The Wild Swans (1977 film)

The Wild Swans
Japanese theatrical release poster
Directed by	Yuji Endo, Nobutaka Nishizawa
Written by	Tomoe Takashi, Yasuko Miyazaki
Based on	The Six Swans by the Brothers Grimm The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen
Produced by	Chiaki Imada
Starring	See voice cast
Cinematography	Tamio Hosoda
Edited by	Yasuo Iseki
Music by	Akihiro Komori
Production company	Toei Animation
Distributed by	Toei Company (Japan) Turner Program Services (North America)
Release date	19 March 1977 (1977-03-19) (Japan)
Running time	62 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

The Wild Swans (世界名作童話 白鳥の王子, Sekai Meisaku Dōwa: Hakuchō no Ōji, lit. 'World Masterpiece Fairy Tales: The Swan Princes') is a 1977 Japanese anime fantasy film produced by Toei Animation, based on the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale The Six Swans and on Hans Christian Andersen's variation The Wild Swans. The film was first shown in Japan on 19 March 1977 in the Toei Manga Matsuri (Toei Cartoon Festival).

The Wild Swans represents the first entry in Toei's World Masterpiece Fairy Tales film series, followed by Thumbelina (1978), Twelve Months (1980), Swan Lake (1981), and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1982).

Plot

One day, King Hildebrand and his hunters found a deer and wanted to capture it. However, in his hurry to hunt the deer, the king accidentally broke into a cursed magical forest, and the deer suddenly turned into a dead tree. When King Hildebrand blows the trumpet to seek help from the outside world, an old witch tells King Hildebrand that if he wants to leave the forest, he must fulfill the wish of her daughter Greta, because Greta is the only one who knows the way out of the forest. After the old witch introduced Greta to King Hildebrand, Greta expressed to King Hildebrand that her wish would not bring him trouble. Greta knew that King Hildebrand had been lost his wife for many years, so she asked King Hildebrand to marry her as his queen. King Hildebrand was fascinated by Greta's appearance, so he accepted her request and left the forest smoothly.

In fact, King Hildebrand had been married for a long time, and his late wife gave him seven children (six princes and a 12-year-old princess named Eliza).King Hildebrand's late wife once hope their children to live in a place surrounded by nature, so King Hildebrand specially asked his children to live in a castle in the forest. When King Hildebrand's late wife dies, the magic ball of yarns she left behind becomes the only thing that knows the castle leading to the forest. At first Greta didn't know the King Hildebrand's secret, but then she learned the truth from a maid. King Hildebrand promised Greta that he would be back when he visited his children, but it had already been three days when he returned to the castle. Greta was dissatisfied with the fact that the king often left her to visit his children, so she stole the magic ball of yarn at night and walked into the forest the next morning. When Greta arrived at the castle in the forest and King Hildebrand's children came down to greet her, she picked up six pieces of enchanted white cloth and turned the six princes into swans. Only Eliza escaped under the cover of her brothers and running into the woods. The helpless Eliza sadly watched her brothers turn into swans and fly away, but she regained the courage to look for her brothers under the comfort of her own tears that turned into elves. It was already winter when Eliza reached the cave far away from her country, but when she found her brothers had flown back she ran up to reunite with them.

That night, Eliza's brothers explained to her that after they turned into swans, they could only turn back to humans at night, and they would turn into swans after daylight. When spring comes, they have to migrate to other cold places to spend the winter. After Eliza's brothers specially prepared clothes for Eliza for the winter, they lived happily in the cave for a while until spring came. Later, before the princes left, they told Eliza that if she wanted to break the spell, she would have to be mute for six years and sew six shirts for them using balls of yarn made from nettle threads. But the moment she spoke or cried while knitting the shirt would kill them. Although the princes could not bear the many risks their sister had taken to break the spell, Eliza was determined to free her brothers from the spell.

After the princes left, Eliza decided not to speak. She went around picking nettles and making many nettle yarn balls. When winter came, she decided to spend the winter somewhere else so that she would not be unable to remain silent when her six brothers returned. Although the princes called Eliza when they returned and found her missing, Eliza had no choice but to leave her brothers and silently left the cave. Later, Eliza settled down in a hollow tree and sewed shirts under the attention of the animals. During this period, she successfully knitted five shirts. Six years later, just as Eliza was about to start knitting her last shirt, she was discovered by two hunters and a pack of hunting dogs from a neighboring country and was taken out. By coincidence, Friedrich, the king of a neighboring country who was hunting, discovered Eliza and was fascinated by her. Since he could not bear to leave Eliza to live alone in the forest, he brought Eliza to the court and wanted to marry her.

