Blue Bird, The (1976) – Nostalgia Central

The first US-Soviet co-production made during the Cold War was based on a 1909 play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck.

Peasant children Mytyl (future pop star and Oasis wife, Patsy Kensit) and her brother Tyltyl (Todd Lookinland, brother of Bobby Brady actor Mike Lookinland), live in a snug forest cottage with their woodchopper father and his wife (Elizabeth Taylor).

One night, while their parents are sleeping, the pair sneak out and visit a super party at the castle next door with fireworks, dancing musicians, and tons of sweet food – but they are not invited to join in.

Returning home forlornly, the kids discover a hideous but kindly old witch (also played by Elizabeth Taylor), who gives Tyltyl a magic hat.

If he turns the diamond on the front of the hat, he can see the souls of animals and objects.

He points the diamond at the witch, and bingo! she becomes a beautiful fairy named Light, with her deep cleavage pushing out of a Cleopatra gown (also Liz, obviously).

Tyltyl points it at the cat, and out pops Cicely Tyson in a cat suit. Next, the dog becomes Arthur Daley in a dog suit (George Cole). Then fire (Evgeniy Shcherbakov). water (Valentina Ganibalova), milk (Margarita Terekhova), bread (Richard Pearson), and sugar (Georgiy Vitsin) all come to life (Ever seen an actor dressed up like a sugar bowl?)

Light tells Tyltyl that the children must now go on a journey to find the Blue Bird, which will give mankind the secret of happiness. She breaks into iambic tetrameter: “I am the Light that makes men see/ The radiance in Reality.

Tyltyl, Mytyl, Light and the whole crowd of elements, edibles, and animals troop off on the first of their five quests to find the bird.

The first takes them to the Land of Memory, where they meet the souls of their dead grandparents (Will Geer and Mona Washbourne), who find heaven boring and wish they were alive again.

They give the children a bird which looks blue while they’re in Memory heaven, but it turns black when they get back to earth.

The second journey is to the Palace of Night, played by Jane Fonda. And if you think she was dressed snazzy in Barbarella, you should see these costumes by Edith Head.

Night governs everything that makes humanity miserable: ghosts, wars, plagues, Shakespeare . . . wait, Shakespeare? Yes: in the weirdest episode of a weird film, Tyltyl opens the door marked “Ghosts,” and out come running about a dozen heroes of Shakespeare’s tragedies – King Lear, Macbeth. Hamlet, Othello, the whole crowd acting really nutty and running around, reciting their most famous lines.

Then the kids discover that the characters are afraid of real people, so they chase them back into their lair. Fonda slams the door behind King Lear and says patronisingly, “They’ve felt so foolish since man stopped taking them seriously.”

Night’s third door – “The Pit” – reveals an Oz-like heterocosm in which danseurs dressed as silver trees (the Kirov Ballet Company) support Russian ballerina Nadezhda Pavlova (dressed as a blue bird) in a lengthy sequence with nice special effects, leading to the children’s departure with a flock of pigeons that have been dyed blue.

There follow quests to the Forest (talking trees), and the land of Luxury (played languidly by Ava Gardner with a supporting cast of dozens of gluttons, lechers, idlers, boozers, rich people and other bad guys), with respites in the deceptive Garden of Dreams and the Meadow of Happiness, where they are entertained by a funny clown (Oleg Popov).

In a dark forest, however, they encounter Oak (Harry Andrews), who admonishes them for mankind’s endless cruelties and abuses of nature.

Narrowly escaping, they come to the land of the Future, where Father Time (Robert Morley) presides over a large contingent of yet-to-be-born Whiz Kids, who have to present him with their futuristic technological inventions before they enter a sort of huge collapsible garlic bulb that leads to their birth into the world.

Finally, everybody has to go back to their original state, i.e., the woman dressed as spilt milk has to go back into her pitcher, the loaf-of-bread guy goes back to the cutting board, etc. The last to go is Light, over the tearful protests of Tyltyl and Mytyl.

Tyltyl grasps her elbows: “No, don’t go! Light! Light!” to which Liz (now their mother again) answers, “Of course it’s light! Now get up, you two sleepyheads.”

A pessimistic coda has the children lose the blue bird (which is ultimately found not in Dreamland but in Liz’s kitchen), but Tyltyl vows to capture it. Turning to the audience, Tyltyl says, “If any of you find him, would you please give him back – we need him for our happiness . . . later on.”

What is it all supposed to mean? But more importantly, why did so many first-rate actors sign on to make a second-rate Wizard of Ozski?

Mytyl
Patsy Kensit
Tyltyl
Todd Lookinland
Mother/Witch/Light/Maternal Love
Elizabeth Taylor
The Night
Jane Fonda
Tylette (Cat)
Cicely Tyson
Tylo (Dog)
George Cole
Luxury
Ava Gardner
Milk
Margarita Terekhova
Sugar
Georgiy Vitsin
Clown
Oleg Popov
Blue Bird
Nadezhda Pavlova
Grandfather
Will Geer
Grandmother
Mona Washbourne
Father Time
Robert Morley
Oak
Harry Andrews
Bread
Richard Pearson
Water
Valentina Ganibalova
Fire
Evgeniy Shcherbakov
Father
Leonid Nevedomsky
Pleasure of eating
Glikeriya Bogdanova-Chesnokova
Pleasure of not understanding
Sergey Filippov
Pleasure of doing nothing
Vladimir Kazarinov
Pleasure of being rich
Grigoriy Shpigel
Pleasure of being beautiful
Igor Dmitriev
Pleasure of knowing nothing
Lyudmila Ksenofontova
Pleasure of drink
Yuriy Shepelev
Children of the future
Grant Bardsley
Monique Potter
Anne Mannion
Russell Lewis
Steven Warner
Sick girl
Pheona McLellan

Director
George Cukor