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 tried to hunt down a deer, but in his hurry to chase the deer, he accidentally broke into a cursed magical forest, and the deer suddenly turned into a dead tree. When King Hildebrand blows the horn in an attempt to call for 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 how to leave the forest. the old witch introduced her daughter 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 Fascinated by Greta's beauty, he accepted Greta's request and took her out of the forest.

In fact, King Hildebrand was already married, and his late wife gave him seven children (six princes and a 12-year-old princess named Eliza). King Hildebrand’s late wife once hoped that their children could live in a place surrounded by nature. That’s why King Hildebrand specially let his children live in the castle in the forest. When King Hildebrand's ex-wife died, the ball of yarn she left became the only thing that knew the way to the castle in the forest. At first, Greta didn't know the king's secret, but later she learned the truth from a maid. King Hildebrand promised Greta that he would come back when he visited his children. As a result, three days had passed since his departure. Greta was dissatisfied that the king often left her to visit his children's secret home in the woods, so she took the ball of yarn at night and walked into the woods in the next morning. When Greta arrived at the castle in the forest, she coaxed King Hildebrand's seven children to come down to greet her. When the princes came down from the castle, Greta picked up six enchanted white cloths and turned the six princes into swans, only Eliza escaped deep into the woods under the cover of her brothers. The helpless Eliza became sad soon after watching 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 winter when Eliza reached the cave far away from her country, but she found her brothers had flown back and ran up to reunite with them.

That night, Eliza's brothers explained to her that they could only turn back into humans at night until transform the swans in the morning, and once they waited until spring, they would have to migrate to other cold places. Later, after Eliza's brother specially helped Eliza prepare winter clothes, 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 them six balls of yarn made of nettle threads into shirts. 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 resolved not to speak and went about picking nettles and making lots of balls of nettle yarn. When winter came, she went to spend the winter somewhere else so that she would not be able to remain silent when her brothers returned. 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, when Eliza was starting to weave her last shirt, she was discovered by two hunters and a pack of hunting dogs from a neighboring country and was taken out. King Friedrich of the neighboring country happened to be hunting when he discovered Eliza and was fascinated by her appearance. Since he could not bear to let Eliza live in the forest, he brought Eliza to the court and wanted to marry her.

Meanwhile, King Hildebrand expelled Greta from his kingdom after he learned that Greta had turned his sons into swans, so 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 told 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 time when the church bells ring twelve Next time) knit six shirts and give the six shirts to her swan brothers to put on. The princes who have turned into swans will turn into swans and cannot return to their human form again. Greta believes that this is the only way for her to exact revenge on King Hildebrand. She believes that only by getting rid of Eliza can she win King Friedrich's heart.

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 balls of yarn, causing Eliza to be arrested for picking nettles in the cemetery at night, which led to her being tried by a judge and improperly accused by Greta's mother and being 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 is about to be surrounded by fire, she suddenly sees her swan brothers arriving to rescue her, so Eliza throws six shirts at her brothers while they surround her. Eliza's brothers successfully put on the shirts given by Eliza and successfully returned to their human form. The swan feathers they dropped put out the fire at the stake. Eliza spoke as she saw her brothers return to human form.

Greta's mother was dissatisfied with this. When she tried to convince a executioner to set fire to Eliza and her brothers, he pushed her down and broke her magic wand. When the princes rescued their sister Eliza and told King Friedrich the truth, Greta and her mother were taken to the stake. Eliza asked King Friedrich to let their stepmother go, so King Friedrich agreed to Eliza and drove Greta and her mother out of the wilderness and refused to allow them to come back again. Finally, Eliza married King Friedrich and lived happily 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