At the same time, King Hildebrand expelled Greta from his kingdom after learning that Greta had turned his six sons into swans. Greta cried to her mother and asked her to help her marry another king. Later, Greta's mother fulfilled Greta's wish and cast a disease spell on the river near King Friedrich's country. Later, they found Eliza staying next to King Friedrich knitting six shirts. Greta's mother tells Greta not to worry, because there is only one week left for Eliza to lift the curse on her swan brother. If Eliza fails to meet the deadline (referring to the twelve strokes of the church bell) to knitted six shirts and gave them to her six swan brothers to put on, the princes who had turned into swans would turn into swans and could not return human. Greta believes that the only way to win King Friedrich's heart is to get rid of Eliza, and plans to take revenge on King Hildebrand.

When King Friedrich and his loyal ministers are troubled by the problem of strange diseases in the country, Greta and her mother convince King Friedrich that they must get rid of a witch who has cast a spell on the kingdom to solve the problem. Greta and her mother burned Eliza's ball of yarn, so Eliza was arrested for picking nettles in the cemetery at night and was tried by a judge and improperly accused by Greta's mother and was burned at the stake. Later, when Eliza was taken to the stake, she took the shirt she had just finished sewing with her. Just as Eliza was about to be surrounded by fire, she suddenly saw her swan brothers arriving to rescue her, so Eliza threw six shirts at her brothers as they flew towards her. Eliza's brothers successfully put on Eliza's shirt and successfully transformed back into humans. The swan feathers they dropped put out the fire at the stake. Eliza finally spoke after seeing her brothers' spells successfully lifted.

Greta's mother was dissatisfied with this, and when she tried to persuade a executioner to set fire to Eliza and her brothers, he pushed her down and broke her magic wand. Shortly after the princes rescued their sister Eliza, they told King Friedrich the truth, so Greta and her mother were taken to the stake. Eliza asked King Friedrich to sentence Greta and her mother to be expelled from the wilderness, so King Friedrich agreed to Eliza's request and expelled Greta and her mother and prohibited them from returning again. Eventually, Eliza married King Friedrich and lived happily together with the blessings of the people and her six brothers and their father, King Hildebrand.

Voice cast

Character	Original version (Japanese) [original version]	Turner Program Services version (English)
Eliza/Adult Eliza (エリザ)	Eiko Masuyama (増山江威子)	Corinne Orr
Greta (グレタ)	Kaneko Iwasaki (岩崎加根子)
Tears (涙)	Yasuko Miyazaki (宮崎恭子)
King Hildebrand (ヒルデブランド王)	Yousuke Kondo (近藤洋介)
Witch (魔女)	Tokuko Sugiyama (杉山とく子)
King Friedrich (フリードリッヒ王)	Taro Mochizuki (望月太郎)
Judge A (裁判官A)	Yasuyuki Kachi (可知靖之)
Judge B (裁判官B)	Shoshin Kobayashi (小林尚臣)
The Six Princes (六人の王子たち)	Kiyoshi Komiyama (小宮山清) Noriko Tsukase (つかせのりこ) Akira Kamiya (神谷明) Toru Furuya (古谷徹)

Additional voices

• Original: Midori Goto (後藤みどり), Noriko Kanzaki (神崎教子), Haiyuza Theater Company (俳優座), Aoni Production (青二プロダクション)
• English: Earl Hammond

Music

The songs were composed by Akihiro Komori and performed by Columbia Orchestra. The lyrics were written by actress Yasuko Miyazaki under the nickname Takaba, who also wrote the screenplay.

1. "The Swan Princes" (白鳥の王子, Hakuchō no ōji) (Singers: Eiko Masuyama and The Chirps)
2. "I'm Sorry" (なみだとねんね, Namida to ne nen'ne) (Singers: Kumiko Ōsugi and The Chirps)

International releases

The film was dubbed in English in 1983 by Sound Shop Inc. in New York under the direction of Peter Fernandez and released by Turner Program Services. It was later released on VHS in 1984 by RCA Columbia Pictures Home Video.

In Italy, the film was theatrically released on 24 November 1978 under the title "Heidi Becomes Princess" (Italian: Heidi diventa principessa). This was done to capitalize on a vague likeness between Eliza and Heidi from Heidi, Girl of the Alps, which had gained huge popularity in Italy that same year. Eliza's name was changed to Heidi in the film, and Heidi's Italian child voice actress was hired to dub the character. The Italian version is a few minutes shorter, and features narration provided by the Italian narrator of the Heidi series.

The film was also dubbed in Spanish, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Greek, Korean, and Arabic.

External links

• Official English webpage from Toei Animation
• The Wild Swans at IMDb
• The Wild Swans at FilmAffinity
• The Wild Swans at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Wild Swans (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia