The Story of Hansel and Gretel

“The Story of Hansel and Gretel” is a remarked improvement over the same year’s “Rapunzel,” creating a sustained air of dread throughout its ten short minutes and then ending in a bittersweet happy ending. The innocence is forever lost in Hansel and Gretel’s dewy youth, but at least they didn’t get turned into a witch’s banquet. Even better is how thoroughly definitive some of the animation gets here in creating personalities and individual characters.

While Hansel and Gretel still look like Edgar Bergen’s castoff puppets, and frankly like shrunken middle-aged frumps rather than elementary school aged children, their father is a study in haunted, worried paternal love. His body language is broken and fraught with despair, the never-ending poverty and worry about his children’s health and welfare etched into his face. While the wicked step-mother is missing, the nasty witch remains a frightening presence stomping around the forest. While her red eyes and teal skin, she lords over Hansel while he sits in a candy cane chair, slowly studying him before violently grabbing him and throwing his body into a cage. The witch is a ghoulish piece of work, a leering she-devil that erupts into puffs of sparkles when Gretel sends her back into the inferno.

Even better are some of the smaller moments, like the witch creating the candy-and-gingerbread house to lure Hansel and Gretel into her demonic hands. A large pile of sugar spreads out across the forest floor, then evaporates up before the house pops into view. And the two forest creatures are amusing little side attractions, with the hungry duck munching away on the bread crumbs an obvious delight. The problem still remains of the faces sometimes appearing to blur into various emotions, but Ray Harryhausen’s artistry is clearly growing by leaps and bounds. This witch is scarier than Rapunzel’s, and yet another marker on the way towards more memorable screen creations yet to come in just a few short years.