than hold its own in a sea of overly-commercial attempts to grab children's hard-earned money. Unfortunately, since it actually takes the time to develop characters and a story while eschewing explosions, it's unlikely to garner much at the box office. Witness the performance of similar recent films if you doubt that.The main character is Sara, played delightfully by newcomer Liesel Matthews. The motherless girl has grown up in India, a land where "the air is so hot you can taste it." In fact, the scenes there are filmed with warmth and color to emphasize the beauty as seen through Sara's eyes. The year is 1914, and World War One is in full swing. When Sara's father (played by Liam Cunningham), a British army captain, decides to rejoin his regiment, he deposits Sara in an exclusive girls' school in New York City. Run by the nasty Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron), this is a place that stifles creativity in favor of etiquette and strict rules. Sara is immediately unhappy there, but her fortunes go from bad to worse when her father is declared dead inEurope and all his assets are seized by the Indian government. Sara is left penniless and forced to work as a servant to earn her keep.A Little Princess is an engaging tale about self-respect and the importance of imagination. In India, Sara is told that "all girls are princesses", and this is a lesson she clings to when forced to mop floors and serve meals. Even dressed in rags and living in a bare attic room, she is special -- and so are all the others around her, regardless of whether they're nice, snobbish, or bossy. Princess or pauper, there's no difference in Sara's eyes.She also accepts magic. In her father's words, "Magic has to be believed -- that's the only way it's real." Her stories about Princess Sita and Prince Rama not only enchant her schoolmates, but they give Sara an escape route once her father has been declared dead. She uses fantasy as a tonic for her bleak reality without ever losing sight of what's happening around her. Together with her friend Becky (Vanessa Lee Chester), she ventures to amazing places without leaving her room.To be sure, A Little Princess has a few missteps. For one thing, Miss Minchin could have been played with less villainy, but younger viewers will probably appreciate the one-dimensional nastiness. There are also a few moments of overt sweetness, but these are easily forgiven. Actually, there's very little this movie has to apologize for -- it's the rare kind of picture that can be enjoyed by viewers of eight, eighteen, and eighty.[edit] FilmSome of the film versions made significant changes to the story, setting, and characters. In the 1939 version an entire subplot is devoted to Sara's abetting of a forbidden romance between the school's riding master and an under-teacher. The 1995 version moves the action to New York City during World War I and generally follows the storyline of the 1939 version. In both the 1939 and 1995 films, Miss Minchin becomes aware of Sara's transformed attic room and tries to have her arrested for theft. Additionally, both versions change the book's ending completely, revealing that Sara's father is alive and having him recover from amnesia on sight of her.∙1917 version: Mary Pickford as Sara and Katherine Griffith as Miss Minchin.∙1939 version: Shirley Temple as Sara and Mary Nash as Miss Minchin.∙1995 Filipino version: entitled "Sarah, Ang Munting Princesa" (lit. Sarah, The Little Princess) which starred Camille Prats as Sara and Jean Garcia as Miss Minchin. It was inspired by the entry of the anime version Princess Sarah, which became a hit in thePhilippines. The movie was filmed entirely in Scotland. It was produced by Star Cinema and ABS-CBN.∙1995 version: Liesel Matthews as Sara and Eleanor Bron as Miss Minchin.。