In the years following its original release, Das singende, klingende Bäumchen (1957) became something of a staple on British television during the holidays. As Christmas drew ever closer, Das singende, klingende Bäumchen would begin to show up in children’s programming (though dubbed in English). As the children of the sixties and seventies grew up they introduced their own children to Das singende, klingende Bäumchen, turning it into a multi-generational cult classic.
Das singende, klingende Bäumchen has not faired as well in the intervening years outside of Europe. In the United States Das singende, klingende Bäumchen is a relatively obscure film that is likely only known for being featured on the show MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000). As it sometimes happens, the episode of MST3K featuring Das singende, klingende Bäumchen ends up making the “hosts” of that show look rather foolish as opposed to the other way around. For a show based on the naive notion that something can be “so bad, it’s good”, the creators on that show don’t seem to have a very firm grasp of cinematographic art.
Das singende, klingende Bäumchen is an East German fairytale film produced during the height of the Cold War by DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft), the state controlled studio, from a fairytale put to paper by the Brothers Grimm in the nineteenth century. Das singende, klingende Bäumchen is an amalgamation of a few different fairytales, each as macabre and uncanny as the next. The fairytale films produced by DEFA, though made for children, aren’t as squeamish or prudish as their American iterations over at Disney. Das singende, klingende Bäumchen is, despite its fantastic production design, a kind of surreal morality play about greed, penance, and abstinence.
The fact that Disney renders its sugar-coated fairytales in animation rather than live-action as DEFA did in the fifties could account for why so many Americans find Das singende, klingende Bäumchen “creepy”. When a princess rides a giant fish made of paper or a prince turns into a bear (and looks like something out of Zoobilee Zoo) is taken out of context for shock value it could take some getting used to seeing it executed with practical effects and make up. But in the context of the overall film, these quaint effects take on the poetry of theater.
Das singende, klingende Bäumchen was directed by filmmaker Francesco Stefani whose background in the theater made him a much sought after director of children’s films in East Germany. Stefani can light a sound stage populated with paper trees and glitter for a night sky and make it feel like an oil painting come to life. Stefani’s spectacles of Grimm fairytales possess that elusive quality of imagination made flesh. The sets in Das singende, klingende Bäumchen are far more ornate and stylized than the other fairytale films produced in East Germany at the time largely because Stefani’s gifts as an artist enabled such extravagances on a measly budget.
In this way Das singende, klingende Bäumchen predicts Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König (1972) and was an obvious influence on The Company Of Wolves (1984). These aesthetic connections to post-modernist fantasias and revisionist fairytales makes perfect sense because Das singende, klingende Bäumchen is a children’s fantasy imagined as high art.
