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Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy Movie Review

Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy is a 1954 animated musical film directed by John Paul and starring Anna Russell. It’s the earliest American stop-motion movie and a solid one at that.

Two hungry children encounter an evil witch and her gingerbread house in this puppet version of the iconic fairy tale. This was not just the first ever American stop-motion film, but it was also the only non-Disney feature released in the country since ‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’. Despite all of these important historical feats, the movie is not particularly well known today, which is a shame as it’s a solid, uniquely strange little flick.

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There is not much that you can really do with this tale to make it more interesting as we all know it by heart know, so the filmmakers made an interesting choice to make it a musical. This was a great idea that led to a different film than it could have been. Yes, the opera music here may seem dated to some and most songs are indistinguishable from each other, but for me the songs mostly worked as they made the movie pleasingly of its time and immensely charming.

The singing is excellent and the voice acting is very good, especially the playful and fun performance from Anna Russell in the role of the witch herself. The main issue here lies in the characterization. It’s quite weak. We do not get to see these characters developed at all. They looked and sounded great, but not much emotion and/or personality was present there.

This Hansel and Gretel movie features pretty good animation. The dolls look like dolls and aren’t too humanized, which was a lovely choice that lent the movie so much vintage authenticity. The figurines looked so cute, in fact, that I instantly wanted to buy a couple of them for myself. The background work overall is just okay and the movie is unpolished and not of greatest quality as it lacks preservation and HD, but the characters looked excellent. It’s a short film that is easy to get into and quite endearing, especially in the parents’ interactions and the witch scenes, but it needed more substance overall.

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