The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films

Jack Zipes takes us beyond Disney and DreamWorks to the many films that draw on fairy-tale sorcery for their cinematic power. With fierce analytic energy, encyclopedic inclusiveness, and imaginative verve, he enlivens an expansive history that reaches back to Georges Melies's enchantments and ends with the complex grotesqueries of Pan's Labyrinth and Little Otik. Maria Tatar, Harvard University

The Enchanted Screen is a labor of love and a major work of scholarship, encyclopedic in reach and rich in sustained and detailed thinking. The `unknown history' of fairy-tale film is lucky to have found such a skilled and dedicated narrator. Stephen Benson, University of East Anglia Norwich

Last year, Zipes (emer., Univ. of Minnesota) contributed a foreword for Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (CH, Mar'11, 48-3760), a delightful collection edited by Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix. This year, Zipes presents an extensive, well-organized study of fairy tales in the film genre. Zipes's knowledge of films from a wide variety of cultures is admirable. In the silent era, fairy tales provided filmmakers worthy material free of copyright expense. From the 1930s on, the film industry was able to put old wine into new bottles with both color and sound, a la Walt Disney and filmmakers in other parts of the world. Taking a fresh approach to major films, Zipes avoides the heavy use of jargon and instead offers clear, direct commentary on the films themselves and their oral and literary sources ... Zipes gives the reader 10 pages of endnotes, 12 pages of bibliography, 38 pages of filmography, and a thorough index--all in fine print. The influence of this book will extend for decades. Summing Up: Essential. All readers.
CHOICE, June 2011 (R. Blackwood, City Colleges of Chicago)

The true achievement of this book is its astute, perceptive, and thought-provoking discussion ... This intellectually stimulating book should be informative and enjoyable for a wide range of readers. At once a satisfying read and a valuable reference source, this is a solid and worthwhile scholarly effort. Mihaela Mihailova, Yale University (The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2011)

The subtitle of the book is The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films; what Zipes has done in this book, as he has done in all his work, is to make that history known.
-Children's Literature Association Quarterly

This colossal book offers a thorough and yet whimsical overview of the foundational role of fairy tales in filmmaking. Zipes, with his usual acerbic wit and inspiring expertise, takes readers on a journey through the historical facets of fairy-tale films, ranging from major studio productions to little-known art pieces. While the scope of Zipes' research and the acuity of his analysis alone are breathtaking, the passion with which Zipes writes about this subject impressed me deeply. The themes to which Zipes returns again and again in his interpretations - home, the uncanny, the family - provide powerful explanatory frames that help make his case that most fairy-tale films have deep roots in oral and literary tales and re-create them with great imaginative and artistic power (xi). Indeed, Zipes demonstrates this point and in so doing, provides the rest of us (fairy-tale scholars, film scholars, and scholars in adjacent disciplines) with an essential companion for research, teaching, and entertainment. Jeana Jorgensen, Journal of Folklore Research